MerusCase Customer Success Stories: Ortega Counseling Center

At MerusCase, we're passionate about saving legal professionals time and money so that they can focus on more important things. Don't take our word for it, though; check out what Hazel Ortega of Ortega Counseling Center had to say about her experience with MerusCase!


With over 25 years of combined experience, Ortega Counseling Center (OCC) provides excellent vocational, return-to-work counseling services to injured workers. Founded in 2011, Hazel Ortega and her team have since helped numerous injured workers navigate through the process of Vocational Rehabilitation in order to gain new skills and get started working in jobs they love.

Prior to starting Ortega Counseling Center, Hazel was a legal secretary for 17 years, where she had the opportunity to work with several case management systems, such as A1 and Tritek. Although the firm she worked for had an IT manager, she still found herself constantly struggling with the various case management systems: "It was hard to get technical support or answers to questions quickly," said Hazel, "and I was interested in working away from the office, which I couldn't do with those systems." It was these frustrations that initially prompted Hazel to seek a new solution for her case management needs upon founding OCC.

"I first met [the CEO] Johnny and his team at a convention; they were so nice and patient," Hazel explains, "I was able to take a look at the software and I thought it seemed easy to use." Naturally, when OCC was ready to purchase a case management system, the decision was clear: MerusCase would be Hazel's top choice. Now, long gone are the days in which she's forced to wait on hold for tech support or left frustrated by her systems' downtime; with MerusCase, not only is the customer service team quick to respond and resolve any issues or questions she has, but the system boasts a 99.95% uptime over the course of it's 7 years.

Since Ortega Counseling Center began using MerusCase in May 2014, the firm has experienced incredible growth. Most impressively, OCC's firm size has tripled and they've added three physical offices and twenty satellite offices. "I love that, when employees have to be out of the office, they're still able to work, so it's not as if we're out an entire person for the day," says Hazel of MerusCase's cloud-based portability and accessibility.

Ultimately, Hazel believes that MerusCase has increased her firm's productivity, especially with the use of it's communication features. She goes on to say that the transparent tasking "prevents random tasks from going 'missing' and that nothing is forgotten," which has helped her staff get more done and her clients get updated far more quickly. "With MerusCase, I'm able to work from home, so I can put in more hours. It helps to keep me on top of my tasks, I’m getting back to my clients right away, and I’m overall happier because of it."

If you would like to refer a client to Hazel at Ortega Counseling Center, you can access her referral form online, as follows:

1. Sign into your MerusCase account.
2. Go into the case of the client you want to refer and click on "Forms & Templates."
3. Search for the form named "OCC Service Request Form."
4. From here, you can auto populate your client's information, save the form, and send it off to OCC.

And there you have it: another example of the incredible growth made possibly by MerusCase! Want to be featured in our next Customer Success Story? Email us at pr@meruscase.com or comment below!

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