Bott and Co Leverages Lexis Visualfiles to Drive Cost Efficiencies and Client Service Improvements Through Automation
Discover how Bott and Co use Lexis Visualfiles legal technology to streamline legal case management, boost efficiency, and enhance client service.
Bott and Co is a multiple award-winning ‘No Win No Fee’ solicitor based in Wilmslow, Cheshire, with industry acknowledged experience and particular expertise in flight delay compensation, mis-sold car finance, and road traffic accident claims.
In 2013, Bott and Co made a significant move by establishing its flight delay compensation department, choosing Lexis Visualfiles as the firm’s technological foundation. Ever since, this case management system has supported operations, playing an essential role as Bott and Co carved out a niche in passenger rights advocacy. Today, with nearly 140 users, Visualfiles is also deployed in the personal injury and mis-sold car finance claims departments. Across the three units, the firm has processed over a million clients.
Bott and Co have forged a distinctive position in the market to exclusively process low-value claims for individual consumers who otherwise wouldn’t be able to secure affordable legal assistance. Coby Benson, Solicitor at Bott and Co, says, “We can take cases to court that are often considered of very modest value and therefore uneconomical for most other law firms. A Supreme Court judge commended us for facilitating access to justice for mass consumers, noting that small claims cases are one of the biggest barriers to accessing justice because claimants typically can't afford to instruct lawyers. Visualfiles plays an integral role in aiding this service.”
Lexis Visualfiles, the operational backbone
Today, Visualfiles is the engine under the hood at Bott and Co. It is the central system that powers the firm’s operational workflow across its flight delay compensation, personal injury, and mis-sold car finance claims departments, to ensure smooth business operation.
The firm has the flexibility to create bespoke workflows and build business logic into code, workflows, and even documents to automate complex processes. Benson adds, “Our ability to implement complex business logic is the 'secret sauce' that allows us to make processes bespoke to our unique business needs and automate processes extensively.”
Data management plus seamless API integrations for single-click automation
Fundamental to this capability is superior data management, alongside integration via API's with several third-party systems across the three departments.
With a keen focus on consistent data management, Bott and Co ensure they correctly structure and store data in Visualfiles to aid business success. For instance, the firm has automated court proceedings production that caters to a wide variety of scenarios, reducing manual intervention and increasing efficiency. Today, case handlers build complex case documents with confidence, and often with minimal human intervention.
For example, when drafting court proceedings in flight delay cases, Visualfiles automatically checks the exchange rate, calculates the compensation amounts, verifies if a claim has been paid, checks flight details – i.e., cancelled, delayed, missed connection, and so forth – and then filters all this information to generate a precise and accurate document, with a mere click of a button.
Benson elaborates, “We now have so much trust in the automated court proceedings capability, we just click the button and off they go to the court with 100% accuracy.”
Likewise, Bott and Co have automated the complaints submission process in the personal injury department. With Visualfiles integrated with the Official Injury Claim (OIC) and the Ministry of Justice (MoJ) portals, the relevant information residing in the system is transferred via the APIs, removing the need to re-key and manually enter the data in the respective portals.
Bott and Co have integrated Visualfiles with several of the major medical agencies, too. Consequently, medical reports are received directly via the API, and correspondence with clients, such as status updates and final decisions, is automated, ensuring timeliness.
Yet another area of the business where Visualfiles has improved efficiency is the finance department. With flexibility at its core, team members can quickly and easily create as many fields and screens as they need to view the necessary information.
“One of the major strengths of Visualfiles is that API integration is limitless,” Benson comments.
The power of the SDK for unique automations
Bott and Co are leveraging the Software Development Toolkit (SDK) to embed new capabilities and more efficient workflows and processes through automation.
The firm’s motor claims department often receives 1000s of motor claims per day, in spreadsheets that also include the decision taken on each of the claims. Using the SDK, Bott and Co has developed a self-service process that enables users to bulk import all decisions from Excel spreadsheets into Visualfiles through a custom-developed website front-end. This is much faster than manual entry or the traditional CSV file imports, where previously a system script had to be written in order to run the CSV file through it.
Another example of innovative deployment of the SDK at the firm is a queuing system in Microsoft Azure to run processes concurrently, starting with simple tasks like updating fields on files. For instance, if a lender confirms that they have received a claim, the queuing system records a date and time stamp as a record of receipt from the lender.
“We haven’t even scratched the surface with the SDK,” Craig Dawson, Software Development Team Leader at Bott and Co, states. “The SDK’s power lies in its customisability. Once set up, the potential it offers for automation and efficiencies is near infinite.”
Robots manage workload
Bott and Co are also successfully using the robotic process automation capability in Visualfiles to better manage workload and improve operations in the flight delay, motor finance, and personal injury departments.
The firm initially started using one robot but swiftly increased their uptake once the benefits of use were confirmed. Tasks such as automating time-consuming manual administrative work, and reducing human intervention, especially in the initial stages of activity – means today Bott and Co has a total of seven robots, with more possibly planned in the near future.
The robots play a key role in the personal injury department. Using three robots, the firm has automated the production of court bundles. The robots download the documents from the Microsoft Azure Access Control Service (ACS), bundle them, and save as a PDF, whilst simultaneously scheduling a task for the supervisor to revew before printing.
Dawson adds, “Court bundles are a big, big robot win. Manually preparing and producing court bundles is a massively time-consuming task, given the typical size of such bundles. The robots have taken the grunt work out of it.”
The robots are proving to be hugely useful in the flight delay and motor finance systems too. The four robots that are deployed undertake a variety of tasks such as, pre-processing new motor finance claims, performing initial checks before human review, checking for duplicate claims, sending emails to clients with case updates, downloading signature images, and so forth.
Lexis Visualfiles and AI integration
A technologically forward-thinking law firm, Bott and Co are actively exploring and adopting AI technology. In the motor finance department, the firm is developing and training a sophisticated machine learning model for email processing and analysis, going beyond simple rules-based email categorisation that only looks at subject lines or body text. AI retrieves information from emails such as reference numbers, vehicle registrations, sender type (e.g., client, medical agency, third-party), and so on. Once the information is accessed, the email automatically gets routed to the relevant team members.
Crucially, the firm is saving the extracted metadata for future reference, so that, should a case handler want to query an email at a later date, the information can be easily accessed.
Integration between AI and Visualfiles is on the cards. Once the emails are categorised by a Fine Tuned OpenAI LLM, Visualfiles will be able to take the categorised emails and seamlessly incorporate them into the relevant workflows to support timely client communication.
Benson concludes, “Our key objective is to continuously enhance and deliver excellent customer service while maintaining cost-effectiveness through technological improvements and automation. Visualfiles sits at the heart of this philosophy.”
