Overview

About Maurice Turnor Gardner

Maurice Turnor Gardner is a boutique private client law firm of 45 top-tier lawyers based in London. The firm has been offering its services since 1 May 2009 following the demerger of Allen & Overy LLP’s highly-rated Private Client Department.

With a global client base of ultra-high-net-worth families, the firm seeks to understand all the legal, commercial and tax issues affecting its clients to provide them with principled and practical legal solutions, working in partnership with them as their trusted advisers. It also covers tax disputes, particularly investigations and follow on litigation with the HMRC.

Real Estate, Philanthropy and Charities and Immigration practices complement the firm’s traditional strengths in tax and estate planning and disputes relating to wealth.

A Future-Proof Platform to Improve Day-to-Day Legal Processes

Documents are at the heart of how Maurice Turnor Gardner operates. Therefore, enabling its lawyers to easily and securely access and share important files is business critical.

Like many organisations, Maurice Turnor Gardner had to quickly transition to remote working due to the pandemic. When it came to document management, the firm was using its existing practice management system (P4W) to store and manage documents. However, this made searching for and collaborating on documents difficult, especially for users who spend their working day inside of Outlook, as it took time to switch between the different applications.

In addition, the only way the firm’s lawyers could access documents remotely was via a virtual desktop. While this provided security, it also required a reliable internet connection, which wasn’t always possible on home WiFi. If a lawyer’s connection dropped, it meant they would then need to reauthenticate each time, impacting the user experience. Maurice Turnor Gardner therefore wanted to move to a true cloud platform that would provide both the security that its high-net-worth clients demand and the flexibility to support its lawyers’ remote working needs.

“We required a solution that would enable our lawyers to work from anywhere with minimal disruption,” said Richard Price, Finance and IT Manager at Maurice Turnor Gardner. “At the same time, our new DMS needed to seamlessly integrate with our existing practice management solution, which underpins our business. By moving our document management to the cloud, we would be able to benefit from enhanced levels of flexibility and security.”

Richard Price, Finance and IT Manager at Maurice Turnor Gardner

Strong APIs Make for a Quick and Seamless Implementation

NetDocuments stood out as the DMS of choice as it is built on the cloud, intuitive and enables lawyers to work seamlessly and securely within their day-to-day applications.

“From attending a number of industry events over the years, NetDocuments has always been on my radar. So, when it came to choosing a DMS, NetDocuments was top of the list as it was a true cloud platform with strong APIs,” continued Price.

NetDocuments’ implementation partner, Accesspoint Legal Services, was able to quickly build an integration with the firm’s practice management system using NetDocuments’ APIs, which meant Maurice Turnor Gardner was able to go live in only three months.

In addition, onboarding sessions were delivered to ensure all users were up and running successfully and could realise the benefits almost immediately.

“As with any IT rollout, it was crucial to ensure our lawyers were fully on board with the new systems,” said Price. “Implementing NetDocuments was the most well-received product change we have ever done. Our lawyers could immediately see how it could improve their ways of working, which was key to user adoption.”

Integrated Applications Improve Productivity

Tools like the intelligent filing function of the NetDocuments platform have enabled Maurice Turnor Gardner’s 65 users to work more efficiently, saving them time searching for and filing documents. As a result, they have been able to spend more time on higher-value work.

“NetDocuments has made the lives of our lawyers a lot easier, which means they can focus on delivering the very best client service,” added Price. “We now have a future-proof DMS which will power our business for years to come, with added peace of mind that our documents are protected with the highest level of security in the cloud.”

By utilising the integration between the firm’s practice management tool and NetDocuments, Maurice Turnor Gardner’s lawyers have been able to work in P4W, Outlook, Word and NetDocuments with one central repository for information. This has improved productivity and ensured compliance, and now there is only a single source of truth in the NetDocuments cloud. With NetDocuments CollabSpaces, Maurice Turnor Gardner is now also able to share and collaborate with clients on documents stored on NetDocuments, providing the firm with an added layer of security.

With all of its documents residing in the cloud, Maurice Turnor Gardner now has complete confidence that its lawyers can quickly and securely access the files they need from wherever they are working. In addition, the significant number of integrations NetDocuments supports means the firm can future proof its legal software stack by adopting a best-of-breed approach.  For the firm, this can only further enhance productivity and client service.

“Accesspoint’s expertise in both NetDocuments and P4W enabled us to successfully implement a document management solution that was seamlessly integrated and joined up with the core PMS and Back End processes. This ensured that the firm’s staff were fully onboard from day one.”

Hong Tran, Sales Director at Accesspoint

Overview

Take a look at how we partnered with Osbornes Law to automate accuracy and profitability

The Group Entity Form has proven to be successful in gaining a high level of efficiency and reducing the workload within law firms. Osbornes Law has certainly been a testament to what can instantly be achieved through the integration of the innovative Group Entity Form.

Accesspoint’s team of Legal IT experts conducted P4W development work and IT Infrastructure Support

Accesspoint Legal Services and Osbornes Law began their partnership in 2014 with the like-minded goal of achieving a more seamless and sustainable workforce by utilising bespoke, intelligent, and innovative automated services and products – it was a perfect match. Recently, our Legal services team have partnered with Osbornes Law to implement a new timesaving, risk-managed and compliance led automation tool, the P4W Group Entity Creation form, which is based on Accesspoint’s game changing P4W Windows Form.

The Group Entity Creation form is one of the latest automation products that have been added to Accesspoint’s wider portfolio. It has been designed to break down group entity creation in P4W to its most simple form. Effective for both private clients and corporate/commercial entities (including integration with Companies House) it enables firms to quickly input and manage the creation of all Group Entities through a more risk managed and compliance driven process. Like many firms, Osbornes found themselves in a situation that left many staff with little to no time on their hands, as they struggled with the current group entity creation process that is available in P4W, involving creating multiple entities on numerous screens and then grouping them together. Since implementing the Group Entity Creation form, Osbornes have dramatically cut down on resources and time spent on creating multiple entities and now use the form to complete the process within one screen.

“Accesspoint’s P4W Group Entity Creation Form is the best P4W Add-On since PartnerMail. It has significantly reduced the time taken at Osbornes to create group clients and improved the accuracy of data input due to the intuitive process and user-friendly screen layout. Being able to conflict/duplicate check multiple contacts from one single screen has improved risk management in our client onboarding process, no P4W site should be without it.”

Stuart Taylor, Head of IT at Osbornes

About Osbornes Law

Established in 1973, Osbornes Law have since expanded their team to 115 lawyers and staff, and together created a long-lasting reputation for themselves built on dedication and hard work. Today they are an award-winning private client London law firm, consistently putting their clients first and working hard to maintain the strong communication and excellent bond between their team and clients. Osbornes pride themselves on their team of specialists and the quality of work they provide across a range of areas, not only within their combined expertise in family Law, personal injury, clinical negligence and more but also their commitment to stay on top of client work in a more personal manner and find effective solutions for any problem at hand.

With offices located in Camden and Hampstead, Osbornes Law are now able to complete a wide range of their work more effectively and have been recognised and celebrated with awards and mentions in the Times Best Law Firms list and The Legal 500.

Overview

GloverPriest have been using P4W for over two years and the Accesspoint Legal Services development team initially helped them write their Sale and Purchase case flows in and around their existing practice management system.

First off, the case flows were reviewed and then overhauled with additions made where appropriate, then GloverPriest and the Accesspoint Legal Services development team worked with a third-party consultant to fully integrate with Perfect Portal. This included the creation of managing partner tables and XAML screens which populate the figures directly from Perfect Portal.

The auto population of completion statements and bills also proved itself to be beneficial. More recently, the Accesspoint Legal Services team have worked with GloverPriest to add the new and innovative Online Will Planner for the firm to utilise across their online activities.

The Online Will Planner directly addresses the problem GloverPriest and their clients faced on a regular basis, as many clients start their legal journey not knowing where to start when creating a will and the last thing GloverPriest wanted them to deal with was an overwhelming and complex process with too many steps.

The Will Planner offers a simple way to gather information from the client, through a remote web-based process, that can be completed in as little as three steps. GloverPriest’s new Will Planner has been tailormade to suit the firm, from the layout of the form providing a sleek suitable look that matches the rest of the firms branding, to the data fields and questions within the form being customised to suit the firm’s requirements. By adding the Online Will Planner to GloverPriest’s website, they have been able to dramatically reduce the cost of having to go to a third-party wills software provider and cut the usual time taken to start the wills process, not only for the client but also the firm itself. Thus, leaving more time for fee earners to get on with other urgent matters without compromising the quality of the service given to clients.

GloverPriest have a long-standing history of providing excellent legal protection for their clients, with their oldest office in Tamworth being traced back to 1749. Since then, the firm has seen great growth, as they now have eight offices operating in Birmingham, Staffordshire and Northampton. The firm pride themselves on continuously supporting the legal needs of local communities and constantly living up to their company values of being experienced, expert and personable.