Commercial software for UK law firms hosted in the cloud

Commercial law refers to contract and tort laws involving issues arising at any stage of the business cycle, including commercial litigation and commercial dispute resolution as well as finance, company, insolvency, insurance, reinsurance and restructuring matters. Clients can be anything from individuals operating as sole traders to large businesses, banks, insurance companies and more. Legal advice is equally wide ranging – spanning every part of running a business, from offset all the way to dissolving a company.

Legal software created for commercial practices contains time-saving, efficiency-enhancing, profitability boosting functionality that guides solicitors, paralegals, cashiers, law firm managers, COLPs and COFAs through the tasks associated with commercial law matters – beginning with conflict and identity checking, proceeding with case workflow guidance and concluding with submission of final invoice to the client. The software features empower practitioners to minimise mistakes and maximise productivity.

Yes. Paying for legal services is a concern for some businesses, especially SMEs with limited cashflow. Fixed fee arrangements negate worries about large legal bills at the end of a case. Commercial lawyers can offer fixed fees – with costs dictated by the type of matter, level of court proceedings and case complexity – and our software supports this process.

In Quill, you can correctly estimate fixed fees and disbursements to ensure your practice remains profitable. You can also calculate standard costs for specific kinds of commercial law matters, progress through cases efficiently and speedily with minimum variability, track estimated costs against incurred costs to inform future fee-setting decisions and comply with Precedent H demands.

The Quill system itself comes with the ability to instantly switch on Microsoft Office integration courtesy of our document management feature. Quill also integrates with specialist third-party systems – including Veriphy (for AML and credit checking), FormEvo (for legal forms and e-submissions), Legl (for online payments from privately funded clients) and Bundledocs (for bunding of documents for review by clients, instruction of counsel, and preparation for court or tribunal).

Quill integrates fully with the FormEvo library of legal forms and e-submissions. Where commercial law is concerned, there are defined areas for ‘Business and property courts’, ‘Company’, ‘Company forms for mortgages and loans’, ‘Insolvency’, ‘Limited Liability Partnership’, ‘Limited Partnership’, ‘Tax’ and ‘Tribunals’ encompassing an extensive range of forms from the AA01 to AA06 accounting forms, to the LIQ01 to LIQ14 liquidation forms, to the SH01 to SH50 allotment, cancellation, sale and variation of shares forms.

A costs budget is used at the outset of litigation and details the costs that the receiving party expects to recover on conclusion, and also outlines where time and efforts should be focused during the course of the case. A legal costs budget is referred to as Precedent H. It’s required for all multi-track, high-value litigation matters – including commercial law. Full Precedent H guidance notes can be found at www.justice.gov.uk/downloads/courts/cpr/precedent-h-guidance-notes.pdf.

Your legal software should contain functionality to support the process of preparing and submitting Precedent H costs budgets. In Quill, there are features from a simple ‘Precedent H matter’ tick box which is activated upon new matter set up, to relevant time recording categories to choose from a drop-down selection when logging fee earner time, to easy-to-view ledger cards listing Precedent H entries, to Precedent H reports option for export of data in the correct format.