How Cassiday Schade Improved Efficiency, Collaboration, and Communication With Dashboard Legal

Challenge: The need for collaboration and efficiency in a hybrid workplace

Managing a dynamic portfolio of litigation and transactional matters demands a high level of organization, teamwork, and efficiency. Clients expect immediate answers and excellent work product, so Maruna’s top priorities are fostering collaboration and ensuring efficiency across his team of associates, paralegals, and assistants.

Beyond immediate demands, the firm had to adapt to the long-term impacts of a hybrid work setting, which disrupted traditional collaboration practices.

“The previous methods of communication and task management, which relied heavily on physical proximity and 1:1s simply weren’t scaling,” Maruna said.

It became clear that generational differences were influencing expectations and work styles. Many younger attorneys had completed substantial portions of their education remotely, leading to a shift in how they preferred to work and collaborate.

Efficiency was another pressure point.

“We want to make sure the client is getting maximum value for every minute we spend working on one of their matters,” Maruna said.

This philosophy highlighted the need to streamline workflows to ensure teams were working quickly while maintaining high client service standards.

However, traditional systems such as lengthy Outlook threads, Microsoft Teams chats, and internal memoranda often felt disjointed.

“I was using three platforms to replace what used to be a central conference room meeting,” Maruna said. “I had to believe there was a better way.”

While email chains provided documentation, they lacked the clarity and immediacy that modern legal practices demand.

“An email thread can give you the history of everything going on in a matter, but it’s usually presented in a long narrative format,” Maruna said. “Narrative discussion is valuable in analyzing a problem, but inefficient in presenting a status of where we’ve been, where we are, and where we are going.”

Cassiday also faced the challenge of encouraging younger associates, many of whom prefer digital-first communication tools, to engage with workflows that frequently felt dated or cumbersome.

Maruna knew that finding a tailored solution was key to meeting both client expectations and the evolving needs of the next generation of legal talent.

The search for simplicity and efficiency

Maruna and the firm’s leadership team embarked on an in-depth evaluation of platforms that could improve efficiency, streamline collaboration, and centralize workflows. They prioritized several key criteria. The solution needed to be intuitive, modern in appearance, and easily integrated with existing tools such as Outlook and iManage.

“If all it’s doing is just a very fancy calendar reminder and then I have to go into Outlook to send a document, it’s not shrinking process or workflow – it’s actually just adding to them,” Maruna said. “It’s doing the opposite of what my goal is.”

Mobile accessibility was also critical. Describing his typical day, Maruna outlined the gap that had to be addressed.

“If I read an email on my phone but then have to remind myself to set a task when I’m next back at my computer, that’s a workflow gap. I want to review it, log it, and assign tasks on my phone right then and there.”

Finally, intuitive design was critical to fostering adoption among a multigenerational workforce. “It has to look clean and modern,” Maruna said. “If it’s clunky and dated, it’s just not going to be adopted by the younger generation.”