From court order to final payout, on one platform
A class action settlement administrator brought us in to replace an internal system built around 2012 that still looked like 2002, and the spreadsheet layer that grew around it. The full case lifecycle, class member management, claims and cure, escrow and treasury, tax, notice programs and mailings, and per-case websites, on one connected platform built for how the work runs.
Half the business in the system. The other half in spreadsheets
Every case they administer carries 20 to 20,000 class members, court deadlines, an escrow fund, and its own tax filings. Like most of the field, they ran that on an internal system with spreadsheets filling every gap: six tools in all, reconciliation matched by hand, and the report the court requires at the end of every settlement assembled line by line.
It is a court-supervised, deadline-driven operation, and the volume only moves one way: more cases, more claims, more fraud screening, against the same headcount.
The class members themselves arrived the same way. The firm was taking about 4,000 emails a week from class members asking where their money was, whether their address had been updated, whether they still qualified. Every one of those answers lived in a system or a sheet that the person reading the email had to go and open.
They brought us in to map how the work really runs and rebuild the platform underneath it.
We mapped everything. Then we rebuilt it
We mapped every workflow in the operation, role by role, current state and future state: quoting, case setup, notice, claims, payments, funding, tax, reissues, and closeout. Data workshops with the team turned what the team carried in their heads into an entity model.
Within weeks of the mapping wrapping, they were clicking through a prototype of the full platform. Then we started building it for real: strategy, product design, and the platform itself, module by module.
Map + prototype
- Every workflow mapped, current and future state
- Data workshops across the whole team
- Systems and data audit in plain English
- Clickable full-platform prototype within weeks
Build, launch, extend
- Fast-track v1, live with the team in weeks
- Distribution, treasury, and tax modules first
- Audit trail on every record from day one
- AI roadmap layered on the new foundation
Every case. Every class member. Every dollar. One system
The exceptions that used to live in inboxes now live in queues. The reports that used to take days now take a click. The judgment calls stay with the people who should make them.
Cases set up in minutes, not meetings
A new settlement comes in and the case exists everywhere at once: timeline generated from the case type, milestones assigned, documents filed, and the case website spun up alongside, so class members can file a claim, check a status and update their own address without emailing anyone. No ticket queue, and no second copy of the case living in someone's spreadsheet.
Every payment tracked, every exception queued
Awards are calculated from the court-approved allocation, tier by tier, so a flat refund and a documented injury claim each land at the right number without anyone rebuilding the model in a spreadsheet. Tens of thousands of payments per case then move through one status chain: approved, sent, mailed, cleared. Returned checks, missing tax IDs, and stale payments land in an exceptions queue instead of an inbox. And the accounting the court requires at the end assembles itself from the record, in one click.
Treasury and tax on rails
Escrow and QSF funding confirmed against the bank, payments reconciled against vendor files, and the tax calendar running itself: information returns generated per class member, quarterly filings prepped, unclaimed funds tracked by state all the way to escheatment or cy pres. Every movement stamped to an audit trail. People approve; the system remembers.
Claims and correspondence in one lane
Claims arrive from the case website, the mail room, and the call center into a single queue, where each one is scored for eligibility, duplicate filings and fraud before a person sees it. Deficient claims get flagged with the reason and a cure letter drafted for review. Behind them sits one class member record: name changes, address changes, deceased members and eligibility status, carried across a case that runs for years. Class member correspondence is triaged to the right person with the case history attached, so nobody answers blind.
More cases per person. Cleaner answers for the court
The operation moves through the system, not through memory. The team takes on more settlements without growing the back office, exceptions surface the day they happen, and when the court asks who has been paid and how much, the answer is a report, not a research project.
On case management before the platform
The baseline the 25% comes off, not the time returned.
Faster case throughput
Hires avoided as case volume grows
The 25% back, divided by one person’s month.
The build usually pays for itself inside the first year.