Outsourcing and hosted systems are topics we have covered frequently in the Newsletter over recent issues since we consider that these developments will, over the next few years, transform the legal IT world.

Quill Pinpoint (www.quill.co.uk) was established by Tony Landes in 1978 to supply legal software, with Hilary Fisher joining in 1979, Andrew Sherwin in 1988 and Peter Dye in 1989. With offices in Manchester, Liverpool and Wilton they specialise in supplying software and (since 1995) outsourced services to legal firms and professional companies.

The company was initially known as Quill Computer Systems and in those early days offered word processing and DOS-based legal accounting software to its clients. Nowadays the company’s flagship software, Quill Pinpoint Interactive, offers features like document management, CRM, conflict searches and anti-money laundering checks, business continuity and disaster recovery, client portals for viewing documents and progress and sophisticated management reporting. Quill Pinpoint recently won the Institute of Legal Cashiers (ILCA) Solicitors Software Users Award for 2010.

The company employs over 80 staff with almost 50 being legal cashiers; this probably makes them the largest single employer of legal cashiers in the country. Quill Pinpoint has a combined client base of over 550 practices using the in-house software and the outsourced service. Their web and browser-based outsourced service is popular with newly established niche practices as well as established practices seeking efficiency whilst retaining control and quality of service.

The service is offered to firms without the associated capital costs of other solutions; there is a monthly fee covering everything from the application, the hosting, the BC & DR planning and the full time legal cashier. The Quill Pinpoint infrastructure spreads across three sites in the UK and is centrally managed from the Manchester offices.

Quill Pinpoint processes over 1,000,000 accounting transactions per year, reconciles in excess of 50,000 bank statements and performs over 3,000 month ends.

Andrew Sherwin, Quill Pinpoint’s Sales and Marketing Director, provides further information:

Our clients have no legal PMS to purchase, pay no annual software maintenance, pay no hosting fee for their application or data and have no legal cashier to employ. They simply pay Quill Pinpoint monthly for the banded number of accounting transactions they send for processing and the additional services such as time recording, purchase ledger, payroll, cash flow forecasting, civil/criminal legal aid processing and cheque writing. Fees start at £250 + VAT per month.

Mobility, compliancy and service are the three fundamental principles driving our service.

Mobility enables firms to work from court, office, client or even home locations. More and more practices are embracing wholeheartedly the principle of a virtual existence. Why be tied down to a single office and broadband connection when lawyers can access their compliant PMS from serviced offices, a laptop and 3G dongle? Whilst around 60 per cent of our new clients each year are new start-up firms, 40 per cent are well-established, multi-disciplinary practices who can see the benefits of outsourcing their back office functions.

Compliancy is at the heart of all responsible law firms whether that is the SRA, SAR, HMRC or LSC regulations. Quill Pinpoint over the years has grown to be a formidable resource for clients. With almost 50 legal cashiers in their employment working from one of their three regional offices, Quill has become the first port of call for firms needing practical advice.

Service is the key. Clients are not tied into long and onerous contracts; they need only give one months’ notice of termination. This certainly focuses our minds! We allocate a named legal cashier to each firm who can be contacted by phone, email or fax five days a week and these cashiers are fully responsible for everything from day-to-day postings to bank reconciliation to VAT returns. Quite often our legal cashiers are invited to firms’ Christmas parties and other celebrations and are met not with a handshake but a hug!

User comments

Mooneerams (www.mooneerams.com) is a specialist Claimant Personal Injury practice. They have used the Quill legal cashier service since 2002, and they now use Quill Pinpoint Interactive.

Leena Mooneeram: The service provided by Quill allows us to have, in effect, a team of specialist legal cashiers without the associated overheads of supervision, training, leave etc. Quill also manage their teams of cashiers so that a member of the team, familiar with our accounts, is available at all times.

As we have used Quill’s services since the firm was set up, we have never employed a legal cashier. We do retain some financial expertise in house but all of the day-to-day cashiering is handled by Quill.

Our staff complete chits to request payments out or advise of payments in. Copies of these chits are sent to Quill who enter the details on to the relevant ledger. We send the chits by post at the moment although the facility exists to enter the data onto the system electronically and we will be migrating to the “electronic chit” system in the near future.

Overall, we have been very pleased with the software and with Quill. Not only do we benefit from the costs savings of not having to employ a legal cashier or run accounting software, but as a supplier Quill are very personable and accommodating.

Licensing Legal (www.licensinglegal.co.uk) is a niche licensing firm, dealing with licensed trade clients in the pub, hotel, restaurant, supermarket and leisure sectors as well as other areas. They have 4 fee earners.

Richard Williams: We have used the outsourced cashiering service from Quill since we started out about 7 years ago. Pinpoint takes away all of the accounting problems and the cashiers alert us to any breaches which can be rectified immediately. The service allows us to concentrate on fee earning work.

We don’t have any cashier or financial expertise in house as such although many of us are now trained in the posting of e-chits and after such a period of time we know what we’re doing to avoid accounting problems.

We use the service every day to set up new clients and matters and to time record. All transactions are then notified to Quill by e-chits online and the Quill cashier posts these entries. At any point, we can produce detailed management reports, billing guides etc. It all works pretty seamlessly as if we have a cashier in house.

It’s not cheap – we are only a small firm but we spend roughly £9000 per year to use the service. However, it is very reliable, easy to use and we have never had a problem with any of our accounts. Our accountants can key in to the software at year end and for client account audits and it removes one of the headaches of being a small practice, ie accounting.

Mark Ellis & Co is a small firm covering conveyancing, probate and matrimonial. They have been going for 7 years.

Mark Ellis: The secretaries prepare the chits which we send to Quill by DX. In the past, Quill used to send us back a CD-ROM with our accounts, but now we have access to our accounts online. This is not quite as instant as having a cashier in house but typically a small firm such as ours would in any case only have a part time cashier so the accounts would not be instantly up to date in any case.

Overall, the service is very good. You avoid all the problems with holidays, sickness etc which can beset small firms. I highly recommend it.

Delia Venables is joint editor of this newsletter.

Email delia@venables.co.uk.

She is grateful to the following for their help with this article: Andrew Sherwin Andrew.Sherwin@quill.co.uk, Richard Williams row@licensinglegal.co.uk, Leena Mooneeram leena.mooneeram@mooneerams.com and Mark Ellis markellisandcosolicitors@btconnect.com.