Saving the team hours every day with our simple and straight-forward matter management software

The City of Murfreesboro needed a simple and easy to use in house legal matter management software that would provide visibility over all matters and help streamline legal operations.

City of Murfreesboro - Tennessee
Industry

Municipal Government

Key results
  • Single source of truth with a centralized hub
  • Increased productivity
  • Streamlined legal operations
  • Improved communication and client service

“Xakia tells you what you need to know - without involving unnecessary information.”

Aly Dabbs
Legal Assistant

City of Murfreesboro

About the City of Murfreesboro

The largest suburb of Nashville, the City of Murfreesboro, Tennessee has a population of approximately 150,000. In addition to being the fastest-growing city in the state, Murfreesboro has ranked among the fastest-growing cities in the United States.

The City of Murfreesboro’s in-house Legal Department serves the City Council, City Manager, Department Heads and Boards and Commissions, functional units that vary in focus, from Airport to Finance & Tax to Information Technology to Police.

The corporate legal team comprises six lawyers, two paralegals and a legal assistant. One lawyer focuses on public safety, and another focuses on schools. Others handle a wide range of duties, from civil litigation to bonds to contracts to zoning.

office man using laptop

The in-house Legal Department challenge

Requests for Legal Department help were coming in through email – and from there, subject to nine different “systems,” one style for each member of the team.

“Everyone was flagging their requests in emails, and keeping track on their own computers and putting documents in different places,” said Legal Assistant Aly Dabbs.

This made it a major challenge to track matters or collaborate across the team, Ms. Dabbs said: “Everyone saved documents differently, so it was hard to find information because nothing was consistent. I had to dig into many folders and folders, and sometimes I would end up finding nothing after all that digging. I would be 15 files deep in a pathway, only to find nothing.”

Beyond causing Legal Department hassles, the lack of a centralized online legal matter management software threatened the team’s work productivity. Without visibility into legal matters and their status, Ms. Dabbs said she often feared missing deadlines or deliverables.

Approach

When they decided to pursue a legal matter management system, the City of Murfreesboro knew it wanted to prioritize simplicity.

The team experimented with legal software that was built for the law firm practice setting, but soon found it was a bad fit, as Ms. Dabbs explained: “It had a lot of fields that we weren’t using, so it wasn’t user-friendly to find things. It had too many fields. It was too complex.”

Given the complexity and range of projects handled by a municipal legal team, Ms. Dabbs and her colleagues wanted a legal matter software solution that was simple and straightforward – and that required no retrofitting to work in their environment.

The City of Murfreesboro needed a better solution

The corporate Legal Department then chose Xakia, a matter management software developed specifically for in-house teams.

“Xakia tells you what you need to know - without involving unnecessary information,” she said.

A secondary selection factor: Xakia integrated with the Legal Department’s document management tools, thereby eliminating those fruitless file searches.


“Xakia has saved hours of our day finding information on a file.”

Aly Dabbs
Legal Assistant

Results

One central cloud based legal software

The City’s Legal Department has centralized all of its projects in a consistent, updated hub.

This has streamlined operations, starting at legal intake. Requests for legal work instantly become matters in Xakia. The City Attorney then assigns the right resource, referring to the “All Matters Dashboard” to see who has capacity.

Then, throughout the lifecycle of the legal matter, the lawyers and staff members track status updates, notes and tasks – all in a centralized place where the rest of the team can see real-time progress.

Increased efficiency

“Xakia has saved hours of our day finding information on a file,” Ms. Dabbs said. “If someone says to us ‘Why didn’t I get this back,’ we can go into the matter and check the reason instantly. The notes section helps too, because I can see what’s going on instead of calling people, or searching in many different places.”

legal matter management software

Improved communication and client service

Moreover, the Legal Department has started using Xakia’s reporting functions to expedite work and improve service delivery. Ms. Dabbs runs reports for items awaiting action so lawyers can proactively follow up and move matters forward.

This new way of working has bolstered the Legal Department’s working relationships, Ms. Dabbs said.

“Now people in the City will email us as a reliable source of information, because of our system – we can provide information a lot faster,” she said. “They know us and know we’re a responsible team. It’s helped with our City relationships. Even if they do have to wait a while, I can at least give them an accurate update, which relieves them.”

City of Murfreesboro - Xakia case study

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