PROJECT TITLE: CENTRAL CASE MANAGEMENT SYSTEM (CCMS)

PROJECT PROPOSAL: DESIGNING AND IMPLEMENTATION OF COURT CASES FILE SYSTEM

Table of Contents
Table of Contents....................................................................................................... 2 Background Information.............................................................................................3 Current Situation........................................................................................................3 Problem Statement.....................................................................................................3 Proposed Solution.......................................................................................................4 Objectives of the Project.............................................................................................4 General Objective....................................................................................................4 Personal objectives..................................................................................................5 System objectives................................................................................................... 5 Project objective......................................................................................................5 Literature Review.......................................................................................................6 Research Methodology...............................................................................................7 Data Collection........................................................................................................ 7 Data Analysis...........................................................................................................7 Methodology............................................................................................................... 7 Conclusion.................................................................................................................. 9 References..................................................................................................................9

BACKGROUND INFORMATION

MG is legal firm practicing law in Africa. The firm has over the years established itself as a premier indigenous Law Firm with key competencies in the various areas of legal practice. The Firm endeavours to provide solutions relevant and specific to the needs of the commercial environment subsisting in the economy. To achieve this goal, the Firm has striven to build in-house capacity in its resource persons, and when necessary has adopted a policy of partnering with like-minded entities, natural and legal. The practice areas the firm engages in include, but not limited to, Banking and Finance Practice, Intellectual and Real Property Practice, Conveyancing Practice, Commercial Conveyancing Practice, as well as Civil Litigation Practice.

CURRENT SITUATION MG has an existing Management Information System [MIS] which aids in automating its operations. The MIS is meant to address broad areas including Accounting, Payroll, Human Resource Administration, Debtors, Fixed Assets, and Stocks. However, MG is not able to properly monitor and manage Court Cases and Client Files for various clients as this is missing.

PROBLEM STATEMENT With regard to Court Case and File system, MG uses a manual file register for each of their clients. This poses great challenge, especially, when it comes to tracking down or following up on what has happened to a particular file and/or case. Problems identified include the inability to quickly respond to client
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enquiries online; tracking down of the case progress and status becomes difficult and strenuous for one has to manually peruse the file(s); duplication of files due to lack of an automated control mechanism, among others.

PROPOSED SOLUTION This proposal is aimed at developing an automated Central Case Management System [CCMS], with a view to later integrating it with the other modules of the existing MIS. It is expected that the proposed system will transform the manual system to electronic/digital system for ease of retrieval and reference of files and cases. It is further expected that the proposed system will make it easy to manage cases and substantially improve feedback/communication to/with clients thus increasing efficiency in client relationship and response.

OBJECTIVES OF THE PROJECT There are four (4) objectives CCMS is aimed at achieving: General, Personal, System and Project objectives: General Objective The general objective is to develop an understanding of key decisions and how they are supported with information by examining decisions, flow of information in the organization, and the types of file/case processing undertaken.

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Personal objectives

To have an opportunity of applying the skills acquired during the course of my study.

To gain experience in IT project management techniques and be able to test my ability to apply available resources.

To fully understand the work of Kenyan law firms and, to some extend, how the Court Process goes.

System objectives

To facilitate recording and tracking down of Clients details and Transactions relating to particular cases.

To facilitate recording case details including the Court, Parties and Case Types.

To develop an electronic Court Diary facility that allows users to be able to record Court Dates

To support efficient updating, deletion, addition and retrieval of cases records/data.

To facilitate generation of report on the Clients Files and Status, Court Matters, and Cause Lists for easy management and decision making

Project objective

To develop a system that is user friendly and that will improve records retrieval.

To develop a system that will substantially reduce the occurrence of human error and omissions.
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To come with a system that will improve the efficiency and flow of work by minimizing turn-around time.

LITERATURE REVIEW MG being one of the leading indigenous African law firms offer legal services to diverse clients. It has not been easy undertaking this due to lengthy process of identifying and referring to clients files, the reason they commissioned this projects.

MG is not the only firm implementing this Central Case Management Systems. There are other systems of this type and function that do exist in the field and industry of our reference.

For instance the Supreme Court of Singapore has implemented an Electronic Filing System that serves almost the same purpose but only handles matters of Civil nature. Our proposed CCMS will be able to serve clients who manage/handle matters of Civil, Criminal and even Arbitration in nature

Electric Legal Filing System (E-Filing), is a California based online system which came into operation in September of 1999. Filing cases electronically reduces the cost of filing, eliminating much of the paper handling involved, and allows the courts to function more efficiently. In addition, Electronic filing process makes it possible for documents to be submitted to the courts twenty-four hours a day from any location with Internet access. However the system does not, from research, integrate with individual law firms, private
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and public. The proposed CCMS comes in, upon full implementation, to bridge this obvious gap.

RESEARCH METHODOLOGY

Data Collection I intend to gather data using traditional contact/verbal interviews, observation and written questionnaires. My methods of choice is informed by the fact that its interactive and the proposed system integrates users requirements/needs and fits into the way business is done rather than changing business processes and procedures internal

Data Analysis After data collection using the above methods, I intend to analyse the same on an aspect to aspect basis where each component of data input so collected is evaluated on the basis of the user requirement in order to determine the requirements of the system to be developed. The process will employ the use of fact finding techniques as outlined above.

METHODOLOGY To achieve the above objectives, I will be adopting a Waterfall (Top DownApproach and Bottom-Up Approach) methodology because, in my assessment of the needs of the user, I find it user-friendly. This is an approach where the proposed system will be designed from the top level down but shall be implemented from the bottom up. This means that basic systems are written
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first and then integrated into subsystems. The waterfall model is a popular version of the systems development life cycle model for software engineering. Often considered the classic approach to the systems development life cycle, the waterfall model describes a development method that is rigid and linear. Waterfall development has distinct goals for each phase of development where each phase is completed for the next one is started and there is no turning back. The perceived advantage of the waterfall process is that it allows for departmentalization and managerial control. A schedule is typically set with deadlines for each stage of development and a product can proceed through the development process. This process lead to the project being delivered on time as each phase had been planned in detail.

Project Idea & Proposal Project Planning Feasibility Study Systems Analysis System Design System Development Testing & Modification Project Report Presentation & Hand-Over
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Project Closure

The relationship of each stage to the others can be roughly described as a waterfall, where the outputs from a specific stage serve as the initial inputs for the subsequent stage and so on. During each stage, I shall gather additional information, combined with the inputs, and used to produce the stage deliverables.

CONCLUSION This project is aimed at availing me an opportunity to contribute to your organization by coming up with a system that will improve your quality service delivery and increase efficiency of your service to clients. I hope you find my proposal reasonable and I look forward to establishing cordial business relationship with you.

REFERENCES i) http://app.supremecourt.gov.sg/default.aspx?pgID=56 ii) Information Systems Concepts for Management, Grolier Business Library iii) https://www.e-filing.com/

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