USA/Canada News
Umbria helps lawyers and other professionals build a client-focused business while maintaining profitability
When Akin Gump looked to upgrade their tools to better support their client-focused approach to delivering legal services, the firm turned to Prosperoware’s new Umbria software platform.
“Prosperoware’s Umbria is a fresh approach to the technology for legal process management,” said Toby Brown, Akin Gump’s chief practice officer and a leading expert in pricing and project management. “This investment allows us to be considerably more nimble and in how we serve our clients.”
Prosperoware LLC announced the general release of its next-generation software today.
Umbria is a web-based platform that takes aim at the critical challenges faced by today’s law firms – clients want efficiency, predictability, and cost-effectiveness, while firms need to closely monitor margins. Umbria starts with a matter opportunity and tracks the matter through its entire lifecycle.
“Umbria helps firms to balance clients’ requirements and the firm’s need for profitability,” said Keith Lipman, president of Prosperoware. “It fuses the work with the cost, allowing lawyers to easily link the budget of an engagement with the work delivering the services.”
Changes in the legal landscape mean that firms can no longer ignore these issues, and need to make it easy for lawyers to capture data and make the right decisions about allocating the firm’s – and the client’s – resources, Lipman said.
“Gone are the days of the ‘perfect service model,’ according to Lipman. “Now is the time for firms to provide the right service at the right price. Umbria makes that transition easier and faster.”
What is Umbria?
Umbria currently features two modules – Core (Budgeting and Pricing, Experience, Analytics and Monitoring) and Litigator – but will grow to encompass additional practice areas and more processes.
Umbria Core (Budget, Pricing, Experience, Analytics and Monitoring)
Increase client value through metrics-driven predictability and economic transparency.
What can you do with Umbria?
Umbria systematically captures and consolidates critical information around lawyers, staff, costs, and matter profiles. Firms easily ascertain who is most qualified to take on the work, what similar matters and engagements have cost the firm to deliver, and budget and monitor for new matters.
Umbria provides four approaches to budgeting: (1) monitoring at the matter or budget level; (2) determining a budget from an amount (e.g. top down); (3) building budgets with hours and resources; and (4) building a budget using task templates.
Umbria allows both pricing and professionals to monitor the progress on the matter on a constant basis. The monitoring can involve simply sending an email, but also includes powerful analytics which provide a snapshot on a current-month basis or from the inception of the matter.
In addition, Umbria’s ability to compile firm and matter experience provides crucial information for marketing, sales and RFPs. The availability of firm and client analytics allow lawyers to quickly determine if a client – or a matter – is profitable for the firm.
Umbria Litigator
Litigator solves one of the missing parts of the enterprise legal technology, the ability to maintain an index. The use of an index is critical for litigators to work their matters. Uses include pleadings, evidence and witness indexes. With Litigator, the document can be ordered and then easily located through the use of both profile and full-text search.
Why is Umbria better?
Umbria is a new class of software that has been designed from the ground up to address today’s issues. Umbria breaks down silos of information – documents, budget, pricing, experience, analytics and monitoring data – and fuses it all together to provide better understanding of a particular matter, client relationship, or practice area.
Check out Umbria at the Legal Marketing Association’s P3 Conference at the Hyatt Chicago Magnificent Mile, June 12-13, 2014, and at Prosperoware’s Lunch and Learn, June 25, 2014 at Lutyens Restaurant, 85 Fleet St., London. For more information, call 1-484-895-1900.
Copyright © 2023 Legal IT Professionals. All Rights Reserved.
We offer organizers of legal IT seminars, events and conferences a unique marketing and promotion opportunity. Legal IT Professionals has been selected official media partner for many events.
