Testing for Legal Software: 4 Common Pain Points and How to Fix Them
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Feb 25, 20215 min read
The legal sector is evolving. From new data protection laws and regulations to increasing client service expectations, firms are facing new challenges brought on by tectonic shifts in the legal marketplace.
Running a law firm today means balancing administrative tasks, billing, and much more, all while trying to integrate new digital tools to keep pace with the competition.
Every law firm or legal department now deals with a vast assortment of processes as well as legal research, risk mitigation, contract management, and compliance needs.
From managing case documents, keeping information secured, taking care of billing and accounting, to collaborating with clients and associates – legal software can facilitate all these processes.
While off the shelf software such as Thomson Reuters Elite, Aderant, SAP, and Clio, are addressing many of the day-to-day challenges of running a law firm, they often necessitate customization and integration with other platforms.
We take a look at the top pain-points of deploying and integrating legal tech today and how you can tackle them.
Like every other product, legal software also needs high-quality software testing, since it deals with highly sensitive customer data that is stored as well as transferred. A security breach or a bug can cause serious consequences. Therefore, a quality assurance team from a trusted software testing company must always be cognizant of performance issues to avoid unforeseen instances.
To ascertain that there are no loopholes while testing for legal software, a test expert must consider certain essential aspects. Let’s take a look at these important factors:
When data of any form undergo migration from legacy systems to upgraded systems, it needs thorough authentication for its precision as well as consistency. Since the process involves enormous amounts of data, sound knowledge in Sampling Technique and proficiency in SQL/Oracle is essential, to ensure accuracy during the verification.
Tools like Alfresco, SharePoint, etc. can be leveraged to function as a central repository to store the enormous amounts of data that legal matters are associated with. Performance testing is mandatory in this process to assure that the data is easily accessible as well as stored securely.
Since the legal industry is replete with jargon and phrases specific to the sector, it is vital to hire test engineers proficient in legal systems as well as procedures. The services of Software engineers trained in law as well as legal professionals trained in software would be required for data validation and risk-based testing approaches.
It is beneficial to add test engineers proficient in delta testing techniques, and testing for both inbound and outbound integrations, when conducting testing for legal software. This is because communication through several third-party systems through API integration is carried out for a continuous update of information.
When software testing is carried out for legal systems, there are several challenges and pain-points every test engineer undergoes. Some of the most salient ones include:
1. Issues with accurate billing and time-tracking:
Precision in billing for every aspect is very crucial in the legal domain. This often requires per-minute tracking, which can be therefore prone to accuracy and performance issues during peak-hours and end-of-week surges.
Billing and time-tracking need a risk-based testing approach. Implementing an automated test suite for time-tracking and authenticating billing information accurately, and proper performance testing to ensure precision during rush hours is the right solution in this case.
2. Integrity in Ethical Walls:
Sensitive information across internal as well as external processes is secured among ethical walls. While it is crucial for lawyers to have access to relevant case files, permission to access conflicting cases may result in legal issues.
In this case, conducting a risk assessment and risk-based testing to ensure sufficient test coverage is mandatory. Apart from that, necessary testing procedures also include security testing, test automation and integrated system testing, to validate access through the walls.
3. Concerns with Case Management:
Case management software requires comprehensive testing for each case. All appropriate solutions integrated into the management software must be linked appropriately. There may be human errors in integrating the vast amount of data and tracking every minute procedure.
Thorough functional testing, including manual and automated tests, can validate privacy and precision. Performance testing and security testing conducted following a well-planned testing approach can take care of such issues and ascertain accuracy in every process.
4. Cyber-security Issues:
Owing to the enormous amount of super-sensitive client data that law firms deal with; they are always vulnerable to security breaches. Being dependent on third-party providers for their software requirements, they need to trust these providers with confidential information, which in turn makes them more prone to cyber-security attacks and data leakages.
Automated testing and pro-active application security need to be implemented to strengthen information privacy and manage cyber-threats. A skilled test engineer should be able to identify risks at a code level, while also being vigilant of emerging threats. Risk assessment and cyber-security testing will thus safeguard not only legal data but also the reputation of a law firm.
With experienced test engineers, Qualitest is competent enough to provide comprehensive support to law firms to get their legal software quality assured through rigorous software testing.
With excellent test automation methodologies, proficient test engineers at Qualitest can ensure optimum performance by detecting issues and addressing bugs. This helps in seamless and accurate generation of bills and simplifies time-tracking too.
Qualitest houses cyber-test experts, with in-depth, code-level knowledge of customer applications. Being a part of the app development team, makes the threat intelligence cell architects skilled enough to manage emerging threats proactively. This also rules out any possibilities of data breach and maintains integrity among ethical walls.
SAP specific application security experts possess an exhaustive understanding of the functioning of ERP software and can validate threat protection mechanisms through established methodologies.
Your legal applications need absolute precision and optimal performance. With completely equipped mobile testing labs, managed crowd testing and mobile test automation frameworks, out proficient test engineers make sure they can provide maximum test coverage for your applications in the least possible time. Thus, managing cases with the help of legal apps would no longer be a concern.
Law firms can avail benefits from our recommendations regarding strategy improvement and enhancement and efficiency of your QA processes. They can also assist in integrating several test methodologies.
Test engineers at Qualitest leverage innovative strategies and turn-key solutions for the seamless deployment of cloud-based as well as networked products.
Testing for legal software is quite advantageous to organizations dealing with legal procedures, as it makes deployment, integration, migration, and upgrades seamless and glitch-free. Moreover, legal software systems with colossal amounts of sensitive data and case files to get a seamless methodical workflow when tested for performance, accuracy, and relevance.
