DataGrids Are For... Legal Professionals

As the legal profession changes, the applications that support legal professionals must also change. The DataGrid can help you evolve.

The legal profession is going through enormous changes, some driven by changes in the business (e.g., outsourcing) and some by technology (AI). As a result, applications created for legal professionals like lawyers and paralegals have to reflect and support those changes.

For example, thanks to outsourcing, AI and more sophisticated third-party software, the amount of time a legal professional spends on research (once a key skill in the field) is shrinking. In the same way, legal professionals are now spending less time drafting legal documents (another formerly critical skill) and more time reviewing/correcting the products of various software systems.

Many things in the profession have not changed, of course. Today’s legal professionals still need to be able to understand their clients’ needs and analyze the issues each client faces. Legal professionals must provide solutions that are attainable while meeting their clients’ needs and be able to communicate the resulting courses of action (with their risks) both to their clients and the other parties involved.

Actually, here’s an interesting survey of legal professionals that the Progress ShareFile team put together. Lawyers love the work they do—but many still face workflow friction that slows client service, delays intake and creates unnecessary complexity. Of the participating legal professionals surveyed:

• 97% say AI and automation will be important to the future of legal
• 84% say workflow inconsistencies impact efficiency
• 95% want tools that are simple and easy to use

When it comes to executing the selected actions, much remains the same: filing deadlines remain critical, as do keeping clients compliant with relevant laws and advocating for clients’ interests in criminal and civil cases.

While the business has changed, clients have also changed and are increasingly using self-serve and lower cost options (e.g., community legal workers). When working with legal professionals, clients are increasingly assessing their experience by how the client’s interaction is personalized and customized to their needs. As a result, legal professionals are moving away from traditional hourly based billing toward value-based billing and are increasingly focused on efficiency.

The net result is an increased demand for “legal services” (contract life cycle management, for example) instead of “legal advice” like routine contract negotiation.

The Progress Telerik and Kendo UI DataGrid is an essential part of building applications that support those changing needs.

Retrieving and Finding Documents

For example, a legal case still involves thousands of documents: client records, meeting notes, case files, pleadings, affidavits, court filings, expert reports and more. Most of those documents are now digital assets, stored in various repositories that can be accessed through the DataGrid. Using the DataGrid’s virtualization features enables users to retrieve and review large numbers of documents quickly—essential in being responsive to clients’ needs.

The DataGrid offers multiple tools for filtering, sorting and searching for specific documents. Professionals can find documents by specific clauses, case IDs or document types, even across large repositories. The DataGrid AI-enabled Semantic Search even lets users find records just by typing in what they want (e.g., “Show me all the active cases”).

Once the relevant document is found, professionals can have multiple options in reviewing the document, depending on their needs. Documents can be viewed in the DataGrid, of course, but can also be reviewed in popup windows to show key information without leaving the current screen. Or users can navigate to a separate screen to view the document in full.

Organizing Documents and Data

Given the variety of documents, the DataGrid’s ability to organize those documents into groups is critical. The DataGrid can be configured to provide a predefined set of groups, and users can create their own groups as they need them by dragging and dropping columns in the grid.

Going beyond simple groups, the DataGrid can be configured as a hierarchy of document groups to organize documents by whatever criteria the user needs. Because the DataGrid has the ability to nest grids with different layouts within, for example, a document hierarchy, different document types can be displayed with different formats.

Some things remain constant, though. Even in the evolving world of legal professionals, time remains of the essence. While nunc pro tunc (“now for then”) can apply, it remains essential for filings to be made on time and correctly. DataGrid templates enable users, without leaving their current screen, to switch between a document-oriented view and a time-based view to see what’s pending (and conditional formatting can be used to highlight filings that still need development).

The DataGrid’s ability to organize any kind of data, in any order, to support any analysis is also essential to supporting the way the profession is evolving. Businesses now expect their legal departments to not only find ways to manage legal risk but also to provide strategic insights to improve revenues and decrease costs. Legal professionals increasingly need tools—like the DataGrid—that support exploring data to help them provide those insights.

For example, in the contract management area, clients now expect their legal representatives to be able analyze past performance of various terms in contracts to identify opportunities both for improving future contracts and renegotiating existing contracts (or identifying contracts that can’t be improved and should be terminated).

Sharing Data

Client confidentiality remains a key concern in any interaction with a legal professional. The DataGrid’s ability to integrate with code that authenticates and authorizes users to control access to data helps provide that. The DataGrid’s UI supports hiding columns, hiding whole rows and formatting individual cells hide information, all driven by the user’s authorized roles.

On the other hand, legal information often needs to be shared with others (courts, clients, other members of the office, opposing counsel). The DataGrid supports exporting selected rows or the whole grid in both Excel and PDF formats (these options can also be turned off to help prevent data from leaving the application’s secure environment). Any hidden rows, columns and obfuscated data remain hidden during export and, where necessary, custom code can be inserted into the export process to further control the process.

Updating Information

While reporting data is important, the DataGrid also provides excellent support for updating information efficiently. Users can update single rows, enter a “bulk update” mode that supports updating multiple rows, open popup windows for individual rows to improve the update experience or navigate from the DataGrid to full screen editing for any row.

The DataGrid also provides built-in validation to help prevent invalid data being entered and supports both synchronous validation (stopping the user from continuing until data is validated) and asynchronous validation (allowing the user to continue when validation is time-consuming but preventing updates when the user tries to save their data). Validation can be extended with custom code that can take advantage of the DataGrid’s error-handling support (displaying error messages in tooltips, for example).

In addition to providing multiple shortcuts that enable experienced users to work efficiently, the DataGrid supports WCAG accessibility guidelines out of the box. For occasional users, the DataGrid’s various assistants (AI Toolbar Assistant, AI Column Assistant, etc.), let users perform complex operations with natural language commands.

As the legal profession changes, the applications that support legal professionals must also change. The Telerik and Kendo UI DataGrid gives you the ability to support those evolving needs.

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