Justice in Motion Optimizes Salesforce to Take More Cases
The Objective
In 2005, Cathleen Caron founded Justice in Motion to address the crisis of abused migrant workers who get shut out of the justice system because they would return home to their native countries. Justice in Motion designed the Defender Network to help migrants get justice across borders.
The Defender Network is a network of organizations outside the U.S. that are trained by Justice in Motion to help migrants with cross-border legal work. To help migrants, Justice in Motion matches Advocates (a U.S. or Canadian lawyer) with a Defender Network member from the migrant’s country of origin to partner on specific cases. Most recently, Justice in Motion also has been taking in more family separation cases, which tend to be more complicated.
Justice in Motion has been using Salesforce since 2014, but it needed to be optimized to keep up with the complexities and realities of the work they were doing. Their instance was not flexible, and they needed a more reliable way to manage collaborations.
The Problem
With the ongoing migrant crisis in the U.S., there is a need for more help from Justice in Motion and their Defender Network. Justice in Motion needed to optimize their Salesforce instance to track cases, and all the parties involved with those cases, more efficiently.
System flexibility is necessary for Justice in Motion because various aspects of a case need to be handled by different parties and it is not clear until a case is underway exactly which parties will need to jump in for certain aspects of the case. Some cases require cooperation between multiple lawyers and social service organizations and sometimes the cases evolve or the case needs change, and several different Defenders located in different cities need to jump in.
Their original Salesforce setup couldn’t keep up with urgent needs or complexities like this. Tracking all of the entities and individuals involved was taking the Justice in Motion legal team too much time and was just too hard. Justice in Motion needed a flexible Salesforce instance that would meet the reality of the work they were doing.
The Solution
Justice in Motion chose Idealist Consulting to optimize their instance because we’d worked together in the past, they were familiar with our attention to detail, and because they knew we understood their mission. Nan Schivone, Legal Director at Justice in Motion, worked with the consultant to create and adapt their instance to their exact needs. Schivone was able to test and give feedback to the consultant to make sure Salesforce was able to do what they required.
During the optimization process, the consultant provided training that assured Schivone she could continue using and customizing Salesforce efficiently and effectively. Schivone felt that this cycle of optimization and training provided a great user adoption experience for not only her but other users that need to use Salesforce as well.
The Result
Once optimization and onboarding were complete, Justice in Motion had a more streamlined and efficient process. The customizations the consultant completed in Salesforce allowed for better flexibility, meaning that a case no longer had to be tied to one ally (whether that meant a lawyer in the U.S. or a Defender located in Central America). All Justice in Motion team members who needed information about the case could access all the information and track all the parties more easily, and it became more manageable to keep tabs on a case’s exact posture and assign tasks, and importantly, not lose attention to detail!
The optimization reduced the time Justice in Motion spent administering cases and has allowed them more time for actual legal work. Their response in taking in and closing cases became more efficient, which enabled them to accept more. The new customizations in Salesforce have allowed Justice in Motion to take on about 250 more cases in the same amount of time since the optimization. Schivone said that Salesforce is important and essential to the work they do. It’s the core of their case management.
In Their Words:
Nan Schivone says Salesforce has “helped us be more efficient. Simply put, we’re able to work on more cases because we can respond more effectively. I can do a better job managing our heavy workload with our new architecture. I am thrilled with our consultant’s work!”
Ready to Increase Your Impact?
If you need to optimize your Salesforce instance to help your organization become more efficient, let us know, and we’ll connect you with the right person. If you'd like to learn more about optimizations, view more curated optimization content here!
