On File Management and Quality Control in Law Firms
Published:
2010-07-01
Abstract:The management of business files in law firms is an important part of the management of law firms. Today, with the rapid development of lawyer business, it is of great significance to strengthen the file management of law firms and improve the understanding of the importance, seriousness and necessity of business file management, which is of great significance to standardize the development of law firms, reduce the risk of lawyer practice and improve the assessment system of lawyer work. The author makes a brief analysis on how to strengthen and standardize the business file management of law firms in the light of my practice in file management.
Key words:Lawyer Business Archives Management Quality Control Risk Prevention
The lawyer's business file is a true record of the lawyer's activities in accordance with legal procedures. It records the whole process of the lawyer's work. It is the true evidence for testing the quality of the lawyer's case handling and assessing the lawyer's professional ability and level. It reflects the lawyer's maintenance of the correct implementation of national laws and the protection of clients. The legal rights and interests reflect the basic functions and social roles of lawyers.[①]The business files of law firms record the whole process of the development, construction and change of the lawyer's career, which is an important method for law firms to strengthen risk prevention, the history of a law firm, and an important basis for understanding the history, development and exploration of the law of the development of the lawyer's career. For this reason, the Ministry of Justice and the State Archives Administration have issued a notice on the "Measures for the Filing of Lawyers Business Archives" and the "Measures for the Management of Lawyers Business Archives" issued by the Ministry of Justice and the State Archives Administration (1991) No. 153, and have made detailed provisions on the filing of lawyers' business archives, the management of lawyers' business archives, the storage period of lawyers' business archives, and the cover format of lawyers' business archives.
The Importance of 1. the Management of Business Archives in Law Firms
In the traditional sense, business files are the records of the business work of law firms and the precious wealth of law firms. They provide detailed and intuitive materials for lawyers to conduct business discussions and handle related cases; they are trainee lawyers and paralegals to learn to handle cases. The first-hand teaching materials for transforming theoretical knowledge into practical operations are the reference materials for lawyers to handle similar cases, and it is the embodiment of the quality of lawyers in handling cases. Therefore, as an important part of the daily administrative work of law firms, under the circumstances of the rapid development of the firm, the continuous expansion of the scale of lawyers and the sharp increase in business volume, it is a foundation for the healthy development of law firms to improve the understanding of the importance and necessity of the management of lawyers' business files.
In today's increasingly fierce competition in the legal service industry, the competition in the legal service market is fundamentally the competition of service quality and risk management. Therefore, we should correctly understand, judge and grasp the practice risks of law firms, strengthen the control and prevention of risks and the quality management of services, in order to improve the anti-risk ability of law firms and improve the quality control mechanism.[②]
1. Perfect file management is an important part of the quality control system of law firms.
The quality control of a law firm refers to the activities of a law firm in the course of practice, in order to achieve and ensure the quality of handling cases, the use of technical control measures and management measures. The quality of the case file formed after the completion of the case is the most direct manifestation of the quality of the lawyer's case handling. In strict accordance with the requirements of the Measures for the Filing of Lawyers' Business Files and the Measures for the Administration of Lawyers' Business Files, the assessment of lawyers' business files and materials, and the establishment of a system in which the partners in charge first review the contents of the files and then file them, can effectively urge lawyers to accept and handle cases in accordance with the law and improve the quality of lawyers' handling.
2. Strict and standardized case file quality assessment can effectively reduce the practice risk of law firms.
Lawyers must provide legal services in the name of a law firm, and our law prohibits lawyers from practicing in their own name. Therefore, the practice of a lawyer is largely equivalent to the practice of a law firm. Law firms lack effective management and supervision of lawyers' practice, lawyers' mistakes in the practice process, and the abnormal flow of lawyers in their personal practice career will also lead to the occurrence of law firm practice risks.[3]The business files of the law firm are organized and filed from the application case number, formal acceptance, fee voucher, entrustment contract, power of attorney, all legal documents formed in the process of handling the case and the client's evaluation content on the quality of the case after the case is handled, so as to standardize every step of the lawyer's handling of the case and reduce the practice risk of the law firm caused by the difference in the lawyer's legal literacy and practice quality, avoid lawyers' illegal operations, do a good job of retaining the content of lawyers' work, provide a basis for timely handover of lawyers' work, and avoid the risk of law firm practice caused by the reduction of the quality of case handling caused by the flow of lawyers.
The current situation of the management of business files in 2. law firms.
In the early 1990 s, the Ministry of Justice of our country formulated the "Measures for the Management of Lawyers' Business Archives" and the "Measures for the Filing of Lawyers' Business Archives", which put forward requirements and specific management methods for the standardized management of lawyers' business archives. But in practice, the management of many law firms is not satisfactory. Investigate its reason, generally has the following several aspects:
External factors:
At present, the law firm is mainly based on partnership, and the advantages and disadvantages of file management work mostly depend on the degree of attention paid by the managers of the firm to the file work, and the lack of a unified and rigid standard measurement. The current assessment method for archives management in Shandong Province only requires that all kinds of national archives at all levels, organs at all levels, organizations, state-owned and state-holding enterprises, institutions, and central units stationed in Shandong Province should participate in the assessment of archives management every year. The file work of law firms is not included in the scope of mandatory assessment.
Internal factors:
(1) Partners only focus on business and ignore archival work.
(2) The firm is small in scale and has fewer personnel. It is not equipped with full-time or part-time archivists and specialized archives. The hardware facilities are difficult to meet the needs of standardized management of archives.
(3), lawyers value economic interests, file awareness is weak. In the process of handling the case, the case materials that should be filed were not collected and sorted out, resulting in no file to return.
(4) The frequent replacement of archives management personnel and the lack of detailed work handover lead to the poor consistency of archives management in law firms.
3. how to strengthen the management of business files of law firms.
In view of the importance and necessity of strengthening the management of business files of law firms, the author believes that strengthening the management of business files of law firms should start from the following aspects:
1, the case assignment form, fee voucher, proxy contract, power of attorney, risk notice, review card and other important legal texts to form a unified format and set as the necessary content for archiving. Standardizing these legal documents is of great significance for assessing the quality of lawyers in handling cases and reducing the practice risks of law firms.
2. Clear responsibilities, clear division of labor, and incorporate the development of archives management into the large planning of the development of the office.
The archives work is included in the development plan and annual plan of the office, and there is a clear leader in charge of the archives work and is included in the responsibility system of the leader in charge. Archival work is a long-term, trivial work. In a business-oriented law firm, it is difficult to persist in this work for a long time without a clear responsible person, clear development goals and reward and punishment standards.
3, the establishment of filing files in charge of partner pre-trial system and file quality regular assessment system.
After the case is handled, the partner in charge of the department where the undertaking lawyer works will review the quality of the case handling and the quality of the case file arrangement, focusing on the review of the fee vouchers, the legal documents written by the lawyer and the client's evaluation of the quality of the lawyer's case handling. Through the pre-trial of the partner in charge, the lawyer can effectively urge the lawyer to handle the case in accordance with the law and reduce the practice risk of the law firm.
In view of the custody and utilization of case files, law firms may establish a regular assessment system for the quality of case files, such as quarterly sampling, annual unified inspection, and the establishment of a special case file quality inspection team. According to the inspection results, improve the storage of archives; according to the current situation of utilization, formulate the corresponding file utilization system to improve the efficiency of file utilization of law firms.
4, strengthen the awareness of archives, regularly carry out archives knowledge training.
The content and nature of the lawyer's work determine that if the materials that should be formed in each step in the lawyer's case process are not collected in time, it will be difficult to complete them later. Therefore, to strengthen the business file management of law firms, we must first strengthen the file awareness of case-handling lawyers, so as to form corresponding case file materials in strict accordance with the case-handling steps.
Conduct regular training on archival knowledge. The training here not only refers to the training of file management personnel, but also emphasizes the training of case-handling lawyers, trainee lawyers and assistants. As direct participants in the case, their level of archival knowledge directly determines the quality of the case files after the end of the case.
5. Use the management software system suitable for the scale and management mode of the law firm, strictly control the whole process from application to filing to closing and filing, and carry out file management throughout.
When the law firm develops to a certain scale, making or introducing a set of management software suitable for the development of the law firm has become a problem that must be solved. For the management software used, the file management must be complete. The file management process starts from the time the lawyer receives the case declaration and filing and the conflict of interest review. The file manager calculates the progress of the case according to the filing time. The file manager communicates with the case handling lawyer in a timely manner to understand the progress of the case, ensure that the case is filed in a timely manner within a certain period of time after the case is completed, and ensure the filing rate of case closure, reducing the loss of closed case files can also ensure that the parties are looking for materials in a timely and rapid manner.
6, the establishment of special archives, the purchase of archives facilities and equipment, equipped with full-time archives management personnel, and the development of archives management personnel assessment system.
Nowadays, the business files of lawyers are still mostly paper materials, which requires law firms to establish special archives equivalent to the size of their firms to store them. According to the current measures for the management of lawyers' business files, the preservation period of long-term business files is 15 years, and the preservation period of some criminal files is longer. This requires the archives to meet the nine prevention standards of "fire prevention, theft prevention, high temperature prevention, moisture prevention, light prevention, dust prevention, rat prevention, insect prevention and pollution prevention". Law firms need to purchase sufficient and good quality archives, temperature and humidity testers, fire extinguishers, air conditioners, dehumidifiers, disinfection and sterilization machines, vacuum cleaners and other equipment to ensure the preservation quality of business archives.
The quality of archives management personnel is directly related to the quality of archives management. So should establish a set of sound archives manager recruitment, training assessment system.
(1) The file manager of the law firm should have certain legal knowledge to ensure that under the premise of strictly abiding by the law firm's business file management measures, the materials required for various cases or the materials should be flexibly grasped.
(2) Archival work is a "behind", long-term and trivial work, and it is difficult to see the results of the work in a short time. Therefore, how to mobilize the enthusiasm of file management personnel, assess the work of file management personnel, and reduce the turnover rate is an important part of the job responsibilities of law firms. Regarding this issue, there is such a requirement in the "Shandong Province Archives Management Assessment Book" that can learn from "the establishment of a post responsibility system for archivists, archivists and professional and technical personnel enjoy the same treatment", clear responsibilities and clear treatment.
7, regular statistics, regular assessment, to avoid the formation of long-term problems difficult to solve.
The closing of cases and the filing of closed cases by law firms shall be counted and checked in a timely manner, and a personal closing table of each lawyer handling the case shall be established. The lawyer's main energy is still to develop the source of the case and handle the case, which requires the file manager of the law firm to do his work carefully, be familiar with the closing situation of each lawyer, communicate with the lawyer in time according to the closing date of the case, prompt the lawyer to file the case in time, make statistics on the closing situation of each year, and make an annual filing analysis table.
8. Improve the borrowing and searching system of existing case files and attach importance to the development and utilization of existing archival materials.
Business files can be used to summarize and analyze lawyers' experience in handling cases and provide successful case materials for lawyers' business discussions. It can become the first choice for trainee lawyers and paralegals to be familiar with lawyers' handling style and handling methods. At present, the business archives of most law firms are only transferred out and used when lawyers handle related cases in many cases, and the value of the case files is not fully utilized. One of the important tasks of strengthening the management of the business archives of the law firm is to make the existing archival materials alive and fully used, so that they can play their due value.
9. Strive to digitize archives management and improve utilization efficiency.
The existing paper-based materials determine their low utilization efficiency, and the development of modern technology makes it possible to digitize archival materials. With the advent of the information society, law firms should establish electronic file systems, develop professional software, and conduct professional and network management for filing, filing, cataloging, inquiry, borrowing and other work. This is also the development of file management in the new era. The trend lies.
In the environment of building a society under the rule of law, the scale of lawyers is expanding and the number of law firms is increasing. How to make law firms bigger and stronger has become an eternal topic for law firm managers, and standardized management is the basis for bigger and stronger. As an important part of lawyer management, lawyer's business file management has also attracted the attention of managers for its importance and necessity. Improving on the basis of norms, seeking a variety of ways to preserve on a complete basis, and developing digitization and networking on the existing basis are the development direction of law firm archives management.
[①]Si Lutong Zi (1991) No. 153 issued a notice on the "Measures for the Filing of Lawyers' Business Files" and the "Measures for the Administration of Lawyers' Business Files"
[②]Ye Lianyou: "On Risk Prevention and Quality Control in Law Firms"
[3]Guo Xiuying: Improving Cognition and Strengthening the Management of Lawyers' Business Archives, http://blog.hr.com.cn
(This article won the third prize of Jinan excellent lawyer paper in 2010)
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