Thread Legal Announces Launch of Version 3

Welcome to LawNext PR, the podcast where we put a spotlight on the latest news coming out of the legal tech industry. This is Bob Ambrogi, and in each sponsored episode of LawNext PR, I interview a legal tech company about its latest news and developments. Today, our topic is Thread Legal Software's launch of its version 3, introducing a modern UX, kanban task management, an integrated matter calendar, enhanced time tracking, and streamlined document management.

Joining me to tell us all about this, is Estera Orsolic, operations lead at Thread Legal Software. Estera, welcome to the show. Hi Bob, great to be here. Very nice to have you. Before we get into talking about the news, for the advantage of listeners or viewers who may not be familiar with Thread Legal, why don't you start by telling us about the company and what you do?

Absolutely, happy to. So we are a company that has a case management software which has been built on over 20 years experience of a previous case management software as well. we do provide a software for in-house legal teams as well as law firms to manage their cases and really streamline their work to focus on what they need to do best, you know, serving their clients. So as a company, we are very committed to constantly evolve the product.

And this is where our new release comes in, which is based on a number of years of feedback from our clients and also doing user research. and you know, from the experience of the previous software, revision of what works best and what we want to make better. You mentioned 20 years, is that how long the company has been in business? Yes, so we have had the previous case management software over 20 years and so we are going further from that.

There's been a couple years now with Thread specifically and yeah, we're excited for many more.

And you said that your users are both in-house and law firms. Are they primarily larger law firms or is there a particular type of law firm that you serve? So we do have a few large law firms with over 20, 30, even 100 users, but we do have a large number of smaller law firms as well. So that would probably be the primary client base. And where are your customers? Are they all over the world or in any particular countries?

Internationally, primarily we have had Irish and UK based customers, but we have had customers all over the world as well, including Latin America. There is a few in the US and also in a few African countries as well. So we are expanding even more internationally. We are looking to reach further markets and expand our customer base in the existing ones.

You've given us kind of an overview of Thread Legal as a matter management solution, but could you give us more detail on exactly what that means? What is it the platform does for a legal professional? Yes, thank you for that question. So the Matter Management software is really there to help lawyers do their work easier. That has the document management, tasks management, all within the case itself. So the Matter itself is where you can find all the information, all emails.

any events that are happening, key dates, appointments and so on, all in one place. So it makes it a lot easier for lawyers to do the work that they need to do without worrying about any of those mundane tasks.

And what is it that makes Thread Legal unique in the market? I mean, there's other matter management products out there. Why would lawyers want to use this one over others that are out Yeah, so Thread is the only case management software that is fully built on Microsoft 365. So this is something that gives all the users peace of mind that their data is secure, that they are in charge of their documents. So all the documents are stored on their Microsoft SharePoint.

We are also ISO 27001 certified. and we are looking towards a SOC 2 type certification as well. So we do have a high regard for security, which is imperative for lawyers working on their cases. that all-important security.

So, kind of my last question before we turn to the news you've announced this week. But what is the problem that you solve for lawyers? I what's the value proposition that you offer legal professionals through your platform? So in today's world, it's all about going digital and moving away from paper, but also about security. So Thread is fully remote. It's on the cloud. You can access it from anywhere.

So whether that's in your office or if you're working from the court or maybe even from home, it is available to you to manage all the work that you need to do. easily but even more importantly securely. So as I mentioned, it's built on Microsoft, so it has that level of security that you need so that you have that peace of mind that all the work that you're doing for your clients is highly secure. It is also a matter management software that is in line with all the advancements in technology.

So we do have an AI assistant within the matter management that you can use to help you with your research and compiling documents. So again, we just want to make that process of working on your cases smoother and more streamlined. That sounds great. let's turn now to the news you've announced this week. So you've just rolled out this version three. I have to ask when was version two, how long has version two been in place before rolling out this version two?

mean, how long has it been since there's been a major change like this? Yeah, so I've been with the company now for over two and a half years. And when I first started, it was a couple months in that we released the version two, which was essentially the change of the platform, the background of it to make sure that it runs smoother, that it's more secure. So the URL had to change, which was a bit of a change for our customers.

But what it ensured is that we can keep on progressing and developing. both from the back end and now with the new release coming a lot more functionality and front end changes. going to talk about a lot of what you've announced, but why don't you kind of sum up for us maybe the sort of the news from a from a high level and then we'll kind of dig down into some of the details of it. But what is it that you've just announced in terms of this new version three?

Absolutely. So we are very excited for these changes. The first most obvious one that users able to see now in Thread is the design. So the front look and feel of Thread is a lot more modern. We have been consulting with an external design company to improve the user experience and user interface. So it's a lot more clean and really focusing on what you need to see, what you need to do, giving you only the information that you really want to focus on for the day.

So that is the first high level that will improve how fast you can do things and also noticing what you need to know. The second thing is... just stop you on that and ask, I'm just curious, does that include navigational elements for the platform? Absolutely, yes.

So just making sure that it's easier to navigate around and also intuitively know where you need to go to do something, whether that's creating a task, a document, checking on what are the upcoming dates, what are the upcoming tasks or calls that you need to go back to. So just making sure that your day-to-day is a lot easier. Okay. I didn't mean to cut you off. what's the, so the second, you were about to talk about the second feature.

Yeah, so it comes in with the design as well, but that is tasks management. So making sure that it's a lot easier to visualize what you need to do. So we've introduced the Kanban boards where you can group your tasks by who it's assigned to, what status it's on, what's the priority, and also what the matter stage is. So as your stage is progressing, you might have a different number of tasks that you need to deal with. So this way you can actually organize them per stages.

So you know you can only deal with those that you need to right now and you already can have those prepared for the next stage when the matter progresses. I assume it's kind of a drag and drop interface in terms of how the Kanban board works? So the tasks are created the same way, but you can then just click and choose which way you want to visualize them. And you can easily just click into them, whichever view that you're in to update. What else is new in this version three?

Yeah, so we are very excited to bring in the Matter calendar. So the calendar in Thread is integrated with your Microsoft. The whole platform is built on Microsoft, so all your documents are stored in your Microsoft SharePoint, and your user login is your Microsoft login. So it does integrate with your outlook and you can now have a specific calendar within each matter where it only shows you the appointments and any key dates like court dates, hearing dates that are relevant to that matter.

I'm curious whether in the matter calendars there is any ability to also see appointments for other matters of the team who may be working on, I mean, other members of the team who may be working on the same matter. Yes, absolutely. So any team member that created an appointment or a Q-date for that matter will be able to see that when they go into the matter. So the idea really is that you have everything that you need to know about every case whenever you go inside that matter.

And that includes any events that would be visible in the matter calendar.

Yeah, that sounds great. I know that another feature of this new version is enhanced time tracking. Tell me about that. Yes, it's one we're very excited about and it is something that we have enhanced from how it works already. We do have automatic time recording, manual time recording, but we've really brought that to a next level and really improved how the reporting of that works as well.

So with the version 3 now, users are able to... automatically record their time against any call log, any event that they're working on as they're working on documents. So really just making sure that you don't have to worry about the time records. They're there for you in the background. And then at the end of your day or throughout your day, you can go into your daily time sheet and really have control of that time, how much of that you want to be billable.

How much do you want to just keep track of that you have spent that time, but you may not want to charge your client for it. So we've really made it a lot easier and streamlined to have control of your time. Does automatic in that case mean actually creating the time entry or simply logging it that you can then later add to a time entry? It automatically adds the time entries. So there is a system in the background that starts and stops for specific actions.

So for example, if you're creating a call log, you want to reach out to your clients. So once you start the call log, the timer starts automatically. When you've entered all the details into that call log, you finish the conversation. When you click save or end the call, the timer stops. and this time is automatically in your daily time sheet. So you don't need to do anything about that, but if you do want to edit, you can go there and make some changes.

love that timekeeping is the bane of a lawyer's existence. Absolutely.

And then again, another of the new features I know that you've introduced here is enhanced document management. Can you tell us about that? Yes, so with the document management, what we have focused on is making sure that when you go into the matter, you can clearly see all of the documents that you need there in a focused area with very easy preview. You can just click on it to see what the document is without having to actually open the document.

So you can have a glance look at what the document entails. There is a quick access to assign this document to another user. If you need them to approve or review this document, you can give it a status and you can easily see who this is assigned to, what is the current status of the document as soon as you open up the documents inside the matter. Estera, those are all the enhancements that I knew of. Are there other features that are part of this version 3 that you wanted to talk

Yes, so what I wanted to mention as well is the reporting, which I mentioned earlier when it comes to time, but also other instances. So we are including a lot more reports than we've had before, such as viewing matters that maybe haven't been actioned in a while. So you can follow up with those users that are working on those to see what's been happening there.

But also as we are introducing these changes on time, which is tracking what time is billable and what time you've actually spent working on it. We will see now reports that you can compare the two. So you can maybe, you know, revise, is this really worth my time? Maybe we're spending too much time here that we're not billing for. So it gives a lot more granular control again of time, but also the work that you're doing. and how much value this is bringing to your firm.

So some of the reports are specifically, know, value for time spent or stagnant matters where you're able to see, you know, what still needs to be worked on. So I can tell from talking to you that you're excited about a lot of these changes. The question I want to ask is, what about for your customers, for the clients who use this software? What does this ultimately mean for them?

What this means really is that we are making it easier for them to do their day-to-day work. We are improving the experience that they have with the software. So when you start your day, you know that you're looking at something a little bit more exciting, a little bit more color, making it a lot more intuitive and friendly to work with. What this means also is that again, it just improves how much value they get out of the work that they do, which I think is the bread and butter for most of us.

And also it just gives that commitment that we are listening to their feedback. We are looking into making the changes that make a difference to them. And this is just the beginning. So the V3 release today is... a big change, a positive change, and there's a lot more smaller changes coming throughout the next couple of months, throughout the year, where we will be implementing even further changes based on the feedback that we are receiving.

So this is kind of a baseline that we're doing now, and then there will be a lot more build on that. just beginning. This is just the beginning. Is there anything that your customers need to do or this has just been pushed out as part of the platform?

It's just pushed out as part of the platform and we've mentioned this before with the version two, there was a little bit of change that had to be done. But in this instance, they will log in on the morning, which they'll see already now. The same way as they usually do, the platform is ready for everyone and it's available there. We do have a lot of education content around the new release to clarify any changes and guide them through some of the new functionality as well.

We will have webinars throughout the next days also to help all the customers really get familiar and start maximizing all the new benefits. Is there anything else you'd like to say about it that we haven't talked about? I would just mention again that we appreciate all the customer feedback. We do build the software based on our wider customer base. So we do want to make sure we keep getting the feedback.

We're also excited for any new customers joining us and seeing how we can really provide a software for the workers and make sure that we make their work easier. And I also want to thank you so much for your time and for your questions as well. Nothing else from me. thank you for coming on and telling us about this. It sounds really great and I appreciate the chance to meet you and talk to you. So congratulations on this. That does it for today's episode.

If you enjoyed it, you can subscribe wherever you get your podcasts or on YouTube at lawnext underscore PR. You can also find all of the episodes in the Lawnext Legal Tech Directory under the Resources tab. This is Bob Ambrogi. Thanks for watching.