Oneida County, NY Assigned Counsel
Paper Free Assigned Counsel Program Brings More Order to the Courts and County
In a typical month, between 150 and 200 contract attorney vouchers pass through the Oneida County Supplemental Assigned Counsel Program Office. Before switching the paperwork to Laserfiche, the process cluttered up desks in the courts, county departments, and attorneys’ offices while filling up filing cabinets in both the Law Department and the Audit and Control Office. Laborious, error-prone manual procedures meant that attorneys sometimes didn’t see payment for as long as six months after a trial ended.
That’s all changed now, thanks to a Laserfiche form that consolidates 12 pages or more of Assigned Counsel Program documents into a single, online report with electronic signatures, scanned supporting attachments, and built-in records management. The bulky files of hand-calculated timesheets, copies of receipts, and signed affidavits are no more. Email and workflow replace cover letters, envelopes, postage, and inter-office routing. Best of all, attorneys receive payments within an average of two weeks.
A “Top 10 Digital County” Invests in Digital Transformation
For three years running, Oneida’s been named a Top Digital County by the Center for Digital Government and the National Association of Counties for Best Technology Practices. In 2017, the County made the Top 10 nationwide.
Oneida knows Laserfiche. Virtually every County department uses the software, with close to 150 county users. The list of Laserfiche Workflows and Forms implementations grows yearly, including trial case management, contract administration, Board of Elections petitions, and Department of Planning Section 239 submissions. In the words of County Executive Anthony J. Picente, Jr., “We are attempting to move into the digital age and ensure that documents and forms are handled and routed in the most efficient way possible. The end goal is to run government more effectively and to provide benefits and savings for agencies and taxpayers.”
The Assigned Counsel Program continues this initiative, extending the benefits of Laserfiche to 65 contract attorneys and 65 judges presiding over local Municipal Courts, City Courts, Family Court, County Court, Supreme Court, and Surrogate’s Court.
New York State Funding Drives Development
Kimberly Flint is Oneida County’s Contract Administrator. She oversees the Supplemental Assigned Counsel Program and the County’s departmental contracts and government grants. “We’d been using Laserfiche Workflow to process contracts as they moved from County departments to the Law Department for review, and then to the County Executive and Board of Legislators for execution before moving to the Audit and Control Department for payment,” she said.
“When I learned about Laserfiche Forms, I absolutely wanted to do something similar with the Assigned Counsel Program. I applied to the NYS Office of Indigent Legal Services, who loved the idea and awarded us a multi-year grant to get it done.”
Inside Knowledge and Partnership Stand Up Insightful Solution
Flint turned to Sandy Brennan at ICC Community Development Solutions (CDS) for help. “Sandy’s been our trainer and project point person for years, so she understands how county government works. This process has many, many moving parts and so many people to integrate with different functions in several organizations. It’s not a straight line, either. Sandy and Scott Wilson – our Laserfiche gurus at CDS – worked with me to figure out what we needed and how to get it from Laserfiche Workflow and Forms.”
Along the way, this team met with stakeholder attorneys and judges, reviewed prototypes with focus groups, and adjusted their pilot using feedback from about eight test users. Phased training and the rollout of the new Assigned Counsel Program took place over the course of months. Daily lunch-hour mini-webinar training sessions offered users support and answered questions. Eventually all Family, County, City, Town, and Village Courts joined in.
The Benefits of Streamlining Flow from Assignment to Notification to Vouching to Payment and Archiving
Flint runs out of fingers before she runs out of reasons to like her new Assigned Counsel Program. “For one thing,” she said, “I’m no longer wearing out the carpet between my desk and the filing cabinets. Seriously, we replaced a cumbersome, error-prone process and a corresponding space-intensive filing scheme with a paperless Laserfiche Assigned Counsel Program solution that takes full advantage of the software’s forms, workflow, and records management. And we’re integrating with our financial system and with the New York State Court systems for reconciling attorney court time. It’s saving the County – and the Courts – a lot of time, effort, and expense.”
A Statewide Opportunity for Greater Efficiency
Oneida County’s success is pointing the way for other assigned counsel programs in New York State. “This was a terrific partnership effort with Oneida,” says Dan Foster, ICC Community Development Solutions’ General Manager. “We packaged what we learned into our GCStreamline Assigned Counsel Solution to make implementation in other venues much faster. Tompkins County is going live just a few months after Oneida County. Once the team made a few adjustments to align with the specific way Tompkins prefers to manage the process, they were on their way.”
As Flint points out, “The New York State Office of Indigent Legal Services awarded the grant that made this project possible with the intention that it will improve the way Assigned Counsel Programs are managed throughout the state. With Tompkins becoming the second county to get on board, I think we proved that we succeeded. The program reduces the administrative burden for the Courts, the attorneys, and the County departments involved. In my opinion, the only limits to working with Laserfiche are those that are self-imposed.”