Keep your docketing system. PracticeLink moves the mail, the dates and the client updates around the docket you already run. Read-only by design.
The date is right in your docketing system, and the attorney still hasn't seen the office action, because the PDF is sitting in a shared inbox waiting for someone to match it to the matter. PracticeLink, from Quartz IP, works alongside the docketing system and DMS your firm already runs, and moves the work around them: mail into the matter, the deadline to the right person, the update to the client. You keep your docket. No migration off it.
Read that first sentence again. Nothing in the docket is wrong. The work around it stalled.
Keep the docket you trust
If your docket data is clean, somebody spent years getting it that way. Your dates live there. Your docketers make their changes there, and they know every quirk of the system. Replacing it means a migration, retraining and a long stretch where nobody fully trusts the dates.
Our view is simple. If the docket works, leave it alone. Fix what happens around it.
Four jobs that break around a working docket
None of these jobs live inside the docket. They live in inboxes, spreadsheets and somebody's memory. They fail quietly, and you usually find out when a partner asks a question nobody can answer.
### Mail into the matter
Office actions, filing receipts and foreign associate emails pile into a monitored inbox. Someone opens each one, works out the matter, names the document, files it and tells docketing. Then does it again. Every morning.
PracticeLink's Document Intake pulls from monitored email inboxes, from Patent Center for patents and MarkCapture for trademarks, and from a web upload for anything that arrives another way. Incoming email gets matched to the matter by lookup rules that read the subject line, the body, or both. A machine-learning engine predicts the document class. When it isn't confident enough, the document takes a default class and goes to a person for profiling. That's on purpose. You want a human on the ones the system isn't sure about.
Then there's the email with five attachments. Each attachment can be profiled into its own package, with its own document class, matter and routing, and docketing gets one work item instead of five. A PDF with several documents stitched together can be split at capture. Profilers and docketers work in the same screen, so the handoff isn't a second trip through a different tab.
### The date to the person who acts on it
Your docket knows the response is due. Does the associate drafting it? Too often the answer is a reminder email they've learned to skim past.
The Planner is a calendar of each user's relevant dockets and soft dates. Docketed dates come from your docketing system and sit beside the team's own soft dates as color-coded cards. People filter by timekeeper and by role, and they act right from the card: open the work panel, submit a de-docket, add a soft-date task. The work itself gets assigned to a user, a group or a role.
### The client update
Something changed on the matter. The client should hear about it. Someone has to remember to write the letter, attach the document, send it and file the sent copy.
Client Reporting runs on rules your firm sets up per client. There are two kinds, document rules and docket rules. A document arrives or a docket condition matches, the rule drafts the letter, and a reviewer approves it. The reviewer can be a user, a group or a matter role. The email goes out with the document attached and profiled to the DMS. Review is the default. Where your firm decides it fits, a rule can report straight to the client instead.
There's a record, too. Queue history shows whether a given record was reported. So "did we tell the client?" has an answer that isn't a guess.
### Covering the desk when someone's out
A paralegal is out for a week. Their dates are still on the docket. Who's watching them?
In the Planner, the timekeeper filter takes more than one person, so whoever's covering can see several people's dockets in one view. Tasks can be reassigned, and a single task can carry more than one assignee. Delegation is there for non-admins too, where your firm grants it. Coverage stops being a sticky note on someone's monitor.
How PracticeLink reads your docket data
Short version. PracticeLink syncs from your docketing system, and the connection is read-only by design. Your docket stays the source of the dates. PracticeLink reads from it.
Nobody exports a spreadsheet. Nobody re-keys a date.
Want the deeper setup walkthrough for your system? Ask us on a demo.
Where that data shows up for your team
The synced docket data feeds the Planner, badges, grids, matter roles and client reporting. Here's how that maps to three of the four jobs.
The date to the right person. The Planner's docket cards come from that synced data. Its role filters are tied to matter roles, the firm-defined roles that connect people to matters.
The client update. Client reporting draws on the synced data, and a matter role can be the reviewer on a reporting rule.
Covering the desk. Same Planner, same synced dates, just more than one timekeeper selected.
Badges are counted tiles that open filtered work grids. Badges, grids and Planner cards all open the work panel where the task gets done.
What stays in your docketing system
Everything that makes it your docket. The integration is read-only by design. PracticeLink doesn't write back to your docketing system. Docket changes still happen in your docketing system, by the people who make them today.
The Planner follows the same rule. It shows docketed dates but doesn't create or change them. You can drag a soft-date card to a different day, if your permissions allow it. You can't drag a docket card. That date belongs to your docket.
Setup takes some honest work. It involves reports or connectors in your environment, API credentials entered in PracticeLink, and getting timezone settings right where your system needs it. None of it is exotic. But it's real work, and it's better to know that going in.
Want to see it against your own docket? Request a demo.
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Frequently asked questions
Do we have to replace our docketing system to use PracticeLink?
No. PracticeLink, from Quartz IP, works alongside the docketing system and DMS your firm already runs, and moves the work around them: mail into the matter, the deadline to the right person, the update to the client. You keep your docket. No migration off it. Your dates live there. Your docketers make their changes there.
Does PracticeLink write back to our docketing system?
No. The integration is read-only by design, and PracticeLink doesn't write back to your docketing system. Docket changes still happen there, by the people who make them today. The Planner shows docketed dates but doesn't create or change them.
How does PracticeLink get data out of our docketing system?
PracticeLink syncs from your docketing system, read-only by design. Your docket stays the source of the dates, and PracticeLink reads from it. Nobody exports a spreadsheet. Nobody re-keys a date.
How does PracticeLink get incoming mail to the right matter?
PracticeLink's Document Intake pulls from monitored email inboxes, from Patent Center for patents and MarkCapture for trademarks, and from a web upload for anything that arrives another way. Incoming email gets matched to the matter by lookup rules that read the subject line, the body, or both. A machine-learning engine predicts the document class. When it isn't confident enough, the document takes a default class and goes to a person for profiling.
What does setting up the docket sync involve?
It involves reports or connectors in your environment, API credentials entered in PracticeLink, and getting timezone settings right where your system needs it. And it's real work. Better to know that going in.