Simplex Legal is an in-house counsel boutique law firm built on a commitment to significantly reduce client legal fees while delivering the highest quality advice.
The firm is unique in that all of its lawyers have corporate business experience. This formula enables the firm to provide professionalism without pretension, value without compromising skill and simplicity without sacrificing quality.
Since May of 2020, Simplex Legal’s team of seasoned, intelligent and caring legal and business experts have used Blue J L&E to help the firm’s clients reach their goals in the most cost effective way.
Since its inception, Simplex Legal set out a mission to change the business of law. The firm created a new model for client/lawyer interactions aimed at a central goal: reduce client fees.
A core part of Simplex Legal’s services is that they prefer fixed rates, rather than the variable billable hour model, which has long been the status quo in legal services. Fixed rates give Simplex Legal’s clients a degree of predictability and certainty when beginning an engagement with the firm, enabling them to precisely forecast the exact expected cost.
To be able to offer flexible billing options while maintaining a profitable business, Simplex Legal has to be economical with its resources and efficient in its processes. To do so, the firm looks to use advanced technology like Blue J L&E.
In particular, the firm most recently sought a way to increase the speed at which it could arrive at data-backed initial positions for client files, quickly generate high-quality client reporting, and increase its capacity to take on new work.
For an experienced lawyer, developing a reasonable notice position that is favorable to the client is relatively straightforward. However, it can be challenging to formulate such a position in a way that is data-backed, mitigates the risk of the position being successfully challenged, and provides cost-effective client service.
As Gerard Power, Senior Legal Counsel at Simplex Legal, highlights, “if you are an experienced practitioner, you are likely familiar with the labour & employment case law and you can quickly develop a gut reaction about what the outcome should be.”
The challenge is substantiating the position and doing so efficiently.
Before using Blue J L&E, Power would sift through traditional legal research databases like CanLII and scour a repertoire of secondary sources. “To do this effectively, you have to spend many hours,” Power notes.
With the addition of Blue J L&E’s predictive functionality that helps fortify labour & employment positions and gain an advantage in settlement discussions, Power estimates the initial intake process is 5x faster.
“Blue J L&E gathers all of the information I need and centralizes it. It asks the most important questions and pulls from the full body of relevant case law, giving me the confidence that I rarely need to go beyond Blue J L&E.”
Arriving at actionable answers quickly is crucial to Simplex Legal’s business model and commitment to clients to provide expedited, top-notch service.
Receiving succinct and actionable advice is important to Simplex Legal’s clients, many of whom are in-house counsel who are often absorbed in more business-critical decisions.
“Litigation is a distraction for in-house counsel. Being able to deal with things quickly and to give in-house teams a reasonable expectation of what the outcome might be is extremely helpful to clients,” says Power.
A valuable component of the firm’s advice is Blue J L&E’s report, which summarizes the predicted outcome, lists the cases that are factually most similar, and provides an explanation of the results for key stakeholders.
Coupled with the high-caliber expertise of Simplex Legal’s lawyers, the firm is able to provide clients “a well-informed position, an explanation of that position and a letter outlining a tactical recommendation.”
“Litigation can take our clients away from running the business,” Power says. Our aim is to equip them with the knowledge they need to make sound legal decisions swiftly and confidently.”
Blue J L&E’s customizable reporting feature structures and elevates Simplex Legal’s advice.
While the use of technology pays dividends to Simplex Legal’s clients, it also enhances the firm’s internal economics.
“I want my clients to be happy and tell us they’re impressed with how efficient we are,” says Power. ”Using tools like Blue J L&E is one way of being more efficient. Ultimately, we’re able to serve more clients as a result.”
As the firm has grown, increasing its capacity to take on new clients remains one of its strategic priorities.
“An important consideration for Simplex Legal is to never find itself in a position where it lacks capacity to take on additional client work. It follows that tools to increase capacity, without necessarily increasing headcount, would be highly coveted.”
The use of Blue J L&E has increased Simplex Legal’s ability to do that, all while maintaining the flexible billing options and revolutionary client/ lawyer business model on which the firm established itself.
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