Volunteer Lawyers--Private Bar Involvement (PBI)

Basic Information

a) Lawyer – Private Bar Involvement (PBI) is an extremely important part of the delivery system that helps low income people. You can add Lawyers to Prime and assign them to cases and place them in Law Firms. To enter a Lawyer, go to Add PBI Lawyer b) Lawyers Search Screen - Below is the Lawyers Search Screen. Notice how lawyers with no ongoing case show up in yellow. If they are no longer active on the panel they are grayed out.

c) Pressing the Cases button displays the cases the selected Volunteer Lawyer has.

d) This is the Lawyer input screen.

Lawyer Intake 1 Tab

1) Required fields are marked with an (*)

2) On Panel – Check this box if the lawyer is actively participating on your PBI panel. It should always be checked unless the Lawyer has stopped accepting referrals from your organization.

3) Volunteer Panel - tag lawyers who are on the Volunteer panel. Provides a way to track volunteers who may be on Panel but only accept PBI cases or only accept Lawyer Referral cases (or other types of volunteer cases you may need to track)

4) Lawyer Referral Panel – these lawyers are on the Lawyer Referral Panel. The Lawyer Referral Panel can be used to track lawyers that accept referrals thru the local Bar Association’s Lawyer Referral Service. It could also be used to track other types of panels such as Reduced Fee or Conflict Panels, if so desired.

5) Enter the lawyer’s name, extension, salutation, and title

6) Enter the address

7) Enter the Zip Code and push City/State to populate the city, state, and county

8) Position allows you to tag the volunteer as a Lawyer, Law Student, Accountant, Paralegal, etc.

9) Email – Entering the lawyer’s email address allows you to send an email message to the lawyer from Prime.

10) User – A user defined field that you can use to track any additional piece of information such as Retired; ARDC Registration Checked; etc.

11) If you want to associate this lawyer with a law firm, select a Law Firm from the pull down listing the firm names. You will get a prompt asking if you want to update the Lawyer’s Address with the Firm Address. Select yes or no. Note: You must enter something in all required fields before selecting a Law Firm

12) Reduced Fee Panel – Can be used one of three ways;

i) The lawyer is willing to take clients over the eligibility guidelines,

ii) That the lawyer is willing to take cases for a reduced fee, or

iii) That this is a Judicare attorney

13) Second Language – If the lawyer speaks a second language, select it from this pull down

14) Available After – The date the lawyer is available to take cases

15) Date on Bar – The date the lawyer was admitted to the Bar

16) Date on Panel – The date the lawyer joined your lawyers panel

17) How Recruited – How was this lawyer recruited? Phone, letter, etc.

18) Bar # – The Lawyer’s state or local bar number

19) Hourly Fee – Enter the lawyer’s hourly fee here. This can be used to calculate the value of donated time.

20) Cases owed can be used to indicate how many cases they have agreed to accept per year. Sometimes the local bar association mandates this

21) Primary Office shows which branch office they are associated with.

22) The bottom portion of this page shows assignment information, including the date of the Last Case was taken, the number of Cases taken, number of Cases in last 12 months, whether they have an On Going Case, total Hours spent and a list of the cases assigned to them. Double-clicking on any of the cases listed opens that case.

23) Certain information about the lawyer is automatically updated and doesn’t require any effort on your part. The number of cases, number of hours, ongoing case, last case date, last activity date, and number of cases taken in last 12 months are updated automatically.

Lawyer Intake 2 tab

Collect more in-depth information about the volunteer. 1) On what topics is the volunteer lawyer willing to train or do presentations? 2) Does the volunteer have any special needs? 3) Check if the volunteer has received any complaints from clients and note what the complaint was in the About field 4) If the lawyer has refused any cases, list the number of refusals and the dates. This isn’t necessary if you use the Contacts sheet which provides better information. 5) If the lawyer leaves panel, enter the Date Left Panel. 6) Send a Form Letter to the lawyer if needed 7) Select how the lawyer wishes to be contacted and where they prefer to meet the client or opposing party. 8) Check what types of cases the lawyer will handle. For example, will they handle administrative hearings or be a mentor? 9) Indicate the topics the lawyer can speak or consult on. 10) Indicate which panels the lawyer is on. Use the Panel Help box for abbreviations 11) The Miscellaneous Fields can be used to track additional information or answer specific office needs or issues. One possible item would be to track CLE type of training they have attended such as Bankruptcy or Debt Collection.

Lawyer Intake 3 tab

Holds the Lawyer’s case and practice location preferences.

1) Click on Set Counties to choose what counties this lawyer works in. Clicking on a county puts an X next to it. Click on it again to remove the X. Click on Save/Exit to save your changes. 2) Subjects are assigned the same way as Counties.

Contact with Lawyer

Keeps detailed information about your contacts with the volunteer lawyer, such as when they took or refused cases.

Notes

Allows you to record information about a Lawyer that doesn’t fit elsewhere.

1) Click on Date Note to enter a new note 2) Canned Notes allows you to easily enter repetitive advice or questions 3) Zoom Notes pops up a separate form with the notes in it allowing you to add or edit. 4) To perform a spell check on your notes, highlight the notes you want spell checked and press F7. If you press F2 and F7, the entire notes will be checked 5) PBI Portal Registration – Prime has an Online PBI/Attorney Portal that allows attorneys on panel to log onto your website and manage their cases. This includes adding and viewing case notes, PBI time slips, and compensated slips. When completed, they can close a case. This is an optional add-on and is discussed in Advanced Features.

Buttons across the top of the Lawyers Intake

1) Save/Stay – Save this information and stay on this form. 2) Add – Saves the information and opens a new, blank Lawyer intake 3) Print – Print this form and the information in it 4) Time – This button will take you to the Stop Watch Time Keeping form, wherein you can track the time spent on the Intake (Described in Time Keeping) 5) Duplicate – Allows the copying of existing lawyer’s data to a new record. 6) Switch Lawyer – Allows you to go from one Lawyer’s record to another existing record i) Enter a new lawyer’s number ii) Search for a lawyer’s number based on last name iii) This makes it possible to move from one lawyer’s intake screen to another, without the new lawyer’s number or going back to a search screen 7) Close – Saves the information and returns you to the menu system

Form Letters to Lawyers

Most people are aware that you can send form letters from the Client Intake, but they are not aware you can also send letters from other screens, such as Eligibility and Lawyers. What is unique about the Lawyer Form Letters is that you can choose from two different types of letters.

1) Letters directly to the Lawyer - These might concern trainings, their case preferences, the counties they want to work in or an announcement of an awards dinner. 2) Letters to the Lawyer or Client based upon a case -These letters are sent either to the client or to the lawyer in reference to a case they’ve taken. The letter might be an opening letter, a tickle letter, a closing letter, etc. 3) There is a simple five step process to generate a form letter. i) Use the Lawyers Search Screen to open the intake of the Lawyer you want to send a letter to. ii) Go to Tab 2 and push the Form Letter button. A form will open up. iii) If you leave the client name blank, the letters you can choose from go directly to the lawyer and don’t reference any client name. iv) If you put in a client name using the pull down, the list of available letters changes. You can now send letters to the client and the lawyer that reference the case that the lawyer is handling. v) Finish up the form letter in the usual fashion, such as adding text, choosing letterhead, etc.