Bamboo is a platform for legal service providers, offering a regulated environment and essential tools for fee earners and legal professionals, including cashiering, compliance, professional indemnity insurance, and technology platforms. As a multi-brand platform, Bamboo covers a wide range of legal services across different areas of law.
Kieren Windsor, Director of Platform Services, is responsible for ensuring that all components of the platform function optimally for Bamboo’s lawyers. He manages the internal tech stack which enables Bamboo’s law brand’s lawyers to focus more on their legal work, with the assurance that other aspects, such as administrative focused tasks around compliance, are being managed for them.
The Problem
Kieren said, “Across the whole of Bamboo, we have been looking at providing both technology and non-technological solutions that enhance the way paying clients can interact with their respective law firms, and systems that enable lawyers to conduct their work in a really simple way. When you’re first engaging with a client and bringing them on board, that’s the best and most appropriate time to ensure that you’re on the right path; it’s also the first real opportunity to demonstrate the type of service that a client can expect to receive throughout the course of the matter.
Bamboo sought to improve client interactions, streamline the onboarding process, and increase efficiency while managing risk and ensuring compliance. They required a user-friendly solution that would consolidate essential onboarding tasks into a single platform. Additionally, they needed the chosen solution to work seamlessly with their existing practice management system, Actionstep.
Prior to using Legl, Bamboo was relying on administrative and manual processes to onboard clients. “Our partners were capturing information from clients, then recording it in a form that was sent to our team to conduct electronic searches for verification and inputting the information manually into Actionstep,” said Kieren. “We were ready to make changes to the Actionstep instances that would give a great platform for change, yet it wasn’t enough on its own.”
“What we haven’t wanted to do,” he continued, “is bombard either clients or lawyers with a multitude of different tech solutions and try to bolt them together in a clunky way that makes things more complicated. Simplicity, speed, and the user experience are really key to us.”
The Solution
After evaluating several alternatives, Bamboo chose Legl as their preferred platform due to its comprehensive solution, simplicity, and intuitive user experience. Legl addressed Bamboo’s key concerns and requirements by combining crucial aspects of the onboarding process, including client due diligence (CDD) checks, collection of money on account, and electronic signatures on engagement letters, into a single platform. This made administration, oversight and reporting simple and efficient. “[Legl] does quite complicated, very important things in a really simple platform that is user-friendly; everything’s nice and clear. And navigating around it is easy, whether you’re [an admin], a lawyer processing [a client], or a client using it from the other side of the fence (as a client),” said Kieren.
One of the primary motivators for Bamboo choosing Legl over alternative solutions was the Legl team itself. According to Kieren, the Legl team has a “general excitement and enthusiasm for making sure that the product is exactly what we need it to be as their client, and that users are able to leverage it to its greatest potential. It’s been fantastic.”
Integration with Actionstep
Bamboo needed the chosen onboarding platform to integrate seamlessly with Actionstep, their practice management system. Legl’s integration with Actionstep proved to be efficient and straightforward, allowing Bamboo to benefit from the combined features of both platforms.
With Legl and Actionstep working together, Bamboo could automate client onboarding processes that previously required manual input from administrative staff. Information collected through Legl is now automatically entered into Actionstep, reducing human error and increasing overall efficiency. This seamless integration has significantly reduced the time it takes to onboard clients and progress legal matters.
The Results
With the successful implementation of Legl and its integration with Actionstep, Bamboo and Kieren have achieved several key benefits:
- Improved user experience. “One of the key reasons for approaching Legl in the first place was to enhance the experience that our end clients have of engaging with any of our lawyers across all of our platform law firms.”
- Reduced onboarding times. “Onboarding comes at a time when some discussion has taken place between the lawyer and the client in order to understand what the service is that’s being required, and the client is ready to go at that point. So making that quick and simple is absolutely imperative,” said Kieren. Legl’s integration with Actionstep has allowed Bamboo to cut the time it takes to set up a matter, invite clients to complete the onboarding process, collect money on account and have clients sign engagement letters by half. This enables Bamboo to progress matters more efficiently and maintain a single source of truth. “We’re reducing the amount of time attributed to matter opening with this system being in place.”
- Faster, more secure client payments. “Implementing the Legl payments system allows us to offer alternatives to end clients–so where it’s appropriate, card payments can be collected, or we can use open banking,” said Kieren. “The opportunity to make life easier for money on account to be processed, both from the client side and from the partner side, helps us to get more money on account upfront. Obviously, that offers protection and a smoother matter process for us later on.”
- Enhanced compliance and risk management. Legl’s dashboard provides an easy-to-use interface that displays real-time information, making reporting straightforward. The platform also offers better access to MLRO oversight, improving Bamboo’s performance in compliance-related matters and helping them with their risk and compliance initiatives. As Kieren noted, “From an administrative perspective, we can see what’s going on at any one given time. Reporting is easy. Supporting any queries that come up as a result of onboarding through our business quality and compliance team is really simple. And of course, we’ve got great access to MLRO oversight and insights with regard to the way that we’re performing on a compliance basis relating to matter opening. Legl has really simplified and enhanced the way that we’re able to oversee that.”
- Reduced administrative costs. The ROI for investing in Legl was easy to justify with immediate benefits of removing the administrative burden of client-facing processes such as CDD, payment collection and electronic signatures. This makes the process more efficient, effective, and commercially viable.
- Seamless integration with existing technology stack. Legl’s integration with the Actionstep practice management system and Microsoft’s single sign-on (SSO) facility has resulted in a seamless experience, effectively bringing all systems together to benefit Bamboo’s operations and provide our teams with a great experience.
Final Thoughts
By implementing Legl, Bamboo has created a competitive advantage by simplifying the onboarding process, increasing operational efficiencies, and enhancing risk and compliance initiatives.
“For anyone looking at their onboarding process–and that should be everyone on a regular basis, frankly–Legl gives an amazing combination of simplicity and process effectiveness,” Kieren said.
He adds, “Legl has been really fantastic in supporting us with regard to future product development. We’re really excited about what we’re doing today, but we’re also very excited about what we might be able to do together in the future as well.”