The aim of this paper is discuss the current limitations of the information systems used in legal processes, it is described the architecture of a control and tracking system of juridical matters that it was integrated with collaborative tools. This application has contributed to implement a more transparent and documented administration process of the juridical matters in the public electric companies in Mexico. This system allows lawyers to register the actions carried out; it generates supervision reports and notifications to review the actions and support to make correct decisions. Finally, we review the desirable characteristics to improve it and those required to exploit the information stored as best practices and learned lessons.

1. Control of legal processes using collaborative tools
Martín Santos Domínguez, Isaac Alberto Parra Ramírez, Salvador Rodríguez Camacho
and Hiriam Eduardo Pérez Vidal
Instituto de Investigaciones Eléctricas
Gerencia de Sistema Informáticos
Tel. +55 (777) 362 3811
Cuernavaca, Morelos
México
msantos@iie.org.mx, iaparra@iie.org.mx, srodrigu@iie.org.mx, and heperez@iie.org.mx
Abstract
The aim of this paper is discuss the current limitations of
the information systems used in legal processes, it is
described the architecture of a control and tracking
system of juridical matters that it was integrated with
collaborative tools. This application has contributed to
implement a more transparent and documented
administration process of the juridical matters in the
public electric companies in Mexico. This system allows
lawyers to register the actions carried out; it generates
supervision reports and notifications to review the actions
and support to make correct decisions. Finally, we review
the desirable characteristics to improve it and those
required to exploit the information stored as best
practices and learned lessons.
Keywords: Collaboration tools, legal processes and
workflow.
1. Introduction
Traditionally, the areas related with juridical matters don't
have information systems to control and track the actions
that the lawyers carry out on the legal cases assigned to
them.
Usually, the juridical files are administered by the
lawyers in their personal computers. The actions that are
carried out in the legal exercise are integrated in several
separate documents, which are not related and are rarely
shared.
The computer systems of documental administration
allow the classification and reception of documents.
However, the actions accomplished in each juridical
matter can affect the final result of a trial; each action can
change the result in a tribunal. The knowledge of how
each action influence the result of a trial is documented in
different ways or it is lost. In many cases, the legal
matters should be reviewed by several lawyers, different
tasks should be assigned to others persons or the matters
should be reassigned to other lawyers. In most of the
cases this originates the following consequences:
• Lawyers do not have control over the legal
matters assigned to them.
• Lawyers ignore the legal matters that they
should attend.
• Legal matters are not appropriately
administered.
• Cases are lost for inattention.
• Information is lost on the carried out actions.
• The experience acquired in the practice remains
as implicit knowledge (in lawyers head).
• Unnecessary repetition of tasks.
Additionally, the administrators and the key personnel of
these areas have to work additional hours to generate
reports that indicate different metric such as: the state of
the legal matters, as well as the hours, expenses, actions
carried out by the lawyers, their next actions, the current
state of the legal matters, results, recovered cash, etc. All
these characteristics are essential for a health
management of legal matters without losing the
confidentiality and security of the information [1].
At the present, the software available for the legal
exercise is administrative or it is oriented to a personal
use, without considering aspects such as: the
communication between teams of work, the possibility to
delegate tasks and to keep references of the actions
carried out. The lawyer ends up making use of several
computer systems to accomplish his work, such as: their
personal agenda, private documents, contacts,
documental administration system, etc.
The information systems have evolved in systems that
incorporate workflows and collaborative spaces allow the

2. users to exchange information, to validate and complete
tasks that are carried out additionally to the capture of the
data. The system described next was developed with the
objective of integrating a collaborative tool that allows
the lawyers, to give tracking and to control the juridical
matters, to perform tasks, to register results, to consult
planned tasks, calendar, lists of contacts, etc. in a single
place. At the same time, to go building a registration of
knowledge of the state of the juridical practice (cases of
success) that allow sharing in an explicit way the
knowledge and acquired experiences.
2. Collaboration tools
Currently, the technologies of information have increased
the speed with which the businesses are administered.
The organizations that don't adapt to this rhythm of
changes won't survive. To achieve these changes, the
organizations should have tools of collaboration that act
as digital nervous systems [2]. Like a human nervous
system, the computer system should accomplish similar
functions, to transfer information inside the organization
to who needs it and in the appropriate moment. The
collaborative workspaces are more suitable to the process
in that the information is administered by the users [3].
The legal processes require that in each stage was
indicated the state of the matters, to give warning of the
next actions, to give warning of the change of results in
trials by the taken actions, etc.
Due to the complexity and diversity of the juridical
matters, the development of an appropriate computer
model for the legal processes becomes very complex. In a
relational model of the legal processes should be
considered the desnormalization of the data, because the
information generated in each matter should be conserved
without alterations [4]. The documental model developed
by IBM Lotus allows the integration of workflows
generating an architecture more flexible and compatible
with the requirements of maintaining, the information in
one piece, as well as a better form of implementing a
model of the work processes for legal matters to provide
tracking and control to the actions taken by means of the
use of agents [5].
2.1 Workflow elements
A workflow is composed of three main elements (see fig.
1):
• Business rules.
• Objects of information
• Actors.
The business rules establish the mode in that the
information flows. That is, they indicate the activities to
make and who carry out them. The objects of information
are documents that contain the information that is
evaluated and revised in the process. This represents the
knowledge of the business. The actors are people or
groups that get involved directly in the activities
according to the process definition. They build the
content, they make decisions, they delegate activities and
they supervise the work. The functions to realize by the
actor are defined by his role in the organizational
structure.
Fig. 1 Workflow elements
2.2 Key benefits of workflows
The main benefits that are obtained with the workflows
are [6]:
Improved efficiency: The automation of the business
processes allows the elimination of many unnecessary
steps.
Better control of the process: The improvement of the
business process administration is achieved through the
standardization of the work methods and the definition of
routes.
Service oriented to the client: The consistencies in the
processes give a bigger control in the answer levels to the
clients.
Flexibility: The control software on the processes allows
manage the changes of the necessities of the business.
Improvement of the business process: The focus on the
business processes permits its narrowing and
simplification.
2.3 Communication
In a workflow, the communication on the processes state
is basic. The communication in a work team can be
synchronous or asynchronous.

3. The synchronous communication allows the capacity to
contact people in the necessary instant. Examples of this
are the services of instantaneous messaging, the
videoconference services, etc.
The asynchronous communication allows to send
information to the people without necessity them to be in
its workplace. A common example is the electronic mail
service.
3. Developed system description
The control and tracking system of juridical matters was
development using workflows and collaboration spaces.
This application was developed with the purpose of
improvement the process of the legal matters, trials and
procedures that the lawyers of the public electric
companies in Mexico carry out (Federal Commission of
Electricity and Light and Force of the Center).
3.1 Architecture
The system was divided in two principal components (see
fig. 2). The first one implements the workflows and the
collaboration spaces. The second one extracts
management information and improvement indicators of
the process:
• The components of collaboration and workflows
were developed using the platform IBM Lotus
Domino Server.
• For the extraction and generation of statistical
information was used the Seagate Crystal Report
tool.
Fig. 2 components of the system
3.2 Principal workflow
Due to the diverse nature of the juridical matters, it was
necessary to define a flow of tracking and control that it
allowed to generate the different states of the cases in a
single process, as well as, to define the main tasks to
carry out without considering the nature of the legal
matter (see fig. 3). In this model was considered the
capacity of growth and addition of new legal matters to
administer.
In the different stages of the process the following tasks
were defined as follows:
• Registering juridical matters.
• Assigning the legal matter to an area.
• Assigning the lawyer that will take the case.
• Attaching information related to the case.
• Registering actions.
• Registering concluded actions.
• Notifying events of the legal matter.
• Registering a concluded juridical matter
• Planning commitments or tasks.
Fig. 3 workflow of the legal matters
The stages establish the condition and the progress of a
legal matter. When the dates of the programmed actions
of the subjects are near or surpassed, automatic
notifications are generated to take correctives actions.
3.3 Information objects
IISDomino Server
The documental objects of the system are mainly two
(see fig. 4):Reports
jurismatica.nsf
• Legal matters.
• Actions.
Other support elements provide information to the users
on the condition of their actions, like the notifications
generated automatically by agents or the commitments
registered in the personal calendar of the lawyers.
The documents of legal matters contain the essential
information. This information combines the general data,
description and specifics data of the given subject, its
type, the state of the legal matter, the data of its
conclusion, and others fields only accessible for the
administrator. These fields are used by the system to
control the state of the legal matters in the process.

4. 3.5 Security
The security scheme implemented in the system uses the
security provided by the Lotus Domino Server. Each user
should be registered in the server to be user of the system.
Once the user is authenticated, the server validates his
roles assigned and it allows or it restricts to him the
access to the application and his modules depending on
the rights that it possesses in the access control list.
The information that is created always contains the user's
name that generates it or publishes it. The access to each
object of information is exclusive for each work team.
The system also incorporates an access for supervision
based on the hierarchical levels of the organization.
Fig. 4 elements of information
3.6 Communication
The actions are documents that describe the lawyer's
events during the development of the case and they are
bound to the legal matter. These actions are knowledge
sources for the organization.
The system uses a schema based in asynchronous
communication to send e-mail messages to the lawyers
for the tracking of the legal matters and to their
supervisors. These messages are generated by the
activities carry out in the workflow.The legal matters integrated in the system are classified
according to their type: civil, penal, mercantile, labor,
administrative, human rights, agrarian and others.
Other messages are sent by the system in an automatic
mode when the programmed dates expire or the planned
actions have not concluded. These messages are
generated by resident agents in the Server.
3.4 Organizational structure
3.7 Present conditions of operation
The hierarchy of positions inside of the company
determines the tasks that each user can make. The reach
and quantity of tasks that each user of the system can
perform are determined by their roles or functions. Each
role has access to a module different from the system (see
fig. 5). The activities are restricted by module. The
relationship between the roles and the modules of the
system is the following one:
At the moment, the system is operating in the two public
electric companies of Mexico. The system has modules
defined by role as follows:
• Supervision level.
• Head of administrative unit.
• Head of area.
• Head of department.
• Lawyer.
• Secretary.
• Administrator.
• Search level.
• Report module.
Actually, the system is used by almost 500 users, it is
installed in 40 geographical places distributed in the
Mexican Republic, it contains near of 30,000 registered
legal matters, it stores more of 58,000 documents and it
generates 60 statistical reports.
4. Future workFig. 5 roles vs. modules
In the next version of the application, the following
characteristics will be integrated:

5. • The application will be accessed only by web
using a portal.
• Several juridical services will be integrated such
as: digital libraries, juridical archive, discussion
forums, on-line professional, directory of
specialists, search engine, etc.
These characteristics will give the capacity to the users of
consulting the information in any point of the Internet,
using mobile or wireless networks.
The concluded juridical matters will be transferred to a
repository of historical data. The repository generated
will be transformed by a classification module in best
practices and learned lessons. These documents could be
searched by the users to consult them. The searches allow
identifying the sources of information, as well as to the
authors of the same ones. This module will allow
incorporating the knowledge management to the legal
exercise.
The participants of the workflow will have the capacity to
identify similar cases or to make contact with the
specialist in the topic using an asynchronous schema such
as the e-mail, or synchronous incorporating the
technologies of on-line communication as the instant
messaging or videoconference. Will be incorporated
methods of multidimensional analysis of data, to generate
the metrics of the process.
5. Conclusions
The system has been adopted by the public companies of
the electric sector in Mexico and it has generated
important results such as: improvements in the tracking
of the legal matters, transparency in its management,
tracking of the statistical metrics. The strategic
information will allow to the new lawyers reducing his
time to learn about of the legal exercise used in the
electrical sector.
The experience acquired in this development has allowed
us to change the focus of development of traditional
computer systems to systems based on collaboration
spaces. A new generation of developments will allow
incorporating analysis services, discussion and
notifications improving the practice of the legal systems.
6. References
[1] Isaac Parra, Salvador Rodríguez, Hiriam Pérez,
"Manual de Diseño - Jurismática", Instituto de
Investigaciones Eléctricas 2001, Mexico
[2] Bill Gates, “Business @ The Speed of Thought”
Microsoft Press 1999, USA.
[3] Bryan S. Coffman and James B. Smethurst,
“Principals Seven Basic Concepts of Design for
Creating Collaborative Spaces”. Sente Corporation
1999, USA.
[4] White Paper, "Automating Real-World Business
Process", Lotus Development Corporation, 1999, USA.
[5] Søren Peter Nielsen, Carol Easthope, Pieter
Gosselink, Karl Gutsze, Janno Gnaws him, "Using
Dominates Workflow", IBM Corporation, International
Technical Support Organization, 2000, USA.
[6] Workflow Management Coalition, "Terminology &
Glossary", 1999, United Kingdom.