MinterEllison Cuts Time Per Legal Matter 10-30% with Appian Low-Code Platform

MinterEllison's decade-old business process management system had reached end-of-life. Lawyers and support staff were spending significant time searching across multiple legacy systems or asking colleagues to locate the information needed to execute matter-related tasks, creating inefficiency and added risk in matter handling.

MinterEllison built a custom "Best Practice Matter Management" system, branded "Beacon," on the Appian Low-Code Platform — the first such deployment by an Australian law firm. The platform consolidated multiple legacy systems into one, surfacing relevant information to the right person at the right time, enforcing service-level agreements across matters, and giving clients a 24/7 self-service portal to track real-time matter progress.

Within its first year, Beacon had managed 8,000 legal matters, with MinterEllison forecasting growth to 20,000 matters in FY2023. The firm reports having measured a 10-30% time saving per matter through Appian, which it forecasts could equate to up to 42,000 billable hours saved in the 2023 financial year.

• Consolidating fragmented legacy systems into a single low-code platform can materially cut per-matter handling time (measured 10-30%).
• Matching the new system's UI/UX to what staff were already familiar with eased adoption among long-tenured lawyers.
• Pairing internal workflow automation with a client-facing real-time portal can improve external transparency alongside internal efficiency gains.