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Thursday, June 15, 2006

Some of my favorite reports

David Swanner of the South Carolina Law Blog sends out a call for reports in "Need Help With Management Reports Examples." [Via Legal Underground: Please help a kind lawyer with his presentation.] Mr. Swanner would like to hear from lawyers. But, since I'm not a lawyer, I'll just post some notes here.

We're not using any type of case management software at my office. Yet. Maybe someday. Until then, these are a few reports I've devised after being a legal secretary for 30 years:

UNRETAINED CLIENTS: This may not be the best name for a report, but it's descriptive of what I want to show. That is, potential clients who made some kind of contact with my boss, but for whatever reason, didn't hire her. In tabular columns:

  1. Date of contact
  2. Name
  3. Type of case
  4. Date of declination
  5. Reason for declination
  6. Method of declination (in person, in writing, by phone)

COUNTIES: We have many cases across a swath of counties in Central Illinois. I keep this list in the event my boss goes to court or a deposition or something out of county. Then, we can see at a glance what other cases we have in that county that she might give some unscheduled personal attention to. This is a simple report with the name of the county at the top of a column and the clients' names listed below.

PERSONAL INJURY CASES: This report spans all personal injury clients in our office. As of now, this is a total vanity report. But, I suppose it could eventually have some practical uses. This is also my favorite report. So far, the data is quite short since my boss only recently started her new practice. I'm constantly maintaining and updating this report as new information comes in. The categories are:

  1. Date case received
  2. Client(s)
  3. Nature of injury
  4. Specials
  5. Defendant(s)
  6. Insurance company
  7. Opposing counsel
  8. Lawsuit filed (venue and date filed, if at all)
  9. Trial (bench or jury)
  10. Disposition (settle or verdict)
  11. Amount awarded

That would be a be an ideal report for a database so it could be sorted by different categories such as insurance company or venue. A database could also allow for different information to be extracted into a variety of reports. Also, if we had workers' comp cases, I would make a separate report for that.

SPECIALS: In each personal injury file I have a report for medical bills and records. In tabular columns:

  1. Date (Date medical service was provided; this can be a single date or a range of dates)
  2. Medical provider (Name and address)
  3. Amount of bill
  4. Records received
  5. Report received
  6. Lien received

When the time comes to send specials to the insurance company or opposing counsel, I copy this report to another document and delete columns 4, 5 and 6 before printing. That way, the report becomes a nice transmittal cover sheet.

DIARY: One other report I'd like to mention that isn't really a report, but more like a diary or even a docket sheet. For every case, whether personal injury, domestic relations, real estate, bankruptcy, or whatever, I create a new WordPerfect file named. "DIARY - Client Name."

  1. At very the top, I put the name of the client and its contact information.
  2. Below that, if it's a personal injury case, I put the insurance company, adjuster, and contact information, opposing counsel and contact information, including the name of any secretary or paralegal we might talk to.
  3. I also include a field for any other important information I want to retrieve in a hurry, such as date of accident, the judge and judge's clerk.
  4. At the bottom is the bulk of this report. It consists of two columns entitled, "date" and "description." Here I list things that I do, and the date I do them, as my boss's secretary. These are usually tasks done at the behest of my boss that might not be evidenced elsewhere in the file (phone calls, go to courthouse, investigation). I also include here any information the client communicates directly to me in my boss's absence.

The diary mainly stays on the computer. Although, I will often print selected portions to give to my boss or put in the file.

These reports are all created using WordPerfect. And, I should mention, they were all borne out of years of experience. Sometimes, unfortunately, those were bad experiences. Live, learn, and create reports.

• Posted by: Marie Carnes at 11:50 PM
• Filed in: Author and site | Thinking outloud | Tips - Other

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