Higher Revenue, Happier Clients, Seamless Growth: How Actionstep Helped Gower Wooten & Darneille Build the Firm They Envisioned
When Jason Darneille, Anne Gower, and Tim Wooten founded Gower Wooten & Darneille LLC (GWD) in 2015, they weren’t just starting a law firm, they were setting out to build a new kind of practice. Frustrated by traditional law firms who were not interested in modernizing their customer approach, company culture, or technology, the three partners focused on creating a law firm where high-performing legal work didn’t come at the expense of client care, family values, or innovation.
“We started this firm to build something that could grow, provide top-tier legal service, and still let people make their kids’ baseball games,” says managing partner Jason Darneille.
Today, GWD is a fast-growing, multi-state insurance defense and litigation firm that has scaled from six employees to more than 30 lawyers and over 40 administrative support staff. Actionstep’s Practice Management platform has been a key driver behing that growth, helping GWD scale operations, increase profitability, and maintain the people-first culture at the heart of the law firm.
Before Actionstep: Disconnected tools and cumbersome processes
GWD’s early years were marked by rapid growth and mounting frustrations with clunky systems that couldn’t keep pace. The firm had struggled with multiple practice management systems over the years and had yet to find a solution that had everything they needed.
“We tried Centerbase and RocketMatter before, but they just didn’t scale well with our firm,” recalls Anne Gower, GWD’s co-founding partner. “Capturing emails, drafting documents efficiently, and supporting the volume of invoices we processed daily were all major challenges.”
The firm knew they needed a better solution that would support their ambition to grow in four critical areas:
- File visibility and productivity tracking: The partners wanted to be able to easily access and determine the lifecycle of their files. It was the key to understanding their lawyers’ productivity and measuring their business’s performance.
- Seamless email integration: Being able to save emails directly to a file, bill directly from those emails, and ensure time was captured from those emails was crucial to cut down manual taskwork and increase captured billable time.
- Billing efficiency: As an insurance and litigation firm, GWD processes a huge volume of invoices each day. They needed a system that was able to generate many LEDES-compliant bills accurately and efficiently.
- Responsive customer support and a strong implementation experience: As GWD grew and more lawyers were joining their staff, the founding partners wanted to work alongside a reliable company that would answer their calls and assist with any problems that arose.
The journey to a more productive future: Why GWD chose Actionstep
GWD were ready to find a solution that they could rely on long-term. They turned to Actionstep Practice Management for a modern, cloud-based platform that was more configurable to their litigation legal workflows, could centralize operations, and empower staff to save time on manual administrative tasks.
“We chose Actionstep for three main reasons,” says Darneille. “It handles LEDES billing. It integrates deeply with Outlook for email, billing, and time tracking. And the responsiveness of their support and training teams.”
With help from an Actionstep implementation partner, and insights from one of the law firm’s partner’s who has used Actionstep Practice Management before, GWD was able to onboard easily and tailor the platform to match their litigation processes.
“The onboarding was faster than expected,we planned for a six-month rollout and it only took three—without missing a single day of invoicing.”
Scaling with confidence and simplicity
Actionstep Practice Management now acts as the firm’s connective tissue. Streamlining collaboration across GWD’s multiple offices, cases, and giving team members visibility into their work helps the firm make sure anyone can pick up a case and see its status which has helped preserve GWD’s ‘family first’ culture as it scales.
The platform also helps new team members onboard quickly. “Actionstep Practice Management has a very short learning curve,” says Jessica Burkhart, Attorney at GWD. “Other billing software I used in the past took me weeks to understand, but with Actionstep, I watched one video and the rest was intuitive.”
Smarter work, happier staff, and faster results
Since adopting Actionstep, GWD has seen dramatic improvements across the board.
Billing time slashed from days to hours: “I can mass bill for 1,500 files in about an hour now,” says Andrea Cooper, the firm’s office manager and billing coordinator. “That used to take me days.”
Document production cut in half: “Instead of ten open Word documents, I can generate and entire answer packet in minutes, says Sarah Jordan, Paralegal. “I’ve saved so much time that I have been able to take on new responsibilities.” It’s a feature that has cut her production time in half.
- Faster client response times: From a leadership perspective, the ability to monitor productivity and file progress in real time has transformed the firm’s operations, leading to more prompt, informed, and knowledgeable client communications. “With Actionstep I can open any file, check the status, see who’s worked on it, and respond to clients within minutes,” Darneille says. “It’s changed how we communicate.”
The verdict: A high-growth firm and elevated practice powered by Actionstep
Today, Actionstep’s practice management platform powers nearly every aspect of Gower Wooten & Darneille’s operations:
- Email management and time tracking using Actionstep’s Outlook plugin
- LEDES billing with client-specific formatting
- Custom workflows for litigation and client intake
- Document templates for generating pleadings, settlements, and more
- Real-time reporting on matter status and team productivity
The results speak for themselves: “Our revenue has increased dramatically. Our staff is happier. And our clients get faster, clearer answers,” says Darneille. “Actionstep has been an absolute boon to our practice.”
Want to scale your law firm with less friction and more confidence? Book a demo with Actionstep today and see what’s possible.
