James Horsley

I qualified as a Chemical Engineer (cum laude honours) in 1984 and worked for Mobil Oil. There I dealt with process control software on an oil refinery and developed programs to monitor and control the performance of various chemical reactors.

In 1986 I joined the research staff of the Department of Chemical Engineering at Imperial College developing chemical process simulation software and computer based training for chemical plant systems – part of the group that I worked for was subsequently turned into an independent software company Process Systems Enterprise Limited.

In 1989 I broke my links with the chemical industry when I left to become second in charge of IT for Macfarlanes – a leading City law firm. At Macfarlanes I oversaw a controlled migration from IBM mainframe based systems to client server based LAN systems using Netware and Oracle. I provided technical decision making for the firm and helped to modernise and improve both the front and back office systems on which law firms rely.

In 1995 I left Macfarlanes to take overall control of IT for Thompsons Solicitors – the country’s foremost personal injury law specialists. At Thompsons I oversaw the merger of two firms and revitalised the firm’s IT strategy, concluding with the introduction of a state of the art workflow based case management system to allow the firm to react quickly to proposed changes in the legal system whilst maintaining profitability.

In 1999 I left Thompsons to set up an independent consultancy drawing on my experience – Workflow Consulting Limited.

Workflow Consulting has now been active for almost 25 years and has completed a wide variety of projects such as:

  • Upgrading a highly customised Microsoft Dynamics GP finance system from GP 10 to GP current – including rewriting various mission critical customisations and integrations.
  • Upgrading a highly customised on-premise Microsoft Dynamics CRM system from CRM 2011 to Dynamics CRM D365.
  • Creating a centralised conflict search system with associated REST API to perform and record fuzzy conflict searches across millions of records.
  • Creating custom integrations from a legal case management system to the Aderant Expert practice management system.
  • Assisting a client upgrading their legal case management system from Vectus to Thomson Reuters MatterSphere.
  • Creating custom software to integrate a legal case management system with the MOJ Claims Portal A2A system.
  • Developing a pension loss calculator to calculate pension losses due to reduced working for the British Coal Respiratory Disease Litigation (BCRDL) scheme.
  • Developing an automated loss calculator to calculate losses due to dust exposure for the British Coal Respiratory Disease Litigation (BCRDL) scheme.
  • Designing and developing a fully automated (human free) insurance agent system to accept requests for legal After the Event (ATE) insurance, issue the policy and update both the customer and underwriter accounts.
  • Designing and developing a Vectus workflow system to automate processing in legal re-mortgage cases.
  • Designing and developing a Vectus workflow system to automate processing in legal property sale and purchase and plot sale cases.
  • Designing and developing and rolling out a Vectus workflow system to automate free legal advice call handling.
  • Designing, developing and rolling out a Vectus workflow system to automate processes in handling Personal Injury claims.