A Proposal for an Open Source Case Management System (“CMS”)
Case Management Systems (“CMS”)
CMS systems are data management applications designed to accept the input, review and reporting on data relevant for legal organizations. Some of the more advanced systems also facilitate business logic, such as workflow and calendar management. In tandem with the maturation of Windows, CMS systems are used, in one form or another, in every private law firm and corporate and government law departments. The focus of this essay is on the CMS applications offered by established vendors.
Why so many offerings?
To meet needs of legal organizations several, mostly private, companies offer commercial CMS systems. The universe of potential CMS customers is diminutive when compared with more ubiquitous software applications such as Microsoft Office. Vendors usually equate the capabilities of their systems to the size of their target organization. Some, such as Amicus Attorney and Needles, are intended for a small user base ranging from 1 to 50. ProLaw, among others, target the middle of the pack with users numbering from 1 to as high as 500. On the large end packages such as LawManager and MitraTech target the largest legal organizations comprised of potentially thousands of users.
Yet all of these packages are intended to meet the needs of the same user base: attorneys and the people who support them. So what drives each of these products to their separate markets?
Each vendor will assert it is their unique feature set which allows them to control, or play in, their slice of the market. Yet, even a cursory observation of their respective web sites shows striking similarities among them. So as not to belabor the point: if Microsoft Office can meet the needs of millions, perhaps hundreds of millions of users across thousands of industries and hundreds of countries, shouldn’t one well-designed CMS system meet the needs of the 700,000 attorneys in the United States?
Vendors are stuck where they started
The practical reality is all of the mature CMS packages were written years ago during an era where software was built specifically for the Windows platform. Some even have technological roots pre-Windows. This legacy combined with their current user base which is dependant upon it, leaves vendors as prisoners of their own castles. There are two principal reasons why vendors are in this predicament:
(1) A fundamental change to the underlying technology would force existing customers to conduct nearly complete reimplementations ranging from their screens, business logic, especially if script-based, data conversion, rewriting reports and accompanying stored procedures and revisiting training materials and classes.
(2) Changing their software also requires vendors to re-train their own technicians and internal staff on the new software. As any battle-weary veteran will attest, most often even the most experienced technicians appear to learn more about their own product during the course of a project than during any internal classes. This is especially true of CMS products. This shared experience amounts to years of knowledge. And again, because current systems are not based on any current standards, little if any of this knowledge can translate into the new product. Though perhaps not measurable in dollars, the loss of this knowledge would be significant.
So we are left with the existing paradigm. And it is self-fulfilling. Even if a vendor did take the bold step to retool — and if, though unlikely, they managed to completely break free of their legacy roots, some years later they will be facing the same decisions all over again.
In the meantime where does that leave customers? Talk about a hard choice: either they are stuck with outdated, typically clumsy, technology or they are going through a re-implementation every X number of years.
Vendors are the sole source for resources
Perhaps worse, customers only have one source for any help with their existing system: the vendor! With rare exception, vendors are the sole-source for expertise on their own applications. The reality is there just aren’t many classes available, other than through the vendors themselves, to learn Corprasoft, for example. Compounding this, since CMS packages are proprietary and don’t follow any open or standardized software standards it takes months for even the most skilled technician to become facile with the products. Occasionally, a client may take the step of training someone in-house to implement a CMS system. From our experience, this shows little success, which is more a reflection on the proprietary, convoluted, poorly documented application than the skill set of the developer. Compounding this, the in-house developer cannot share in the knowledge of all the “gotchas” that the vendor’s staff knows and, of course, there are no on-line resources for the in-house developer to go to for help.
Vendors Come and Go
As many customers are painfully aware, whether a CMS continues as an ongoing enterprise can fall into doubt at any time. CompInfo, one of the most successful CMS packages with its nearly ubiquitous user base was sunset when new owners decided the market just wasn’t big enough. Soon after, in practically lock-step fashion, a significant CMS vendor was acquired by a public company, then it was reportedly shutting down, and then it was purchased again and reborn. Customers of another significant CMS vendor may be the latest casualty, as the company (name withheld) is apparently on the verge of disappearing.
Costs: the Salt-In-the-Wound
Do people actually pay for this, the uninitiated may ask. Consulting costs may be unavoidable, but licensing fees for software that is inherently not fully upgradeable, that binds it’s customers to a sole source for resources and which comes from a company which can vanish on the whim of a new owner ? Indeed they do, the answer goes, and for sometimes astronomical costs ranging on the high end from $800 to $1,200 per user. And let us not forget these licenses costs establish the base from which the 15-20% annual support is derived.
At this point in the maturation of CMS systems, the market in which they thrive has a choice: either continue down the road described above or seek a path out of this gridlock to recast itself in order to form and control its own destiny.
We posit the time has come for the latter and the way to meet this goal is with a new Case Management System built with open source software.
More, much more, to come.
R.G.