What are Conflicts?

A conflict of interest occurs when a firm has represented the opposing side of a prospective client, its related companies, company executives, board members, and/or other affiliates. Failure to disclose a potential conflict of interest can result in fines and forfeiture of fees. As a result, many professional services firms are leveraging advanced software technologies that can help them effectively manage Conflict Avoidance, reducing the risk of liability, legal investigations and fines.

Accutrac XE™ Conflict Avoidance

Accutrac XE™ offers advanced Conflict Avoidance solutions that assist legal departments, law firms and other professional services firms by efficiently approving new business prospects, making informed decisions, increasing profitability, and reducing liability risks. An integrated feature of Accutrac XE™ Records Management software, the Conflict Avoidance package leverages a single, easy-to-use interface that enables firms to search and review existing client/matter information for possible conflicts of interest.  All client, matter and related party information can be found within one comprehensive database, eliminating the need for multiple searches without requiring additional IT infrastructure to support conflicts software systems.

Conflicts Work Flow

Accutrac® has built a great reputation with over two decades experience providing flexible systems that adapt to client’s unique work flow requirements. The process for managing New Client Intake may differ greatly from firm to firm. For example, matters may be created by the records department in one firm or in accounting in other firms.  Depending on the size and scope of the firm, there may be various levels of technology that support the process including calendaring, time and billing and docketing systems as well as control and approval measures that may affect how a firm ultimately manages the conflicts avoidance process.  Accutrac XE™ is a highly configurable enterprise class records and information management platform that can be tailored to optimally support your policies and procedures.  Our experienced Professional Services team is very adept at reviewing your business practices and implementing effective solutions in Accutrac XE™.

Features and Benefits

Firm Data

As a powerful records and information records repository of the firm, Accutrac XE™ database is the ideal place to store data relative to Conflict Avoidance searching and analysis.

Data Systems Integration

Accutrac XE™ is an open system that facilitates data feeds with other systems to automate data entry into Accutrac.  Typically Accutrac XE™ will integrate with time and billing systems as well as docketing, calendaring and document management systems.

OFAC SDN Integration

Accutrac XE™ supports data feed integrations to help law firms be compliant with government regulations to review the Specially Designated Nationals list published by the US Treasury Department.  When performing Conflicts searches, the SDN data would then be checked automatically.  This integration can be set up to be updated on a regular basis automatically.

Client/Matter Party Data

Client/matter information is effectively stored in Accutrac XE™ and automated through integrations with related legal systems. In addition, all relevant client, matter and party information can be expanded upon including organization trees (showing affiliates and subsidiaries, for example), related attorneys, and party information, roles, etc.  Useful tools are also included to facilitate the import of new data in various fields.

Reserve Party

Attorneys are the sales persons of the firm and often court new business for months or even years before they actually obtain the client.  During this time, the firm might accept a client that would be a conflict with a prospective client. The “Reserve Party” feature adds prospects to the system while immediately alerting practitioners of conflicts that occur in the future.  Access to adverse party information for current and prospective clients, allows firms to make more informed business decisions about adding new business.

Lateral Hires

When firms bring on new attorneys or acquire other firms, conflicts analysis must be performed to review each new attorney’s client base for potential conflicts of interest. Lateral Hire searches prevent potential conflicts from happening and allow for hiring of attorneys at later dates when conflicts are no longer applicable.  Accutrac XE™ Conflict Avoidance offers easy to use screens, efficient data import features, and robust reporting to facilitate the lateral hire process.

Custom Thesaurus

Accutrac XE™ includes a thesaurus that you can customize to adapt to your firm’s unique data requirements.  The thesaurus facilitates the conflicts searching process by creating a list of common key words and phrases, misspellings, and abbreviations to improve conflict search results.

Conflicts Searching

Quick Conflicts Search

Waiting a few days for a full content report can mean the difference between winning and losing a new client. The “Quick Conflicts” feature allows individual attorneys, professionals, conflict administrators and support staff fast, accurate access to information to potential conflicts.  This enables firms to make preliminary determinations about pursuing new prospects.  Accutrac XE™ supports robust control functionality to limit this and other features to meet firm’s unique conflicts avoidance policies and procedures.

In-Depth Conflicts Search

With a comprehensive search, conflicts can be formally verified against records of the firm. This provides a higher level of assurance and documentation. The full search results may be previewed, saved and distributed to the requesting party for review and approval.  The conflict search result status (pending, cleared, or denied) is clearly listed on saved searches for future reference.  Specific search requests can be saved to be used again or easily edited to reduce redundant data entry. Search results and search history can be reviewed at any time and reported on.

Multiple search criteria can be designated within which performs multiple functions and search methods when the search is requested.  By saving these searches, Accutrac XE™ facilitates frequent or repetitive searches when the need arises.

Single Search Point

Accutrac XE™ streamlines business processes and lowers IT costs with a single search point for all conflicts information, versus searching multiple databases and waiting for the information to transfer between systems, when records management and conflicts of interest are not processed or managed on the same system.

Search Operators

Accutrac XE™ supports advanced search options using search operators including options to choose Soundex (find words that sound like a term), Thesaurus (pulling from your custom thesaurus in Accutrac), Proximity (looking for words that have letters located in certain positions in a word), and wild cards, to improve the effectiveness of your conflicts avoidance efforts.

Filtering Results

Once you receive your “hits” or conflicts results after a search, Accutrac XE™ provides filtering and other tools to effectively categorize them, select and deselect, and add comments for easy and accurate analysis and review.  Results can be quickly tagged, filtered from prior hits, to effectively manage conflicts.

Presenting Results

Once Conflicts filtered, a variety of Conflicts reports are available.  Standard, ad-hoc, and custom reports are all available in Accutrac XE™ to facilitate analysis of your conflicts data.  Reports include, Reserved Parties report, Lateral Hires report, new/pending/cleared/in process conflicts reports. Accutrac XE™ makes it easier than ever before to compile, present, and analyze your conflicts data.

Conflicts Clearance

Accutrac XE™ Conflict Avoidance easily tracks the approval process.  Select and enter associated attorneys, approving parties, tracking if waivers are required, attaching a waiver document, and providing comments and notes pertaining to the clearance of conflict hits and updating the status of hits in future search results.  Accutrac XE™ also provides audit trail functionality and application monitoring to track conflicts requests and clearance activities.

Summary

Speed, efficiency and knowledge are core competitive advantages for any organization. Managing risk and preventing conflicts of interest between clients and prospects can be instrumental to the success of a firm. Accutrac XE™ enables professional services firms to act faster, work smarter, and be more effective, providing the tools to make more informed business decisions that increase profitability and decrease liability.