American LegalNet,Inc (ALN) was founded in 1996 as a platform to provide law firms access to State, Federal, Court, and Agency U.S. court forms. I was already familiar with the exhaustive catalog of federal and state litigation and administrative forms which ALN provides in their Forms Workflow product. I recently had the opportunity to meet with ALN founder Erez Bustan and got a full tour of how ALN has transformed into a robust litigation workflow solution addressing some of the labor-intensive processes associated with docket filing and management. In March 2021 they launched ALN Cloud which offers an integrated cloud and mobile litigation experience. The ALN Cloud offers a simpler and single user Interface for their suite of litigation workflow products and services. The platform was designed to drive efficiencies in docketing, calendaring, court rules, e-filing and alerts.
The platform provides law firms with insights into litigation activity across each of their offices down to the client level. The platform integrates with Microsoft Office 365, Power BI and Outlook email as well as major DMS platforms such as iManage and major legal billing systems.
Key Features: The five key features are: e-filing, Smart Dockets, Forms Workflow, Docket Alerts and Court Rules Management. The docket dashboard allows authorized users to see all firmwide docket activity or selected calendars. Integrated deadline calculation logic relies on Federal or State statutory authorities to recommend litigation deadlines for any occurrence in court. The platform is highly customizable and allows for views of national, single office, team or individual attorney calendars.
The e-filing portal: Their e-filing portal allows Managing Attorneys and Docketing departments to manage docket filing distribution lists and daily monitors for the federal court cases as well as eight states including California, Illinois, Texas and New York. Maryland and Indiana court access is being developed.
One of the key benefits of this platform is reducing the rejection of filings by the court. The National Center for State Courts reports there is an average 10% rejection rate for attorney filings. According to Bustan, ALN can reduce this down to a 2% rejection rate.
Case monitoring: Smart Dockets automatically calculates deadlines based on court rules. A unique benefit is that ALN includes individual judges’ rules in their Court Rules offering. ALN faces the same challenge as all their competitors. Not every state has automated their dockets and filing systems, so complete 50 state access is limited by each states technology and policies. Bustan’s strategy for ALN has been to focus on the key states. which account for 85% of the legal business litigation.
The case monitoring feature can track cases by party, by individual lawyers, as well as nature of suit. Docket deadlines appear both on a centralized calendar or individual attorney calendars.
Auto Docket automatically receives receipts from the courts and files them in the DMS.
The mobile dockets app allows lawyers to not only look at their calendars but also provides access to the court rules. Lawyers can filter the results based on a team or individual attorneys.
Screaming Fast Responsiveness. The interface is clean and colorful but most of all it is incredibly fast. I was absolutely astonished at how quickly every document loaded. There was virtually no delay when accessing a document via a link.
Security There is no law firm on earth that isn’t preoccupied with security these days. ALN Cloud’s data is stored security in a virtual AWS cloud which with fully redundant systems and multi factor authentication. It is updated continuously to prevent new vulnerabilities. All of the products security policies and practices are certified by Prevalent.
Next up AI. Bustan hopes that future developments will include the integration of AI into ALN Cloud features and functionality.
ALN’s cloud solution addresses some key management issues. Law firms are always looking to identify products which deliver new efficiencies and to reduce risks by eliminating low level and redundant work or processes.
For more information visit ALN.