Four Brick Court Chambers achieved optimum performance from MLC with Advanced
Four Brick Court Chambers achieved optimum performance from MLC
About Four Brick Court Chambers
Four Brick Court is a long-established set of family law barristers based at the Temple, in London. Their focus is family law for which they offer specialist Counsel, providing a wide range of experience in acting for all sides in public law, private law, and financial remedy proceedings.
With casework that includes some of the most serious and medically complex cases before the family courts, Four Brick Court is fully committed to a strong child welfare approach.
This Chambers has been using MLC as their central work platform for 20+ years. Clive Barrett, former Senior Clerk, and now Finance and Operations Manager, spoke to us about how their experience with MLC has evolved over the years.
Their Advanced experience
Four Brick Court didn’t have a promising start with MLC. Clive explained how barriers were overcome to transform the software into a much-valued platform:
“A lot of our issues were our fault as we started out not using MLC to its full capability. That caused some dissatisfaction, but I liked how the system worked and understood the potential of what we could achieve if we invested some time. Advanced offered us a Training Consultant who was formerly a clerk, and able to understand any issues from our point of view. She arranged a series of training sessions, pushing me to think more analytically about what we actually needed. Working together, we’ve changed a discouraging situation into a very positive experience.”
Automated time savings
“Following training, we’ve saved a lot of time by automating more and more processes. One example is the Local Authority procurement work we do. It’s crucial to them that we provide schedules – but that was a long, cumbersome process. Now, we’ve built a report that automatically picks the data from MLC’s planners – it just takes two minutes to complete at month end.”
Improved access to information
“Working in finance, I was keen to refine progress tracking. We’ve improved our billing cycles and can track our financial performance continually. MLC’s detailed opportunity reports are also helpful – they provide all required information, including the value of completed work. The gains in reporting have been significant and we’re still seeing continual improvement in the way we access, and use, information.”
Clive Barrett, Finance and Operations Manager, Four Brick Court: “The MLC diaries are superb. We appreciate how the functionality keeps us on top of day-to-day planning and the simplicity of the way they work to connect everything together.”
Why Advanced?
They really listen to us and are very proactive. Our training consultant has been invaluable in making us think outside the box, helping us to automate time consuming tasks that we wouldn’t have thought about previously. In future, I’m sure we’ll continue to innovate together.
I would recommend further training to any chambers using MLC. It will definitely help them get the very best from their system.
How’s support now?
Our communication with MLC’s helpdesk has also come on leaps and bounds. They’re very knowledgeable, and we get the answers we need, when we need them. Whenever I speak to someone from Advanced, it feels like we’re working together.
What’s next?
Digital work tools are expanding all of the time, so I’m interested in exploring MLC Mobile. Although we are already set up to work from home, I believe it has additional functionality that will be of real value to our chambers.
