From Clunky to Cloud-Based: Dunn Carney’s Move to a More Intuitive Entity Management Platform

Discover how Athennian helped Dunn Carney LLP gain more control over their work day by upgrading to Athennian for an entity management software, and eliminating cumbersome processes in their previous system.

Introduction

• Located in Portland, Oregon, Dunn Carney is one of Oregon’s largest law firms. 
• Founded in the 1930s, Dunn Carney has been a leader in the Pacific Northwest legal community for decades.
• Based out of their office in downtown Portland, the Dunn Carney team works with businesses and individuals across Oregon, Washington, Idaho, California and beyond.
• Dunn Carney have been Athennian users since July, 2020

Challenge

Prior to upgrading to Athennian, the Dunn Carney paralegal team found their platform at the time to be cumbersome and complicated. They would spend hours managing documents in multiple places due to the limited flexibility and usability of their previous platform. The team needed a more streamlined, intuitive entity management tool to organize minute books, store documents and share files between team members. 

Prior to Athennian, Dunn Carney found that they waited weeks in some cases for responses to their questions and queries. The team required a more supportive and reliable platform. 

Goals

1. Automate manual processes in order to save time and eliminate cumbersome actions the team experienced with their previous platform. 

2. Streamline daily workflows and remove the need for duplicate storage of documents. 

3. Upgrade to a cloud-based platform with a faster and more reliable response time to support tickets and urgent questions. 

Action

Athennian’s team of data specialists and paralegals worked with the Dunn Carney team to migrate their data seamlessly from their previous platform to the cloud. 

“I’m not going to lie, I was terrified of our launch date. But, we knew that we could rely on Athennian. We had just started our current lockdown from the COVID-19 pandemic, and we were still figuring out how to work from home without documents and printing. The platform is more intuitive than I thought, and the launch went much smoother than I expected.” - Linda Escobar, Paralegal

It was important to Athennian that the Dunn Carney team understood and utilized the features available to them in the platform. Athennian’s team of paralegals worked with Dunn Carney to effectively train them on tools such as virtual minute books, task management, and managing documents. 

The Dunn Carney team of paralegals explained that their previous entity management system was not intuitive for their users. They felt that they needed to upload documents in various places to allow for read-only access for attorneys; this caused a lot of duplicates, and additional work for the paralegals to maintain the system. Athennian’s user friendly, drag and drop platform has allowed the Dunn Carney team to feel more confident in their database as they begin to scale and take on more complex projects. 

Result

Athennian’s cloud-based platform is customizable, which allows for different levels of user permissions and promotes accessibility for users at Dunn Carney. 

“I use Athennian almost every day. We’ve been trying to sell it to our attorneys to get rid of paper minute books altogether. One attorney in particular asked us to create a minute book for one of his entities - we asked if he’d prefer a virtual minute book. We explained how it works, and he confirmed that’s all he needed. He can easily get documents in and out.” - Francesca Garcia, Paralegal

With Athennian, the Dunn Carney team is now able to save time using virtual tools they can rely on, plus additional, modern features. This has helped the team increase efficiency when working remotely during the COVID-19 pandemic. 

“Athennian has helped us while working from home because we can connect a lot easier. We get requests from attorneys to email documents for specific entities, and prior to Athennian, it took many minutes to painfully extract the information. Now, I just hit reply, click a couple times and drag it over. It’s saved us a lot of time because Athennian is laid out so much clearer.” - Avaria Spruill, Project Assistant

Why Athennian

Athennian aims to support paralegals, and provide them with an intuitive tool that gives them superpowers. The team at Dunn Carney noticed Athennian’s unique mission to support the voice of the paralegal through Athennian’s customer support, feedback center, and knowledge base. 

In Athennian’s feedback center, users can share and vote on feature updates. This way, we can ensure that each feature update is meaningful and useful to the paralegals that use it every day. Athennian’s built-in customer support function and knowledge base allows teams to immediately access expert assistance when they need it. ‍

“When we were reviewing other entity management systems on the market, in some cases, we were not comparing apples to apples. But with Athennian, there was really no comparison. The paralegals were so excited to come on board," says Linda.

The Dunn Carney team explained that in their previous system, they sometimes had to bump administrative users off to allow for more senior people to access the tools due to seat limitations. The fact that Athennian allows unlimited users means that all members of the team can access information quickly, which promotes an improved team dynamic. 

“Everything is just pretty straightforward and easy. I mean, click a button and it's there...I love it. I thought it was going to be a little more complicated but I find it to be really easy. It's not daunting at all or intimidating, and that's amazing," says Avaria.