That.Legal has been using Tessaract since the inception of the law firm and we have worked closely with their staff to streamline our processes. It has not only allowed us to keep track of our time records to minimise costs to clients but has also been a key driver in growing the firm and enabling us to have our client files and documents almost fully digitised. This digitisation allowed us to make a smooth and swift transition to the work-from-home model when the COVID-19 pandemic struck – it took us only a single day for all our staff to become fully operational from home.

 That.Legal’s integration of Tessaract in our workflow borne fruit time and again, and most recently, was a crucial part in our recognition by the Law Society of Singapore as a “Smart Law firm” that harnesses legal technology for productivity.

Transcript

My name is Mark Teng, Executive Director at That.Legal LLC.

That.Legal is a boutique law firm that specialises in international intellectual property law. We use our expertise in IP – not only as a protective measure, but more importantly, as a way of helping our clients optimise the commercial value of their intangible assets.

As a law firm we are required to keep strict and contemporaneous records. Traditionally, this requires significant time and resources to be dedicated to mundane tasks like printing, filing, time recording and billing. Such administrative tasks would previously chew up about 60 to 70% of the time of our paralegals’ time.

Benefits of using Tessaract

Before Tessaract, our lawyer to paralegal ratio was about 2 to 1.

At That.Legal, we are constantly looking ways to use technology to scale while reducing costs. Today, we are proud to say that we are running at a 4:1 ratio [of lawyers to paralegals] – 8 lawyers to 2 support staff. We hope to expand to 5:1 or even 6:1 in due course.

Furthermore, the digitisation of our files and documents allowed us to relocate our conventional office space to a more cost-effective, and inspiring co-working space at The Great Room.

Tessaract has been a key driver for growth and technological change at our firm. Legal technology has helped us significantly reduce our physical footprint in the central business district, thereby saving on about 40% in rent.

Notwithstanding, we have managed to increase our productivity by running a hybrid “work- from- home” and on-site model. Tessaract helps us gain access to insightful internal business data that facilitates our making of data-driven decisions to optimise our remote working capabilities.

With Tessaract, we also no longer feel the need to have everyone in the office at the same time. Tessaract’s time tracking tool helps us manage our IP Protection, IP Commercialiszation and Dispute Resolution teams remotely. Thereby, obviating the need to allocate a dedicated office space for each and every employee.

With Tessaract, it wasn’t difficult for our lawyers to develop the habit of entering time records on the system. We can even use Tessaract on our mobile phone to record their billable and unbillable hours or access case information on the go. As a director, this has helped me [to] gain valuable insights into the performance of our lawyers.

Tessaract has very much changed the way we work at That.Legal, and this has put us in a strong position even before the pandemic. It has made us more agile, data-driven and efficient – a great place to be in the “new normal".

Conclusion

If you would like to know more about our legal tech processes or how we make the most of Tessaract, feel free to reach out to our Executive Director, Mark Teng (profile). #LetsTalkAboutYourChallenge