“Litify definitely enables us to keep a much better financial pulse on the business. With a few clicks, we can see if our pipeline is a bit weaker this month and decide that we need to do a marketing push, or see where we’re at with current settlement negotiations and take on a few more cases since we know what the flow of the business looks like," — Kate Bristol, Firm Administrator, Ghitterman, Ghitterman & Feld

Based in California, Ghitterman Ghitterman & Feld specializes in workers’ compensation and social security disability cases. The firm currently has eight offices across the Central Valley and the Central Coast, including the main headquarters in Santa Barbara.

The firm’s mission is a relentless commitment to protecting their clients’ rights. They strive to leave no stone unturned when pursuing benefits for their clients while ensuring every client is kept informed throughout the entire process. This means approaching cases creatively and working with community partners who can provide different types of support along the way so that the firm can take the best care of each client holistically.

“We went digital as a firm back in 2011 — and we were actually able to support a lot of firms during the COVID-19 pandemic as they made the same shift — but it can be tough to find a partner who is equally forward-looking when it comes to the intersection of technology and the practice of law,” said Kate Bristol, Firm Administrator at Ghitterman, Ghitterman & Feld.

Ghitterman, Ghitterman & Feld needed a solution with robust reporting and integration capabilities, and the flexibility to handle their unique approach to each case. They found Litify.

Life before Litify

Prior to implementing Litify, the firm was using a system that felt really rigid and outdated.

The team knew what technology could do for them, but when they suggested ideas or improvements, they were often told that the provider wouldn’t or couldn’t make those changes. It seemed like the provider wasn’t committed to staying up-to-date or releasing new features that would prepare firms for the future.

While client care was critical to the firm, the system didn’t make it clear what was happening in a particular case, so the team spent a lot of unnecessary time digging through updates — When was the last time they received mail? When’s the next hearing? What were the results of the last medical report?

Finally, there was a lack of insight into business performance, which impeded the team’s ability to plan ahead. For example, it was difficult to generate reports on how many settlement payments were pending or how many files were closing each month. The firm had to manually create a lot of these reports outside of the system, leading to multiple versions of spreadsheets that would get passed around from person to person.

All of this slowed the firm down, which wasn’t effective for their practice management.

Finding Litify

“We’re often approached by other firms to take over their cases — maybe a solo practitioner is looking to retire or an attorney group is going their separate ways. Whatever the situation might be, we will absorb those five, 10, or 15 cases. However, in 2023, we agreed to several opportunities, which significantly increased our case count. As a result, we ran into a lot of issues while trying to transition 500+ clients, get their paperwork signed, and migrate their case information into our previous system,” said Bristol.

Evaluation

The team decided it was time to look for a better solution, and they came across Litify.

They immediately saw the power of being built on Salesforce and the flexibility this would finally provide them to manage each case as an individual rather than feeling like the process was copied and pasted for them. They would be able to take advantage of the solutions Litify already provided while being empowered to tailor the solution to their own needs and experience.

Implementation

As Ghitterman implemented the platform, they also benefited from the power of two teams of experts: Litify and Sikich.

“Working with these two specialized teams has been a great resource for our team as we continue to dial in how we can make Litify even more unique to us and how we practice,” said Bristol.

The firm enjoyed the deep discovery at the start of the implementation process. Due to their unique approach to cases, it was important to them to review every step and every department with the Sikich team to uncover how work was currently getting done and what they wanted to achieve with Litify.

“Sikich actually recommended that we go live with a strong but simple initial foundation built in Litify. They had seen other clients want to be at 150% on day one, but without ever using the platform, it’s difficult to fully visualize what’s possible. I’m glad we had a partner who shared this advice so we didn’t end up over-designing at the start. We were able to go live more quickly, spend a few weeks using Litify at 100%, and then see firsthand how we could take advantage of the platform to further optimize this, automate that, and integrate these other tools to give us that remaining 50%,” said Bristol.

Life with Litify

Ghitterman now has the forward-looking technology solution and partner they were looking for that will grow and evolve alongside their business.

“Litify definitely enables us to keep a much better financial pulse on the business. Workers’ compensation practices are primarily volume-driven, and we can now understand and maintain our perfect mix of the attorneys and support staff we need to handle the volume of cases we have at any given time. With a few clicks, we can see if our pipeline is a bit weaker this month and decide that we need to do a marketing push, or see where we’re at with current settlement negotiations and take on a few more cases since we know what the flow of the business looks like,” said Bristol.

Not only do they have a better pulse on business performance, but Litify is also automating the manual work that once slowed their team down while keeping client care and communication top-of-mind. For example, the firm now has robust workflows for mail review and text messaging to streamline the process of receiving and reading new mail and then automatically giving clients the necessary case updates and information.

“Automation works in the background to show our staff only what they need to see and give our clients only what they need to know, but then continues to store all the information in a very organized way on the backend. We try to make it as easy as possible for everyone by reducing that manual work and human error, so Litify’s been a total game changer for us,” said Bristol.

And the ongoing support from Litify? Kate says it’s like working with an extension of the firm. Gone are the days of having no phone number to call and waiting days for an email response that may or may not come. Now the firm has a dedicated Customer Success Manager who is quick to respond and quick to support the team members using the platform.

“One of the best parts of our partnership is having people who are equally as creative thinking as we are on what we want to achieve in the platform and then working backward to make it happen. That’s definitely how we operate and it’s been fun to also be part of a community that approaches and appreciates that in the same way,” said Bristol.

Ready to unlock real-time insight into your practice? Schedule a free demo with our team to see how Litify can help. You can also explore the power of the platform in our guided product tour.