Cohen Kolodny Abuse Analytics Sees 5X Improvement in Managing Cases with Neos

Key Results

• 5X improvement in ability to manage cases
• Drastically increased case volume per week
• Improved referral partner satisfaction and faster referral response time
• Significant IT savings
• Effortless ability to retrieve critical information from documents and emails



Cohen Kolodny Abuse Analytics brings justice to victims of nursing home negligence in New Jersey and Pennsylvania. David Cohen and Elliot Kolodny have won notable, nationally reported cases and stay active in professional and community organizations.



Founding Partner David Cohen relied on Needles Desktop for decades early in his career, including at a prominent 100+ person firm. When he ventured out on his own, he tried a low-cost, cloud solution but quickly realized that he needed more robust, modern legal software to power the firm and turned to Neos.



A robust solution that gives back what the practice puts in

When Cohen went out on his own in 2017, he purchased a low-cost, cloud-based case management solution. “It wasn’t intuitive, and it wasn’t workable,” says Cohen. After using the solution for about a year and a half, Cohen was counsel to a boutique firm and used Needles Desktop again until Neos launched. “When Neos became available, I jumped at the opportunity,” says Cohen.



Cohen was an early adopter as a beta user of Neos. Neos was appealing to him, in part, because it works seamlessly with Outlook, SharePoint, and OneDrive online.



When comparing Neos to the competitive cloud solution, Cohen finds it easier to use. “It wasn’t really designed to work with what the entire world works with, which is Microsoft,” says Cohen. “It became a chore to save what I did in their system, whereas with Neos, it’s simple. Neos brought my firm into the modern age.”



Cohen notes that Neos is a more robust solution. Initially, his purchase decision was based on price and because he thought it would be easy to learn. “The downside of simple to learn is that once you learn it, it’s not offering you nearly as much as a program that might be a little more involved to learn,” says Cohen.



“I did a free trial with a competitor and thought I could learn it quickly,” says Cohen. “And I did, but once I learned it, it wasn’t adding much to my practice. If you have a robust piece of software like Needles Desktop or Neos, you have to learn how to use it.”

Complex cases demand powerful solutions

In the business of fighting against nursing home negligence, it’s mission critical for Cohen Kolodny to stay organized. The firm must keep track of multiple versions of nursing home charts as oftentimes discrepancies in those charts are key in winning a case.



“When we seek out false charting, we get the record three separate times,” says Cohen. “Because sometimes a defensive or nervous person from the nursing home will alter a record to improve the defense. If it’s not hard enough to manage thousands of pages of records, multiply that by three.”



“Neos is very seamless when dealing with a high volume of documents. It allows us not only to save and organize the documents but all the communication surrounding the transmittal of those documents.”



“We simply label each set of documents in Neos,” explains Cohen. “First, the nursing home chart was obtained by the client. Then the chart our firm obtains pre-litigation. And then we have interrogatories answered and we’ll label the litigation response from defense counsel of the chart.”



“What’s nice is with those labels, it’s a click that can be downloaded by anyone we want to share it with,” explains Cohen. “If we tell an expert that we have a sneaking suspicion part of a chart might have been altered on a certain date, you just put three links into an email. We do it all from Neos. When we send the communication back to Neos, it’s connecting all the records, they’re all nicely labeled, and we’re comfortable that all the documents are preserved because short of Microsoft going out of business, I’m feeling pretty safe that my documents are there.”



“Because all of our practice is complex litigation, in terms of our ability to bring in cases, take proper care of the clients, and get the clients retained, it’s a five-fold improvement over what it would be without Neos,” says Cohen.

Robust email filing capabilities

The consequence of not being tightly organized could mean potential firm malpractice, which is why Cohen is such a fan of Neos’ Microsoft email filing capabilities and add-in features.



“If we’re not saving everything we do, it’s potentially setting us up for a malpractice claim,” says Cohen. “There’s so much important information and these days 90% or more of communications are digital. So, we need to make sure we harvest every single email into Neos.”



Cohen describes a scenario in which an attorney leaves a firm, and something comes up three years later. “The contents of that email thread are critical to figure out what happened in a specific timeframe. My email is not searchable by anyone but me, and even if there’s a firm administrator, they don’t know the keywords. I have 30,000 deleted emails that they’re trying to recover.”



This common scenario doesn’t have to be scary with robust case management software like Neos. “Using the add-in feature, Neos lets us assign it to the case,” says Cohen. “Now if I’m retired in the Bahamas, they just go into the closed case file in Neos and it’s case number 372 and there’s the email exchange with all the information.”



Neos has already come to the rescue for Cohen on more than one occasion. “Recently, I settled a case, and I could not remember what my last demand and the defendant’s offer was,” says Cohen. “So, I went into the case notes in Neos and then used the nice function where I segregated it by who saved it as opposed to topic or date. I saw the handful that I had saved, and I was easily able to find my email exchange with the insurance adjuster to figure out their last settlement offer.”



“When the judge asked what the last offer and demand was,” says Cohen. “It was effortless. Neos made my life easier that day.”

Instant referrals and signups

Cohen Kolodny receives a high volume of intakes and Neos assists with managing the intake and referral activity. “My phone rings all day long, nonstop,” says Cohen. “The seamless integration between Neos and Office 365 makes it possible for us to efficiently and quickly sign up new clients.”



“We have many law firms who refer us work from Florida to New York to New Jersey, to Pennsylvania. Everywhere. I have a very efficient system where in seconds we could send a form to a client and they send it back to us filled out,” says Cohen. “We convert it into a PDF and my paralegal creates an intake in Neos.” The practice takes in significant cases every week, referring many out and tracking the quantity of intakes and how quickly they’re being signed up. “Neos keeps our referral partners very happy because our response time is almost instantaneous,” says Cohen.



“We gather immense quantities of information from our clients and Neos is the hub. We’re able to bring in many, many more cases per week than we would be able to without Neos.”

Improved speed, performance, and IT in the cloud

Cohen used Needles Desktop for many years prior to signing up when Neos launched. A significant difference Cohen noted was the accessibility of the cloud.



“I was at a mediation, and I took my iPad and I just logged into Neos, and I was full force,” says Cohen. “Having everything directly in the cloud in this new world we’re living in is very important.”



Another advantage of Neos being in the cloud is it removes the IT burden. And, according to Cohen, the Assembly support team acts like an IT team for his small firm. “I can say with a very straight face that we have IT staff,” says Cohen. “When we have a problem and we shoot an email over to support, we get a very, very quick response. They’ll hop on the phone with me, they remote into my computer, and they help me figure it out.”



“We’re functioning really well,” continues Cohen. “And we don’t have an outside IT guy because we don’t need to. Assembly takes care of all of that.”



“Comparing on-premise to the cloud, it’s just night and day,” says Cohen. “It takes some time to learn Neos but that’s just because it’s robust. If you want to get a lot out of a program, you need to have a program that offers a lot. There are great video tutorials available to learn the program.”