DNA – The law firm's vew

It’s no surprise that we’ve got lots to say about DNA. But what do law firms think about it? We bring you a selection of views.

“I can see DNA impacting positively on our operations and ultimate profitability. The entity structure will lead to easier cross marketing and hopefully even better client retention. The flexibility of presentation should make it easier for fee earners to work on active matters and improve time recording. The ease of workflow design should increase the number of areas where workflows are used and thus improve efficiency.

I believe that DNA can offer us greater scope than current practice/case management systems when it comes to controlling and changing the way we work.”

Nicholas Clegg, Porter Dodson


“DNA certainly has the potential to play a key role in future practice and business management and to contribute significantly to our continued growth and success. It offers a package with a broader scope as a process management solution, and so unlike discrete case management systems I can see it being used right across the practice. The template design process appears very simple, making it easier to implement workflows.”

John Tyrell, Wolferstans


“We’re keen to increase the degree of automation and control that exists across the practice. DNA has the potential to rapidly accelerate that process – its breadth of functionality and the ease of integration of third party applications promises to equip us with key capabilities more quickly and more easily than an alternative ‘pick and mix’ approach.

“We don’t want to be constrained by our existing systems – we would much rather they support us in the way we want to work. We expect DNA’s workflow modelling engine will be crucial in allowing more of this ‘self-determination.’

DNA also doesn’t just appeal on a functional level. It’s thin client, web-based architecture is also a strong selling point – we’ll be looking at quicker deployment schedules, lower maintenance costs, reduced training times and speedier uptake by users. That should allow us to return a healthy reduction in Total Cost of Ownership terms.

Finally, the richness of DNA functionality offers the opportunity to reduce the need to make additional investment in extra bolt-on products. The potential to only need to manage one supplier and one solution is attractive and is certainly preferable to juggling a multi-layered supplier/solution scenario.”

Jon Hairsine, Fox Hayes

Published on: 26-03-2007