Kelley Drye & Warren LLP announced today that its META Advisors Claims Management website has been recognized by the Corporate Legal Operations Consortium (CLOC) as one of the top three submissions for the 2020 Legal Innovation in Operations Project (LIO Project).

The LIO Project is designed to honor law firms that have achieved innovation and design excellence in legal operations, thereby contributing to the continuing evolution of the global corporate legal ecosystem. The LIO Project is focused on how law firms are changing their practice group service and business models to better address client needs. The goal is to demonstrate the role, and value, the legal function can play when it focuses on business outcomes rather than solely legal outcomes.

Kelley Drye was recognized for reimagining how to reconcile and manage bankruptcy claims for its client META Advisors by creating and launching a tailor-made digital interface. The primary focus was to allow META to “reclaim” significant amounts of time, while also improving the security, accessibility, and accuracy of key information. While this solution relies heavily on technology, the team employed various methods and approaches from design thinking in order to capture the real user problem and ultimate user experience of the tool and process.

The impetus for the project came as a result of META Advisors facing a challenge while reconciling bankruptcy claims. For each claim, various data points needed to be updated and cross referenced, including the overall status, amount, priority level and documentation of the claim. This process became even more unwieldly, as each case could contain hundreds or thousands of individual claims that needed to be reconciled. META’s Chief Compliance Officer Dana Kane met with the Kelley Drye Innovation Lab team during a workshop facilitated by Design Build Legal. After defining the source of the problem, the team developed a prototype for an online database.

“Our client META Advisors’ process of managing bankruptcy claims was a time-consuming process that dealt with unwieldy spreadsheets, inconsistent data, and duplicate efforts, making it vulnerable to human error,” said Judi Flournoy, Chief Information Officer, Kelley Drye. “The new online database has proven to alleviate most, if not all, of these issues and pain points for our client, and we are thrilled that CLOC has recognized the efforts of our team in the development of this platform.”

The platform, built by SiteCraft, went live in January 2020, and is currently being used to manage its first two bankruptcy cases. Following its successful launch, the website is now being reconfigured to serve as a status portal for another bankruptcy client, with potential to scale for many more. Additionally, the Innovation Lab has evolved into Kelley Drye’s formal Client Service and Innovation Committee, which is undertaking new projects for clients.

CLOC Recognizes Kelley Drye for Innovation and Design Excellence