Due to the varied nature of tasks, it can be challenging for legal professionals to manage these backend processes along with court proceedings and matters. That’s why most law firms and single attorneys adopt legal software to centralize and streamline business processes.

Stick around if you want to know how legal practice management can simplify your operations, enhance collaborations, improve decision-making, refine client experiences and boost your firm’s bottom line.

Streamline Case Management

The legal practice management process starts by marketing your offerings on legal channels and continues through settlements, billing and accounting for a particular matter. The process broadly consists of five steps:

• Client Intake: Interested clients fill out an intake form with their contact details, allowing you to pre-screen and determine whether a given conflict fits your firm.
• Pre-Litigation: If the case has merit, the next step is to compile basic documents in a complaint to file initial pleadings in court. If you’re representing a defendant, this step involves preparing an answer, filing a counter or cross-claiming against a complaint.
• Discovery: After filing the initial complaint and answers, both sides of the litigation disclose case information, witness lists, interrogation questions and other details they may use during the trial. This discovery process ensures each party learns and obtains every case evidence to devise their strategies for the trial.
• Trials: This is the main event where each party presents their case, evidence, witnesses and arguments to let a judge or jury decide. It’s a highly detail-oriented process, and you need organized documents, easy access to files and a deep understanding of court procedures to fight the trial and think on your feet.
• Settlements: A settlement can happen before or after the trial, depending on when you settle the case during the litigation process. Many cases never make it to a trial and get resolved during the discovery process. Negotiations can happen anytime, and if both parties agree, they can sign a settlement agreement.

Enhance Collaborations

A successful law firm needs smooth collaborations between marketing, finance and legal departments to attract more clients, solve matters and bill fairly, leading to healthy company financials and goodwill among clients. You must align your team with a clear business goal and have effective scheduling processes to ensure each task’s completion at the right time.

Practice management also entails streamlining client communications and offering them a well-defined path to request attorneys, disclose case details and follow matter-related events.

Simplify Compliance

As a law firm, you must comply with various state, Federal and international regulations, depending on your practice’s specialization. Unlike other industries, law firms have strict codes regulating their ethical behavior and have serious consequences for non-compliance.

For example, law firms regularly facilitate large transactions during jurisdictions, and unforeseen circumstances can lead to accusations of commissioning crimes or money laundering. To avoid such situations, you must have well-planned checklists and workflows to comply with every standard throughout the litigation process.

Improve Decision-Making

You can analyze historical data on case outcomes, client preferences and resource utilization to devise informed strategies and boost performance in future cases. Adopting a data-driven approach helps you understand which practices are most profitable and which areas might need improvement.

FAQs

What is legal practice management software?

Legal practice management software is a bundle of tools for all your practice management and business administration needs. These solutions help market your firm on online channels, intake and onboard clients, centralize case details and define task automation throughout the litigation process.

Your staff receives unique portals to view tasks, log progress, track time and interact with team members. Built-in chat portals let you centralize communications with staff, clients and opposing parties, and the system maintains a record of each interaction for accountability.

The primary benefits of using the right software for legal practice management are:

• Streamline Trials: Access case files, contacts and matter details from anywhere using any device. The system centralizes all business documents in a library and offers universal search bars and unique filters to locate information quickly.
• Save Time and Resources: Automation takes care of administrative tasks so that you can focus on providing quality casework. Depending on the platform, you can automatically send alerts, file initial pleadings, calculate billable hours and sync calendars.
• Simplify Compliance: Complying with regulations and guidelines can be as simple as defining automation and auditing internal processes. Most systems offer military-grade encryption, multi-factor authentication and biometrics identification to safeguard confidential client data.
• Boost Revenue: Automated administrative processes allow you to focus on casework. You can account for every minute spent on a matter to accurately bill your hard work and efforts using time and expense tracking tools.
• Improve Client Experiences: Improve client collaboration by offering self-service portals to upload case documents, view upcoming events, schedule calendars and chat internally.

What are the types of legal software?

There are different kinds of legal software based on practice specialization and feature set.

Most legal solutions are all-in-one platforms that handle the entire legal practice management spectrum. But individual tools are also designed to manage a specific aspect such as discovery, intake or calendaring for a law firm. Here are some of the common types of legal software:

• Case Management Software: It helps you centralize and manage case details from a single location. But it lacks business administration tools like task scheduling, staff accounts, time tracking and billing.
• Client Intake Software: You can market your firm across multiple channels, design branded application portals, set up screening automation and analyze case details to determine if it suits your firm.
• E-Discovery Software: Store, manage and edit case files, interrogation questions, witness lists and other documents required during the discovery and litigation phase. Connect the system with your email to centralize conversation with clients and opposing attorneys and retrieve chats quickly.
• Calendaring and Docketing Software: It lets you schedule filings, hearings, meetings and other events on an integrated calendar for staff, clients and other stakeholders. Define rules to automate tracking and sending alerts for critical dates and deadlines.
• Document Management Software: The system helps streamline document storage, retrieval and management with unlimited storage space, intuitive search tools, optical character recognition, eSignature tools and access settings.
• Billing Software: Use time trackers and project management tools to accurately calculate the time and effort spent on a particular case and charge clients accordingly.

How do I choose legal practice management software?

SelectHub has prepared a nine-step process called lean selection that ensures you identify every business requirement and select platforms with the correct features that align with your operations and growth plans.

You can also use our free comparison report to understand who the industry leaders are and how they compare against each other based on features, pricing and custom criteria.

For a more personalized recommendation, don’t hesitate to reach out to our team of experts and analysts at [email protected] or call 855-850-3850. Happy selecting!