What if I told you about a technology that would relieve 50% of the administrative burden from your job…would you be interested in hearing what I had to say?

Of course you would!

And that’s why many in the legal tech community have become fascinated by workflow technology. For many attorneys, finding tools to free up more time to bill is essential to growing their practice. Based on a recent report, law offices surveyed responded that they spent 40% of their time on administrative or manual tasks.

In this article, I will introduce you to workflow, explaining what workflow is, some of its benefits and the different workflow tools available in legal practice management software.

If we go back to the basics, workflow itself is defined as the sequence of industrial, administrative, or other processes through which a piece of work passes from initiation to completion (thanks Google).

2. Process vs. automation vs. workflow

Process, automation and workflow are terms you’ll hear people refer to as synonyms or married together such as “workflow automation” or “process automation”.

In my opinion, the three terms refer to different things:

For example, if you’re trying to improve your client intake, here’s how each term would be defined:

Process: A prospective client contacts the website > someone from the firm contacts the prospective client > an initial consultation is scheduled > an attorney meets with the prospective client

Automation: A webform populates a database, a personalized email is created and sent from information stored in the database and a document is automatically generated based on information stored in the database.

Workflow:

3. Benefits of workflow in a law firm

For many law firms, workflow can be a game-changer by creating structure and efficiencies within their practice.

Although the list is long, here are some of the most important benefits workflow can bring to a law firm:

4. Areas workflow can be used in a law firm

Workflow can be used in any area of your practice that requires administrative work but the majority of the legal practice management programs will focus on automating one of three areas:

Intake

74% of all legal consumers visit a law firm’s website to first take action. This means if your firm has a high volume of website form submissions you need a process for managing your pipeline.

Today, many firms receive an automated email from their website’s form tool with the prospective client’s information, but that doesn’t get the information into your practice management software to begin managing the intake process.

These days, many legal practice management software have workflow tools to help you manage your intake.

This includes sending personalized response emails out once someone contacts the firm, scheduling follow-up tasks, merging new client agreement documents or keeping the status of the potential client updated.

Matter

If your firm deals with a high volume of matters, such as an insurance defense or personal injury firm, workflow can be used to help you juggle all the balls in the air.

On a matter, you can use workflow to do things such as schedule follow-up tasks if a member of your staff hasn’t touched a matter within a certain number of days, automatically email updates to clients or generate/email medical records requests for you with the click of a button.

Billing

Using workflow to manage the pre-bill process and collections can help dramatically improve cash flow.

Pre-bills

For pre-bills, workflow can flow the pre-bill through an electronic approval process. If your firm requires the associate then responsible attorney to review a pre-bill before posting it, the workflow can move the bill from one person’s approval list to the next, before finally updating the status once all the approvals are completed. Your billing team can then receive a notification that the bill is ready to post and send out.

Collections

Collections is another pain point for a lot of law firms. It requires the staff to constantly manually send out reminders to your clients. With workflow, you can have reminders automatically sent out to your client once a bill is overdue and continue sending the emails until the balance if paid off.

In the last section, I discussed the practical uses for workflow in a law firm. In this next section, I’ll discuss the technology offered within many legal practice management applications.

Calendaring workflow

The first type of workflow I am going to discuss is calendaring workflow. This type of workflow is for task management and calendar appointments.

Task workflow

If you work with a team, there is a good chance that you assign tasks to different staff members at different stages of a case.

Think about when you open a new case. If you don’t have activity workflow, you either:

This can be automated using a calendaring workflow within a practice management software.

Some legal practice management programs will let you create a prebuilt lists of tasks and then quickly assign them out.

Other programs will automatically assign tasks to different staff members you’ve designed once a matter is open..

Or finally, programs will give you a list of tasks and let you fill in the staff you want to complete the task.

This is helpful to any firm, but especially firms that have a high volume of cases, new potential clients contacting the firm or if you have a high staff to attorney ratio on your team.

Appointment workflow

Similar to tasks, many firms have a set of internal deadlines or meetings they want to schedule once a new case is opened or reaches a certain stage.

For many firms, this requires a paralegal or assistant to manually calculate relative dates based on a certain deadline. It’s time consuming and error prone.

Many legal practice management software programs have a feature built in to solve this problem.

The technical term for this feature is chain calendar events. These are all appointments with relative dates based on a trigger date such as “date of trial.”

This isn’t to be confused with a scheduling order designed by the courts but rather, a list of internal deadlines.

Automated workflow

Automated workflow expands beyond activities and allows you to flowchart your processes into software automation. This type of workflow will keep your case status up to date and offer your staff different options based on the process you’ve defined for that stage of a case.

Your process for opening a new matter might look like:

  1. Run a conflict check.
  2. Send then receive the engagement letter from the client.
  3. Open the matter in your practice management software and send out the initial retainer bill.
  4. Collect the retainer from the client.
  5. Set up an initial meeting with the client.

Throughout this process, your system could use workflow to take the burden off your staff by automatically merging the engagement letter, sending out an emailed retainer bill to the client and even opening the matter file in your system.

With workflow, the software will bring you down the path you set up and automate certain tasks, but your staff will still be required to prompt the software to move to the next stage by marking tasks as complete or clicking on the next step.

Advanced automated workflow

Advanced automated workflow is like having a robot assistant.

The difference between automated workflow and advanced automated workflow is in advanced automated workflow, your staff doesn’t have to click a button to make something happen.

Advanced automated workflow can be triggered by creation of a record, updates to a records or queries.

Your possibilities become endless with advanced automated workflow, but it does require the most set up.

Did you know that only 33% of firms with 10–49 attorneys use practice management software? Furthermore, only 51% of firms with 100+ attorneys use practice management software. We find that a lot of firms become interested in adopting practice management if they only have a billing system when they begin to evaluate new technology. And we agree that if a firm is coming from a system that strictly handles billing, it is a good time to consider moving to a practice management system.

A practice management system creates a hub for the entire firm to find information about your cases, which makes you more efficient and allows you to give better client services, answer questions faster, and gain a better grasp of your data.

 

Understanding Key Features

Practice management is a feature-rich component of legal technology so we are going to start with a few different elements that may be important for your firm.

Although every practice management system on the market today should be able to store all of the important information about your cases in one spot, they vary in terms of customization. For example, not every practice management software allows you to edit fields or use multiple matter layouts. If your firm specializes in multiple practice areas, this type of flexibility is something you may really need.

Overall, most firms will be looking for two overarching features: calendaring/task management and document/email management. Let’s dive into these first.

 

Calendaring and Task Management

Calendaring. It seems so simple – trivial even. Yet nothing is more critical to your day-to-day operations than an accurate and up-to-date calendar. Evaluating and understanding the types of calendars each attorney uses – and how they use them – is critical. Even if you’re a pencil-and-paper type of firm, practice management software provides a considerable amount of calendaring advantages that can’t be ignored.

For starters, it gives you a centralized calendar that is backed up and allows you to choose from multiple views along with a matter-centric view. You can even create tasks through workflow automation that are built into each calendar view. This means that all of the activities associated with meeting specific deadlines can be configured into customizable matter templates depending on individual deadlines.

From an organizational standpoint, this results in everyone having a better idea of when a document has been prepared and when tasks have been completed. And if that isn’t enough visibility, users can subscribe to a specific matter feed to get alerts for every asset pertaining to that matter. This is great for collaborative firms or those that have a heavy workload and need help juggling a multitude of tasks.

All of this sounds great, right? But how does it fit within the complete picture of your firm? To avoid getting overwhelmed, start by asking yourself these questions:

 

One of the major benefits to a firm-wide calendar is that you can see everybody’s calendar and schedule multiple events with several attendees all at once, or select only the peoples’ calendars you need to see – no more having to do it manually one at a time. The ability to sort and change your views as you see fit will ensure you always have visibility into the matters and projects you need when you need it.

The other thing to consider is your calendar reporting. Suppose you’re the type of firm that prefers to distribute your calendar reports. In that case, you’ll want to make sure that the software allows you to generate – and perhaps print – the reports you need for providing various insights, appointments, and deadlines to the relevant members of your team.

On the task management side, a lot of firms currently use Outlook. Moving forward, you have to think about what kind of task management your firm wants in the future. Some software offers Kanban-style task management. Is that something that is important to you? Firms that use Outlook or just a whiteboard for their task organization find it difficult to assign activities to various staff and then keep track of those activities as they progress. How does your firm currently handle this and could your process be made more efficient?

The point of task management is to make it easy for your partners and managing attorneys to check the progress of their cases. How easy is it for them to do this now? Can they see at a glance what has been completed and what hasn’t been completed? The goal of any task management platform is to be able to get an overview of where any case stands at any given point in time.

 

Document and Email Management

Essentially, you have two options here: You can either go with the practice management system or you can use an integration dedicated to document management. When you’re evaluating document management, you need to look at a few things.

Begin with how you need your documents to be structured.

 

Some software uses plugins for Microsoft Word that allow you to create template documents. Is that important for your firm to have? If you have a form that you use over and over again, will the software be able to automatically populate the blanks with the new contacts’ information? We often see firms manually replacing a client’s information with a new client’s information, which can lead to embarrassing and critical human errors.

Storage is also an important factor. How big is your drive now? How much would it cost you for additional storage? These are things you definitely want to evaluate when thinking about document management systems.

On the other side of the coin is your email management. Some practice management systems let you save emails directly from Outlook or Gmail to the system itself. If you’re planning on saving them, how easy is it to do so? We have seen instances where the user is made to drag and drop the folder or has to CC a specific email address. However, some will automatically save them for you.

Once you have learned how saving emails works within the system, the next step is to ask how the system will store the actual emails you save. Is it making copies of them or is it simply linking to those emails? Is it converting them? If you need to use those emails again or bring them forth as evidence, they need to be stored in the native MSG format. A lot of systems don’t do this so this is definitely something you need to keep front of mind. Getting emails into the system is one thing, but getting them out may be another story. And, just like with your documents, you’re going to want to find out what search capabilities are available for your emails. Does the system make it easy for you to find the things you need based on a one-word search? If you get over 200 emails a day, the last thing you have time for is sifting through all of those for one line item.

 

Workflow

If we go back to the basics, workflow itself is defined as the sequence of industrial, administrative, or other processes through which a piece of work passes from initiation to completion (thanks, Google). For many attorneys, finding tools to free up more time to bill is essential to growing their practice. Based on a recent survey, law offices responded that they spent 40% of their time on administrative or manual tasks. So, is workflow something you should consider? Our answer is yes, but we will let you decide.

Essentially, workflow brings process and automation together. Workflow takes a process, adds highly defined inputs and outputs, and uses automation to complete the tasks on your behalf. For example, a client fills out a form on the website which triggers a potential client record to be populated in the database. Once a new record is created in the database, an email is automatically generated and sent to the prospective client thanking them and letting them know someone from the firm will be in touch with them shortly. Then, a task is created and assigned to the firm administrator to contact the potential client. The firm administrator then contacts the prospective client and completes the task, updating the potential client status to “initial consult scheduled,” finally triggering the system to generate a merged fee agreement letter.

For many law firms, workflow can be a game-changer by creating structure and efficiencies within their practice.

Although the list is long, here are some of the most important benefits workflow can bring to a law firm:

 

 

Communication Tools and Portals

Many software programs today integrate with services like Microsoft Teams or have an internal chat function already embedded in the software. These capabilities allow you to facilitate more streamlined communication around matter management and tasks, ultimately creating a more cohesive and efficient team.

As important as it is to maintain thorough internal communication, it is just as essential to be able to communicate externally with your clients. Does your current system allow you to text and call your clients? Does it track and record the time you spend communicating with those clients? Evaluate how you currently work with each of your clients, how they prefer to be communicated with, and if there are any points of friction that could be smoothed out.

Client portals are getting prevalent to the point of becoming a standard feature that your future clients expect. What does your client service look like right now? Does your team lose billable hours because you spend a majority of your morning answering client questions that could easily be answered through a client portal? Do you give your clients the autonomy to pull the answers they need on their own or do they still rely on getting in contact with you?

In order to improve client communication and create a client-centric approach to your day-to-day tasks, here are some priorities you should keep in mind when setting up a portal:

 

Focus on Storage

Most client portals come built-in with file storage attributed to each matter at your firm. The key is to make sure everyone uses the portal from the start of the case; this way, all paperwork, notes, and updates are logged for clients to take advantage of whenever it’s convenient. It’s a two-way street – a spot for clients to access things they may be wondering about in their case, and a tool for staff to easily share files when used with law management software.

 

Focus on Security

Between all the digital phishing and security breaches, hacking emails has become way more common. Why put your clients’ sensitive information at risk of being compromised when a portal is a perfectly viable alternative to holding all their data in one place? The nice thing is your clients won’t need to download anything additional to access their files – any internet-enabled device will be able to log on to view updates and they’ll receive a simple notification email whenever any new information becomes available. Security should always be at the forefront of your firm’s mind so clients feel safe when interacting with you. It will create a seamless, positive experience that they’ll be sure to recommend to others.

 

Geographical Flexibility

Depending on your area of law, a client portal can diminish the issues that arise with distance. Whether a client has temporarily relocated or your firm is currently working remotely for the time being, everyone can be logged in and have access to all the necessary information on both sides. Not only is this more convenient, but it also creates a better place for client-centric interactions on an ongoing basis. Smoother communication and collaboration leads to better efficiency for everyone.

 

Potential Client Tracking

Attorneys are spread thin, and a lot of their time is spent on non-billable labor instead of billable tasks. In fact, on average, lawyers only bill for 2.3 hours of their time daily. After factoring in realization and collection rates, the average lawyer only collects about 1.6 hours of billable time per day. And to take it a step further, about 33% of an average lawyer’s time is spent on business development. To this point, did you know that two out of three potential clients say their decision to hire a firm is most influenced by a lawyer’s responsiveness to their first call or email?

The problem here is that interruptions, like emails and calls, are not just zapping time away in the immediate sense; they come saddled with a recovery time that results in a 2-hour time loss per day. If you’re getting these intake calls, they may not always result in good clients, which is a further waste of your time. Without an effective process, you’re losing money – it’s as simple as that.

All of this brings us to this question: How are you tracking the new leads that come in? Whether they are from your website or over the phone, how are you monitoring your business development?

Most of your new clients will find you online, so you should automatically be asking yourself if this new practice management software allows you to integrate your firm’s intake form directly into your website? Does it provide a way for you to track referrals or assign workflow tasks to different people based on the referral source? Are you able to monitor and analyze conversion statistics based on different marketing campaigns you run? By having access to these metrics, you can gauge your return on investment and allocate funds directly to the campaigns that are seeing the most success. This intake process looks different from firm to firm, but at its core, you need to be able to track data efficiently and access it whenever you need it, from wherever you are. Here is a high-level framework outlining the steps your practice management software could help facilitate:

 

  1. Getting started: When a PNC first makes contact with your firm
  2. Confirm the PNC’s basic details
  3. Screen the PNC and conduct a conflict check
  4. Approval: Grant or deny initial consultation
  5. Gather pre-consult information (if you didn’t have enough information prior to conduct a conflict check, do so now)
  6. Consult
  7. Organize post-consult information
  8. Send over a new client agreement
  9. Gather necessary documents

A huge part of the client intake process is cultivating the relationships that are most fruitful for your firm and then tracking the progress that comes from those leads. Being able to pull lists and reports on current clients and potential new clients is paramount to your firm’s growth.

For example, a huge area we see come up for new and existing client tracking is the holiday list. The holidays only come once a year, but when the season arrives, do you have a way to quickly download a list of names and organize them based on importance to your firm? Who gets the gift card versus the $200 bottle of wine?

 

Third-Party Integrations

The last step to evaluating your practice management software is to make sure that the vendor offers the third-party integrations that your firm deems essential. Whether it’s a way to text your client, document management, or calendaring tools, you should have a list of all the tools you currently use and make sure the vendors you’re looking at can pair well with them.

 

The Takeaway

This was a lot to digest! The bottom line is there are a lot of options your firm can take when considering what practice management features you want, the ones you need, and the ones that may just be luxury. Do your homework, and use this blog as a guide to help you make informed decisions!

 

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To get the history of practice management consultants within the legal industry, you have to go back about 30 years or more. Back then, all programs were server-based (i.e., not in the cloud), so you needed someone with enough technical expertise to understand how to load your new program onto your server, install all the updates when they rolled out each year, deploy those updates to your server, and ensure everything functioned and was maintained properly.

Ultimately, if a firm needed or wanted to switch to new software, four things needed to occur:

  1. Someone had to install the software on the server.
  2. Someone needed to transfer your data from the old system to the new software.
  3. Someone needed to train and teach your staff how to use the new software. At the time, this process was more laborious and time-consuming because video conferencing services like Zoom weren’t around.
  4. Someone had to be readily available to answer questions, provide ongoing support, and perform maintenance upgrades.

Obviously, things have changed quite a bit: Technology has progressed and firms that are evaluating cloud-based programs don’t necessarily need someone to download their data and upload it to new software on a new server. The primary reason for this is that these days the technology vendors will do all of that leg work for you.

Over the course of the last several years, we have seen firms work directly with the practice management vendor and we have seen firms utilize practice management consultants. It is not our intention to lead you one way or another, but rather to give you an overview of what both scenarios could look like. Ultimately, you will have to make the best decision for your firm and choose a direction that best aligns with your goals and processes.

Evaluation Process

As we discussed in, How to Begin Evaluating New Technology, when you’re beginning to evaluate different programs, the first step is understanding your firm’s needs. The first thing a consultant is going to do is come in and interview you and your firm. They’re probably going to be familiar with the program you are currently using so they’re going to understand your technical needs. Based on the conversations they have with you and your staff, they’ll gain an understanding of your firm’s process needs. Finally, they’ll make recommendations based on all the information they have collected.

So, if you don’t feel comfortable speaking directly with a vendor about what you need or discussing with your staff what they need – or you feel like you lack the technical knowledge to make those judgment calls – we recommend bringing a consultant into the fold.

Juggling Multiple Systems

Consultants today typically work with multiple systems. This can be both a good and bad thing.

The good thing is that their experience with multiple systems can prime them to bring multiple options to the table for you, providing the pros and cons of each of the recommended services.

However, if a consultant works with multiple systems, they’re probably not an expert in any single one. So if you’re evaluating multiple programs and end up going with a specific one, your consultant will not necessarily be an expert in that chosen system. What this means is that they will have the foundational knowledge to initiate the basic setup for you but may lack the granular details to help you flourish and excel. In this scenario, working directly with the vendor is going to be more advantageous because the vendor will know more about its own program and be better equipped to help you overcome any issues you may encounter.

Price

Vendors and consultants operate under two very different business models. The vendor is a software company and the consultant is a service company. Software companies view services as a means to get you to use their software and to make you successful on their program so that you stay with them. Service companies sell services as a way to make money.

Typically, working with a consultant is going to be more expensive than going directly to the vendor. The right consultant will offer a lot of value, but some firms just don’t need those services. What we have seen happen after some firms opt to work with a consultant is that the perceived value of what they thought they were going to get was way higher than it should have been, thus setting themselves up to be unhappy once they go live. Other times, we have seen firms who were grateful they chose to work with a consultant because they were able to get reluctant staff on board with the technology change with as little friction as possible.

Think about whether or not it makes sense for your firm to hire a consultant in order to get from point A to point B. If your main concern is cost and keeping expenses as low as possible, you may want to skip the middleman and think about working directly with a vendor. And if your firm has a complex situation and growth trajectory is pointing to a need for more robust features, reports, and capabilities, working directly with a vendor may be the most prudent choice because the vendor will have the insight into how to guide you through that process properly.

Another thing to consider is that consultants tend to come from smaller organizations. The benefit to that is you will develop a close working relationship with your consultant and you will have the opportunity to get to know them and, conversely, they will have the opportunity to get to know you and your firm on a deep level. In most cases, you are assigned one personal consultant, which is conducive to an intimate working relationship. The downside of this is that while they may be a personal consultant to your firm, your firm is probably not the only firm they are supporting. In other words, if you need to get in touch with them, you could be waiting based on their availability.

The Takeaway

Most software vendors today are set up for you to work directly with them throughout your migration, go-live, training, and support periods; however, they will also accommodate your firm if you choose to work with a practice management consultant. It is up to you and what you think will not only best fit your firm but your firm’s future needs as well.

Buying legal technology can go one of two ways: your firm ends up with great software that fits your needs or a week after go-live you come to find that you’ve made a huge mistake. 

In, How to Begin Evaluating New Technology, we discussed how to collect and categorize your firm’s feedback. The next step your firm should take is to create a requirements list.

When you begin this process, one thing that is very important to note is that you should not commoditize your practice management system. Making an exhaustive requirements list can sometimes move you in that direction, but the real goal of your list is to make sure you’re not missing any features you need. The purpose of this list is to use what you have created as a guideline for what your firm must have (versus pitting staff with opposing opinions against one another).

Avoid the Trap

If you carry a mindset that every feature is equal and all practice management systems are the same, you’re going to be really disappointed.

Avoid the feature comparison trap by thinking about the direction your firm is going. Ask yourself: What do I want my practice to look like in 5–10 years? How do I want my interpersonal relationships with my staff to be?

Building Your List

The easiest way to start building your requirements list is to bullet out every possible feature that a practice management software could have and then begin crossing off the things you don’t need.

Additionally, you should be visiting sites like Capterra to evaluate the customer reviews for the software options you’re considering. Reviews can provide you with a snapshot of customers’ sentiment, but don’t look to them as a shortcut to making a final decision; rather, use reviews to find ideas or read comments about topics or problems that you haven’t thought of already. They are a great knowledge bank for you to tap into in order to form your own opinions.

Many reviews at sites like Capterra will talk about specific shortcomings (e.g., “It didn’t bring our history over so we can’t do compensation reports.”). Feedback from third parties who have already used the software can often prove to be just as useful as feedback from your team.

Additionally, if you’re part of the Association of Legal Administrators or any other professional communities, take advantage of their forums by asking questions like, "What is something you wish you had asked or knew ahead of time prior to buying new legal Software?"

Based on what you learn, adjust your requirements list accordingly.

What You Should and Should Not Do with Your List

Be aware that one of the worst things you could do for yourself is to ask a vendor to fill out the requirements list for you.

Instead, you need to have that list readily available and in front of you before a live demo. What happens if you pass your list off to a vendor is two-fold. First, you’ve commoditized the software and, second, you’re letting them check things off for you. When you get on a demo, you want to be shown the features that are important to you and you want to see how they work so that you can determine whether or not the software will align with your process.

For example, a vendor may say its software includes origination tracking functionality, but that does not mean its origination tracking feature will match your firm’s needs.

It is crucial that you go through the checklist yourself and mark what you deem as sufficient versus allowing someone else to mark what they think you need. No one knows your firm or your processes better than you do, so don’t overlook these details!

Of course, it is fine to send your vendors your list ahead of time in order to alert them to the features you want; after all, you want to make sure the demo is a good use of your time – but you don’t want them to check those boxes for you.

The Takeaway

The worst thing you can do for yourself is to come into this process blind. After having spoken with your team, build out a list of features or capabilities you already know you need. If you have are drawing blanks, that's okay! Read through review sites, do some homework, and take a deep breath! There are no wrong answers, this step is simply to help you stay as organized and on top of the process as possible. You can't predict everything, but preparedness is the best way to avoid miscommunication and hurt expectations.

Many firms, upon deciding it’s time to evaluate new technology, make the mistake of immediately sprinting toward a solution, especially when they have been forced into addressing a sudden problem.

They dive headfirst into the search for new practice management software and completely forget a huge step – arguably the most important step: meeting with the people who are going to use it the most.

Many firms, upon deciding it’s time to evaluate new technology, make the mistake of immediately sprinting toward a solution. Learn what important step you should be taking before you begin evaluating your legal technology options.

Meet with Your Team Internally

As soon as you realize your practice needs new technology, the first thing you need to do is take the discussion internal. Too often, the decision to buy software is made by a handful of people within the organization, which makes firm-wide adoption more challenging. It leads to greater conflict and pushback, and makes training on the new system considerably harder. Without team buy-in, implementation of new technology could even make the team’s job harder.

You might be wondering how introducing new technology could make your team’s job harder. Let’s go over some examples:

The takeaway here: Don’t call an audible and buy software on your own without speaking to the people who have the most skin in the game!

How to Meet with Your Team

If you’ll be the one organizing and collecting all of this internal data, start by putting out some feelers to people in order to get a grasp on the politics of your firm. Plant the seeds to gauge how they would feel about adopting new software. It will be more helpful than you think to know exactly what people’s gut reactions were prior to processing any feedback.

When you do reach out to speak with your team formally, lead off with the following two steps to get the best results:

  1. Send your team an email saying you’re shopping for new software. Within the email, make it clear that you are looking for internal feedback.
  2. Set in-person meetings to discuss their feedback and thoughts.

Conducting the actual discussions in person as opposed to over email encourages open dialogue and ensures your team feels like part of the process.

If you’re a small team, you may talk to everyone in the firm; if you’re a midsize firm, you want to speak with at least one person from every department. On the administrative side, it is advisable to speak with everyone regardless of firm size because they will be such heavy users of the software. Consider speaking to:

• Partners
• Associates
• Paralegals
• Legal Assistants

Additionally, you want to speak directly with both the more technology-adept team members and those who don’t love using technology. If you don’t diversify your sample, you will end up with vastly different responses and reactions when it comes time to go live.

Avoid asking leading questions when you do speak with the team. Don’t come into this with an agenda. Ask open-ended questions that allow your staff to freely express their raw opinions and thoughts. The best software you can buy is the one that your staff will like and actually use.

Categorize Your Feedback

Once you have spoken to everyone you need to, compile a list of all the feedback you received and categorize it into buckets. These buckets can be whatever you want, but if you need a kickstart, use Billing, Accounting, and Practice Management as a guide. From there, you could break each category down further. Consider the following breakdowns:

Billing:

Accounting:

Practice Management:

In the end, you want to create your own categories based on what your staff is telling you they need.

Addressing Concerns

Oftentimes, the two parties that push back the most when presented with new software are the Billing team, who don’t want to change their processes, and the Shareholders, who may not feel the expense is justified.

To address Finance concerns, the first thing you should do is ask them to identify any major pain points or complaints they foresee with moving to a new system. Listen to them, make sure they feel heard, and point out the key benefits and shortcuts that the new system offers. In most cases, the initial change is the biggest hurdle to get past. If you can get them excited about the long-term benefits of the technology and emphasize that the road to get there isn’t as cumbersome as it sounds, you’ll be more likely to get them on board

For the Shareholders, it’s all about the value proposition – show them the money! Highlight some of the ways that new technology stands to make your firm money, both in the long and short term: It will enable you to capture more billable hours, increase client satisfaction and referral rates, and attract top talent for a long-term competitive advantage.

The Takeaway

It is easy to jump into a process you're excited about, but there are many intricacies and considerations that go into buying new legal software. Rushing this process can result in either miscommunication, wrong expectations, and an unhappy team. Take your time and do your internal due diligence before you start knocking on vendor's doors.

Timing is everything, right? The old adage holds true when thinking about upgrading technology. 

Maybe you’ve been on legacy software for years. Maybe you work entirely on paper. Perhaps you’re still dipping a fountain pen into an inkwell (by the way, if that’s the case – cool). Wherever you’re at, how do you know when it’s time to start evaluating new technology? Is there ever a bad time? And why do you need to make a change anyway? If you can’t give sound answers to these questions, then figuring out where to begin is going to be considerably more difficult. 

When firms begin to think about evaluating new software, two distinct mindsets come into play: reactive and proactive. Which one your firm holds will set the stage for how you kick off this process. 

Reactive Mindset 

For firms with a reactive mindset, one of five primary motivations tends to drive them to reevaluate their legal technology. 

1. A Dying Server 

Just like car batteries, servers don’t last forever and eventually need to be replaced. 

Picture this: Your server is on the fritz but still operational. The IT guy says it’s got six months to a year. You hold off on any major moves and it dies unexpectedly three months later. Now you’re looking at anywhere between $1,000–$30,000 to replace it (depending on server size, payment plan, configuration, and duration of use). Maybe you’re a midsize firm and you need an even bigger server to replace the old one, maybe you even need two. So not only do you have to buy a server or two, you also have to get all the required software and networking – and you have to have someone or some way to monitor it for security and performance. We won’t go down the dark hole of law firm data breaches, but that is not something to take lightly. 

A reactive firm will wait until their server is at the end of its life, which forces them into making a sudden choice to either buy a new one or move everything to the cloud. Since buying and maintaining a server is such a big capital expenditure, the firm often realizes at this point that the costs associated with replacing the server do not outweigh the benefits of going with cloud-based technology. 

2. A Struggling VPN 

Virtual Private Networks (VPN) are common in most legacy software; without them, users wouldn’t be able to access their data remotely. 

Traditionally, most firms set up a VPN only for those individuals who may work from outside of the office. In these cases, its capacity is only set to be operationally functional for about 20–25% of the firm’s workforce. The more people who need to rely on the VPN to work from different locations, the more the functionality of the private network will suffer. VPNs were not made to host 100% of your workforce. 

A VPN is dated technology, especially when looked at alongside cloud computing. In some ways, you can think of it as the first version of the cloud. With teams all over the world shifting toward remote or hybrid models, the timing has never been worse for you to feel the burden of a struggling VPN’s impact on productivity. A reactive firm will wait until sluggish functionality forces them to consider other options. 

3. SaaS Deficiencies 

Many firms already use some form of cloud-based technology, but that doesn’t automatically mean they’re happy with the software they chose. There are a number of reasons that may cause a firm to think about making a sudden switch from one cloud-based technology to another. The most predominant reason is that the current system lacks features that the firm needs. This is the unfortunate result of either poor communication from the vendor or the firm not being explicit enough about their needs during the initial discussions with the sales team. 

Another pain point that often leads firms to switch software is how their data is distributed. If their current software doesn’t have the necessary integrations they need to manage their day-to-day operations (think document management, court deadline scheduling, etc.), they have to rely on additional third-party programs. At first, firms may not feel that this is an issue. However, as time goes by, they realize how inefficient their operations are becoming as a result of their data being spread across several programs. Working out of multiple systems makes it significantly harder to utilize the data effectively enough to make sound business decisions. Firms end up having to train their staff on each new program, all while dealing with the human errors that commonly arise from working piecemeal with large quantities of information. 

Think about a software program that only has billing features and lacks accounting functionality. In this case, firms have to rely on outside technology for all of their accounting needs, which leads to copious manual work and, subsequently, more chances for human error (because let’s face it, none of us are perfect). If you’ve ever had to enter information into multiple systems like this before, you know very well the pain we are talking about here. Firms also sometimes overlook the importance of a mobile app. In the fast-paced, on the-go environment of today, a mobile app is essential. And just because a vendor offers cloud-based software, it doesn’t mean they also have a mobile app, leaving some firms with buyers’ remorse as they remain glued to their desktops unless they switch to new software. 

4. Annual Maintenance Plans 

Another reason firms consider making the switch to cloud-based software is that they’re late on their annual maintenance plan (AMP) fees. 

Many legacy software programs have this annual maintenance fee to provide users with an annual software update. Sometimes it may get you additional help from the support team, but you’re really paying this fee to get the latest software update. 

When firms purchased software 20 years ago, it meant they were also getting the latest and greatest features and fixes every year. Nowadays, the model is to shell out for the software, watch as new bugs and performance issues emerge, and then, come the end of your year (whether that is calendar-based or not), pay for those bugs to get fixed. Naturally, many firms have found themselves asking, “Why would I pay thousands of dollars every year for fixes to problems I didn’t create?” 

After about five minutes of soul-searching, firms typically respond by refusing to pay the AMP. And then what happens? Firms fall so far behind on their payments that they are left with outdated and bug-ridden software until they pay back everything they owe for their years of update neglect. 

Once again, a reactive firm will find itself forced into a decision. Paying the AMP certainly isn’t appealing at this point since they won’t even get better software. When they look at the burden of paying all that money back, they start to wonder if it would be a better use of their money to ditch the software entirely and go with something new. 

5. Malware and Security Breaches 

Did you know that one out of every four law firms has been a victim of data breach? In 2020, there were 3,932 publicly reported data breaches, comprising over 37 billion records. If your jaw didn’t just drop, it should have. 

At one point in time, cloud technology was viewed as a security hazard compared to on-premise servers. Today, however, that reality has changed. On-premise servers are at significantly greater risk for breaches because they are exposed to way more physical elements. If you have on-premise hardware, think about where it is. Who has access to it? How securely locked up is it? What would happen if there were a natural disaster? Unfortunately, at the end of the day, if a firm has on-premise hardware, it’s the firm’s job to manage and protect that technology. The simple truth is if a firm is hacked even once, it needs to react quickly and decisively to make a change. 

The easiest way to take server security off your plate is by working with a cloud-based provider. Ask yourself what you can do better to protect your firm and your clients and how you would react to a breach. The data you handle is sensitive and hackers today9 use sophisticated techniques to gain access to it. If you aren’t relying on companies who protect data for a living to keep yours secure, you are exposing your firm to significant risk. As soon as a security breach happens – a very real risk when you look at the numbers – a reactive firm is pushed to evaluate new cloud-based software. 

If any of those scenarios resonated with you, it is time to start looking at new legal technology while you have the leisure to do so. 

Proactive Mindset 

Now, firms with a proactive mindset are intent on staying ahead of any problems and motivated by a desire to improve. Instead of waiting for issues to occur, these firms pursue action-driven solutions to maximize their operations. This road often leads them to consider cloud-based software much earlier than a reactive firm. 

Any number of areas of improvement may serve as motivation for a proactive firm. Here are five of the most common ones. 

1. New Goals 

Proactive firms are motivated to meet the current state of technology. They take active steps to adopt modern solutions that may not have existed five years ago, taking note of their current pain points and strategically planning how they can alleviate them. Generally, they set out to improve current processes, become more efficient, and implement software that allows them to be agile, grow, and develop. 

2. Talent Recruitment 

Younger attorneys view technology as a means to push themselves ahead. They see the modernization of old practices as a way for them to do a better job. 

When younger attorneys evaluate firms, they are also evaluating the tech stack each firm has in place. Proactive firms realize that buying that new technology allows them to more easily recruit top talent. Think of your tech stack as part of your benefits, right alongside the number of PTO days you provide and the strength of your healthcare plan. The technology you offer can be a deciding factor for whether an up-and-coming attorney wants to work for your firm, just like those traditional factors. The difference it makes might be the competitive edge you need. And if you have yet to notice that difference, you will soon. 

Many of the more established attorneys do not see the importance and value of legal software. They see it as an unneeded change to a successful career they’ve managed without digitization and automation tools. However, you shouldn’t turn a blind eye to the younger generations because one day they will be the dominant force within your firm. 

3. Better Client Services 

Your clients are expecting three basic things from you:

  1. Their information is locked up and secure. 
  2. They are able to access that information at any time without having to jump through hoops. 
  3. They are able to reach you. 

We call the need for immediacy the ‘‘Amazon Effect,” where people need things yesterday. Obviously, that type of speed is not feasible in the legal industry, but proactive firms look for ways to emulate that type of service. 

To start, your firm needs to be available. No one hits a panic button faster than a client who either doesn’t feel heard or can’t quickly get the information they need. And you have no idea when your client may or may not need something from their files. On a related note, your staff does not have time to be on the phone constantly. Utilizing software with advantages like a client portal not only helps reduce the number of client calls, it also helps your firm stand out by getting your clients what they need faster. You should always be striving for transparency, not just because it is good for your clients but because it also frees up your time. Today, your clients and potential new clients (PNCs) are looking for that white-glove service. If you cannot offer that, another firm can. 

And if you don’t believe us, a study by BTI Consulting Group showed that 80% of participating clients expected immediate responses to texts and emails. But don’t worry, “immediate” in this study was defined as between 1–2 hours. Unfortunately, when firms were evaluated, attorneys considered “immediate” to be between 4–8 hours. With that big of a time discrepancy between attorney and client expectations, clients can get anxious, grow impatient, and become less likely to refer service post-matter. Although you may be juggling many clients at once, the goal is to treat each client like they’re your only client. A client portal helps you achieve that by giving clients autonomous accessibility, which has the added perk of reducing the time you spend answering their questions. 

This responsiveness can be translated into how successful your business is as well. When people are searching for representation, oftentimes it is the firm that responds to their call or email first that wins the business. Not only are these firms setting the tone right off the bat, they are also making the client feel prioritized – a huge factor when it comes to converting potential new clients into billable clients. 

An ABA Benchmark study on intake process found that 42% of the time law firms took three or more days to reply to a voicemail or web-generated form from a prospective client. That’s a long time! Firms spend time and money to collect new leads, yet are slow to capitalize when new leads come due to responding inefficiently. Your availability, response rate, and transparency all contribute to the client experience. Legal software is the best place to start if you want to improve these aspects. 

4. Revenue Goals 

If a firm’s goal is to increase revenue, the initial reflex for many is to try to hire more attorneys. But if you leverage technology, you can increase that revenue by capitalizing on features that allow you to capture more billable time. 

This can be as simple as entering time on the go, whether it’s on the train, at a dinner event, or in line at a grocery store – or it can be complex like being able to instantly track and create billable events for text messages, calls, and emails as the conversations occur. On average, attorneys only capture 2.3 billable hours a day, so automatically capturing your time as it happens is the easiest way to grow your business without hiring more staff. 

5. Remote Work 

If your firm has plans to move to a more distributed workspace, it has a huge reason to invest in technology. Leveraging the connectivity that legal tech provides minimizes the negative aspects of working remotely (such as communication problems, connection issues, organization lapses, etc.). On top of that, it improves overall productivity by giving everyone access to resources that were built to enable agility and efficiency away from the office. 

It shouldn’t matter where your staff or attorneys are. They need to have access to their work and your firm is going to lose money if they don’t. Firms that are proactively seeking flexibility inevitably pursue legal software because that is exactly what it gives them.

The Takeaway

There are many reasons why your firm may need to evaluate new technology and depending on that reason, your journey into the buying process could look very different. Knowing why your team is evaluating new technology will help you stay prepared and give you better insight into what you ultimately need.

Because of its prevalence, most people already know what this is, but put simply, the cloud allows an internet user to access a third-party computing resource located in almost an endless network of interconnected servers that allow you to run your computer’s applications over the internet without having to buy, install or manage your own servers. 

What this means is you could run your firm’s IT operations with nothing more than a browser and internet connection. By using the cloud, firms of all sizes can reduce IT costs, manage data storage needs more effectively, and improve staff flexibility. In a short amount of time, the cloud has emerged as one of the most meaningful innovations in technology.   

The cloud symbol was first used to represent the public telephone systems on our dial-ups and since the original basis of the internet was through dial-up modems, that symbol has been used and now represents what we know of today as “the cloud.” Before we go on, it is important to note that when we say “client-server,” the word “client” does not refer to your customer. Depending on your role, this word means two different things (depending on if you’re on the IT team or an attorney.) The word “client” to an IT person means a device used by one person at a time to access the internet. Essentially it is just an access point, whether it’s a smartphone, tablet, PC, you name it. These access points (or clients), and central servers which supply applications and data, are shared amongst several clients and can be accessed at any one time. So when you sign in to Gmail, or anywhere on the internet, you’re not the only person at that exact moment who can gain access. Thousands, if not millions of people could access their Gmail account at the same time through their own client-server. 

Characteristics of the Cloud

Let’s take a look at the five essential characteristics of the cloud:

  1. On-demand self-service
  2. Broad network access
  3. Resource pooling
  4. Rapid elasticity
  5. Measured service 

On-demand self-service

On-demand service essentially means you order what you want when you want it. You can unilaterally make such provisions either regarding server settings or network storage without the need for any interaction from the provider’s IT administrator. Further examples of such resources include storage, processing, memory, network bandwidth, and virtual machines.

Broad network access

Broad network access means you have access to your data over the standard network through client platforms such as your smartphone, PC, or laptop. 

Resource pooling

Resource pooling simply means that providers serve multiple customers, with provisional and scalable services. These services can be adjusted to suit each customer’s needs without any changes being apparent to the customer or end-user. When you access a server on the internet, it’s not only your information on that server, there is other people’s information as well. Sometimes there may just be one server for 50 different people and sometimes it could even be located overseas. As attorneys, this is incredibly important to be aware of. Many firms will just sign up or pay for cloud services and have no idea where their actual data is being stored, or who it’s being stored with. Sometimes it’s because they don’t care, and other times it’s because they don’t know to ask. So make sure you ask your vendor this question! 

Rapid elasticity

Rapid elasticity allows users to automatically request additional space in the cloud or other types of services. ... In a sense, cloud resources appear to be infinite or automatically available. That's very different from older systems, where the limits of storage or memory were immediately visible to a user. Compared to on-premise servers, this process is significantly easier and more convenient. 

Measured service 

Resource usage can be monitored, controlled, and reported. This provides transparency for both the provider and the consumer of the service. Your firm can actually get insight into the performance of your network with statistics that monitor your usage. 

Will the Cloud Save my Firm Money?

The first question that many firms ask cloud providers is, “how much will it cost?” This is a logical question, but the price range varies so drastically, that it makes more sense to narrow down specific goals and aspects of your firm. Let’s take a look.

Take a look at the chart below. The first thing you need to consider is the upfront expenditure. Let’s look at the on-premise category first. A good quality single server with no redundancy can run anywhere from $3,500-$8,000 if you’re going low end. A decent, middle-of-the-road server will land you north of $10,000. With that, you will need a backup system, which incorporates both software and hardware which could easily tack on another $2,000+. Next, you will want a quality APC battery or locate your system in a colo-data center to protect all of this valuable equipment. Following that line item is your server licensing. This is not per physical server, but per virtual server which typically runs inside of one box. Traditionally, you will be running an active directory, a file server, and a database server. Best practices dictate you separate these roles into multiple servers, but you could combine some of these roles into two servers, which is where you get the $1,900. Next are your user licenses or your client access licenses. This is required for each person who needs access to the server. If they run slightly over $40, and you have 15 people at your firm, you’re looking at about $840. Another expense is your Microsoft SQL licenses which almost every on-premise case management system requires. You can pay for this by the processing core, or by the user, but either way, it comes out to about the same. Finally, There will definitely be implementation fees to get this all together and have your firm up and running. With the going IT rate, you’re looking at about $5,000 of total labor.  

The next two columns are much more simplistic. All the listed services are either included in a private cloud or are not applicable. With the cloud, you will still have a labor fee that will either be due upfront or spread out with payments over a designated period of time. For web applications, if you’re considering a change, this will oftentimes require the assistance of a third-party consulting firm.             

ExpensesOn-Premise ServersCloudWeb Applications
Server(s) Hardware$5,500IncludedN/A
Backup Solution$2,000IncludedN/A
APC Battery$1,500IncludedN/A
Microsoft Server Licensing ($950/ea.)$1,900IncludedN/A
Microsoft User Licenses ($42/ea.)$840IncludedN/A
Microsoft SQL Licenses ($209/ea.)$4,180IncludedN/A
Terminal Server Licenses ($133/ea.)N/AIncludedN/A
Setup Fee$5,000$4,425$7,500
Total Up-Front Cost$20,920$4,425$7,500

Now that we have talked about the upfront costs, let’s look at some of the common monthly expenditures:

ExpensesOn-Premise ServersCloudWeb Applications
Server Maintenance ($200-$350/ea.)$5,500IncludedN/A
User Support + Anti-Virus ($49/user)$735Included$735
Offsite Backup (25-75 cents/gig)$100IncludedN/A
Remote Access (GoToMyPC: $30/user)$450N/AN/A
Cloud Storage ($0-$50/user)N/AIncluded$105
Total Monthly Costs$6,785$2,085$840

The first line item is your server maintenance. If you have a server, you will want to make sure that it is properly maintained, monitored, secured, and audited on a routine basis. This is especially critical with the security threats we face today. Assuming you’re running 2-3 virtual servers, you’re looking at about $500. 

User support entails the support for each computer, anti-virus work, print capabilities, and general network support. The average spend for this is about $49 per user, per month. Some firms will have an in-house IT team, others will outsource the help. The former is quite costly as you’re salarying these additional team members, but outsourcing your support can be tricky if you need immediate assistance. For web applications, keep in mind that if you can eliminate all of your servers, this cost will remain, and in some cases, this cost may increase as computer management becomes increasingly difficult with no server to help automate management. 

Next is the offsite backup category, this is native to almost all cloud solutions, whereas on-premise servers need to be backed up nightly. Be warned that if you are not backing up your data, you risk losing it in a crash. Paying for such solutions varies drastically in price, if you’re looking for a full backup and disaster recovery solution, you could be looking at thousands per month. For the sake of our example, we took the very basic backup system which typically charges between 25-75 cents/gig.

Now, looking at remote access, this also runs natively to any cloud-based solution. If you have an on-premise option, you can get a dedicated terminal or Citrix server. This would add significant spending to the upfront and server maintenance columns. Since we’re considering a 15-user law office, chances are, they’re using RDP over VPN directly to their desktop, or more commonly, a GoToMyPC or log me in a type of solution.        

For storage, most firms with on-premise servers are using their file server which could be your S drive or your T drive (for example). Additional costs here come from when your file server runs out of space or there’s a server malfunction or breach.    

Everything we just mentioned encompasses the average base cost for each solution. Each service provider is different, and fees will vary depending on what your firm chooses to adopt vs. waive.   

Ready to see how cloud-based Centerbase cuts costs and raises your revenues?

Get a demo today!

The Takeaway 

The chart below looks at some features that cannot be quantified mathematically, but they hold immense value. 

Each firm has to evaluate which of these intangible assets are most critical, and which are considered to be more of a luxury. Consider things like mobile access and liability. Do you have plans to geographically expand your firm? Do you want your staff to be connected with centralized access to the same data? Do your due diligence before signing on the dotted line.

Ultimately, all of these intangibles should help you evaluate whether your firm should pursue cloud, on-prem, or web application services, so don’t take them lightly! 

IntangiblesOn-Premise ServersCloudWeb Applications
MobileLimitedRobustMedium-Robust
SecurityLow-MediumRobustRobust
ReliabilityLow-MediumRobustRobust
ScalabilityLimitedFlexibleFlexible
CentralizationCentralizedCentralizedFragmented
LiabilityRiskyLimitedLimited
Software RobustnessRobustRobustLimited
SupportGeneralLegal-CentricFragmented

When it comes to legal research tools, the internet is the most widespread resource everyone uses, almost without question. Having the savviness to find and use the best free and/or budget-friendly tools gives attorneys an edge – especially at smaller or mid-size practicing firms. As we’ve seen, these tools continue to evolve, providing legal researchers (no matter their role) the agility to find the right information needed for the case. Complete with alerts and filters that prevent endless scrolling and frustrating hours lost sifting through everything but the statute you’re looking for, it’s clear legal research has made life easier – if you know how to access the right tools, that is. 

Having hands-on resources for your law firm’s needs will undoubtedly create more meaningful research that drives cases forward. This has been a game-changer for smaller firms who once had to shell out huge expenses for legal research software. Gone are those days; and good riddance, too. Simplifying research will also open up more time for other things, such as organized calendaring and day-to-day operations.

We’ll be covering the following questions:

Although nothing can quite replace a powerful paid tool depending on your needs and area of law, there are some free and more affordable tools available that make top-level research quite easy:

Google Scholar

FindLaw

Fastcase

Casetext

Read more on how to avoid getting a Practice Management “Lite” Software not catered to your firm’s needs

Even the best attorney doesn’t always have all the answers. The best offense in any matter is having a good defense – including knowledge on opposing counsel, and the relevant authorities and cases they’ll be relying on. It can be difficult to navigate strategy when you’re too busy trying to search for the opposite counsel’s angle as well. These obstacles can mount, especially when you’re fighting or are getting blocked and limited on your research attempts. If the research comes easy, so, too, will the brainstorming. 

As a smaller firm, the cost analysis could also prove problematic if you’re billing clients for extensive research conducted. It’s important to weigh these options before going into a case that you anticipate will require ample research time, especially for newer attorneys not as well-versed or equipped with as many resources at a smaller firm or solo practice. This is all part of mapping out features that will be user-friendly for you, this time and the next – so clients stay happy, too.

As we mentioned before, organization begets organization – so adding these online legal research sites and databases to your toolkit is only going to further empower your firm to drive business and spend time brainstorming rather than doing mindless research. The very same can be said about your case management software that’s used day-to-day.

Ideal Billing Workflow

The purpose of a billing workflow is two-fold: save your firm time and drive the collections process. There is a lot going on in the world and for your firm, if you can save time on non-billable tasks, stay organized, and increase client satisfaction, wouldn’t you want to? Sure it isn’t always easy to adopt new change and break old habits, but if it means increasing your profitability wouldn’t you want to try? 

It’s this simple, technology can help you bill while you work, get your invoices out much faster, and reduce your bottom-line. We’ll show you how.   

Create a billing workflow to increase your efficiency and get you paid faster

Invoice template

The first thing you should do is set up your invoice template. Your template needs to be consistent, clean, on-brand for your firm, and easily digestible for your client. It is important that everyone at the firm is trained on how everything is documented so that there is a level of uniformity that is maintained. Additionally, you should ensure your invoice templates account for all of the critical information that your clients want to see, like who worked on a particular item, what they’ve paid you recently, any money in Trust, ledger details, etc. This is an essential piece of communication for your clients, so it is imperative that you give an adequate amount of detail. Your invoice also contributes to your professional appearance, so make sure that it accurately represents who you are.   

Electronic invoice sharing

First, you need to ask your client for approval to email your invoice rather than sending it via snail mail. It is strongly recommended that clients opt into this agreement in a written way. This will help combat those individuals who claim they never got your bill in the mail. 

The beauty of an electronic invoice is that it will eliminate the time spent on printing, folding, stuffing, and then mailing every invoice you have each month. This is will also help you keep an electronic repository with documentation on who has paid what and who hasn’t, and depending on what platform you use, some systems will give you the ability to track whether the email with the bill was opened by the recipient or if it went unread. 

Legal technology is really opening the door to so many possibilities when it comes to your billing practices. For example, there are some software that will allow you to take advantage of a billing portal where you can provide your clients access to view and pay bills or to access a complete history of bills. Your clients want visibility, and with a portal like this, they're given the autonomy to review what they owe, on their time.

Set-up and apply taxes, interest, and discount rules 

Taxes need to be accounted for in jurisdictions where taxes apply to legal services rendered. Whether this is applied based on where your client lives, or where you’re performing the services, these rates can automatically be applied when you’re creating your invoices. The goal here is to prevent any kind of bottleneck at the end of the month when you’re trying to send your bills out. You could also consider assessing interest on past due invoices to help drive the speed of collections. This will need to be discussed with your client beforehand, it should be drafted up in writing, and something that they can expect if they’re late on a payment. Additionally, some states have found this to not be usury, so please take note of that and do your research as you’re making decisions. Lastly, you can incentivize early payments with discounts. If a client pays within the first 5-7 days of receiving the bill, you could consider offering a loyalty discount. Especially for clients with multiple matters, this will not only get you paid quicker, but it will build trust and establish a stronger partnership.   

Even if your firm chooses to pursue only one of these options, you will still be contributing to the reduction of bottlenecks and ultimately speed up your collections process!

Capture Time as Your Work

Do you want to hear something shocking? According to studies compiled in an ABA blog, if you don’t get your time in by the end of the day, you’re likely to lose 10% of your billable hours. If you don’t get your time recorded the next day, you’ll lose 25%! If you don’t get it in by the end of the week, you’ll lose a full 50%. 

So at this point, you’re either thinking, wow, I have lost my firm a lot of money or wow, I need to figure out more efficient ways to track my time.

If you’re thinking the latter, we’ve got you covered. There are services that address the pain points of being a timekeeper. With today’s technology, you have the ability to bill directly from tasks, phone and text conversations, email, and word documents. You can use multiple timers, you can set time to bill in advance and then adjust the figure accordingly in the pre-bill process. All of these solutions aim to remove the inaccuracies that come from waiting until the end of the month to record all your time. 

Schedule A Billing Cutoff Date 

As you are creating your ideal billing workflow, consider setting a hard billing due date. The most well-run law firms bill on a bi-weekly or monthly basis. When you’re ready to bill, you need to identify a cut-off date. Utilize a firm-wide calendar or practice management system to schedule these dates, so any work that was done between that designated time frame needs to be recorded before that billing cut-off date. This does not mean that the billing stops for any work moving forward, but any work that has happened previously needs to be submitted to allow the person in charge of billing time to run those pre-bills.

Set-Up Automated Payment Emails

The next thing your firm should do is set-up automated payment emails. This communication is a reflection of your firm and should motivate your clients to take action and to pay those bills. The email should not be abrasive, but rather warm and include their invoice and clear descriptions for how payment is accepted. If you have it set-up in your system to pay securely online, then this would be an opportunity to include that link. It should also include contact information if questions arise on the bill. The objective here is to make it as seamless as possible for your clients to pay you.

Run Pre-Bills, Then Batch Billing 

Running pre-bills and batch billing is the ideal, most efficient process. You get all of your information into the system regarding the work and services you’ve performed by that billing cut-off date, then pre-bills are run. Pre-bills allow you to see a preview of your invoices so that you can check for formatting, errors, or omissions without changing matter ledgers. The best part about pre-bills is that they can now be done electronically. Gone are the days where firm administrators have to give their timekeepers different colored pencils to mark up a pre-bill by hand. And did you know that by electronically reviewing and sending your bills, you will speed up your billing by 30%! That is a lot of time!

If you use batch billing, this will allow you to generate all of your invoices at once, in whatever format you designate, in just a few minutes. A lot of powerful billing systems have this feature for you to capitalize on to increase your billing and collections processes. 

Managing Alternative Fees 

In, 8 Tips to Improve Your Firm’s Collection Process Right Now, we talked about alternative fees and why you should set those up on your retainer or fee agreement with your client. If you have a situation for example, where you have a monthly retainer agreement, you can set this up to bill automatically. This is one less thing you would have to take care of. If you have matters that you’re billing hourly and then collecting on or deducting from Trusts and you have a monthly retainer agreement, you can set all these permissions up to draw directly from the bank account, or to automatically charge the credit card on a specified day. For payment plans, this is useful to accommodate your past-due clients or flat fees that cannot be paid all upfront. Sometimes clients do need a little flexibility and this fee arrangement is a great way to show them that your firm can be. If your firm chooses to use a reduced rate as an alternative fee, you want to ensure that you document the rate that deviates from your standard hourly to save you time when you bill and ensure you’re not inaccurately billing your clients. Taking care of these things up front will make running your bills at the end of the month much easier.  

Conclusion

All these steps can help you deliver an exceptional customer experience while also driving your firm’s profitability. If done correctly, billing doesn’t have to be dreadful! Centerbase offers countless tools to serve your law firm, take a free product tour today, and see how!

One of the biggest takeaways from 2020 as a whole has been adjusting to the entirely remote atmosphere of day-to-day operations. Although 77 percent of attorneys regularly work from home according to an American Bar Association survey, there’s no doubt this rapid change of in-office vs. a remote environment has affected the ways things are done at law firms. Specifically, how communication happens. Now, moving forward, it’s time to take charge and find ways to use law firm communication tools that prioritize security and efficiency for everyone involved – including clients.

This operational efficiency will serve everyone better in fostering a client-centered firm that maintains clear, iterative communication, positioning your firm’s reputation better than the competition.

How Remote Work is Changing Internal and Client Communication

Both internal communication and client communication are forever changed. While the outskirts of remote work and the digital age have been creeping in the periphery for a while, it’s the coronavirus that’s ushered in the necessity for fully digital communication and remote work. This has changed mainly for in-office workers such as paralegals and legal assistants. Instead of a quick walk over to your coworker’s desk for a question, you're now forced to send a message or phone call. This extra effort leads to more barriers that can prevent alignment across the team.

For clients, without a central office phone number to call, it’s going to create extra worry about how to get updates on their case. Without clear communication and guidance, your firm’s reputation could suffer. After all, poor communication is among the top reason clients end relationships with law firms. When comparing one bad experience to more than one in terms of communication, the percentage of a client switching to a competitor jumps from 50 to 80 percent.

You really can’t afford to let clients leave on the basis of bad communication – especially since there are so many solutions that can help remedy this prevalent communication problem.

Important Law Firm Communication Tools for Optimizing Efficiency

Stay on task and on schedule with frequent communication tools that ease the burden of sifting through multiple windows and programs. One prominent example, which fans of kanban project management will rejoice at, is Centerbase’s TaskFrame™ inclusion. It’s a convenient visual board that lets you drag and drop important tasks and notify people in real-time.

There are plenty of other law firm communication tools that simplify and prioritize what needs to be done in a secure way. Let’s review them based on category:

Video Conferencing Tools

 

Instant Messaging Tools

Creating one spot to facilitate quick communication helps drive efficiency in the digital, remote world we’re now in. It’s easy to keep a tab open as your staff are checking their inboxes or reading a matter to reply back to a quick inquiry.

In terms of messaging, here are some convenient options that can boost your team’s communication:

Secure Client Portal

Whether you need to send matter deadlines or an update via text message, having a simple client portal where it’s all laid out gives considerable peace of mind to clients. This as a law firm communication tool has value when it comes to tracking and divvying direct communication that helps reassure them you’re on top of status updates and important dates to be mindful of.

24/7 Client Portals Improve Communication

A 24/7 portal fosters an open door policy and can help clients maintain trust with you during the entirety of their case. Plus, instead of calling, clients can send a message instead about any questions they have – alerting you, and empowering staff to get them answers quicker than playing phone tag.

Client Intake Management

Onboarding is always a pain point for firms – to get all the paperwork loaded into the system quickly and accurately is timely and takes away from other revenue-generating tasks. Rather than manually entering all a client’s information once they fill out a form, with Centerbase, their information is automatically populated the instant the form is completed. These intake features boost productivity and efficiency on matters.

Why Client Communication is Important for Your Practice

The better your communication, the more alignment your team will have to stay efficient and keep clients happy. As mentioned earlier, one bad interaction can be the difference between a client going to another firm – so it’s a matter of maintaining a good reputation in order to retain clients. You can have a stellar team of attorneys, but without proper client communication, it will create uncertainty and a lack of trust in the client-attorney relationship. With the advent of digitized and remote teams, your firm must adapt, or you may suffer from a lack of client retention.

How to Improve Adoption of New Communication Technology

So you know the importance of law firm communication tools; now is the implementation step that can feel daunting and overwhelming. Take time to research and plan which of the above services will best suit your firm’s needs, and work on a plan to put it into action if you haven’t already. This will require a virtual or in-person meeting with your team to emphasize the requirements, and why it’s needed. Such a transition can be the difference between your firm flourishing and simply skating by.

What Law Firm Communication Tools Will You Use?

Remote work efficiency is going to take a different form when it comes to office communication. Be sure to be mindful of roadblocks – as this transitionary period from a fully staffed office to a hybrid or even fully remote environment can take time to get used to long-term. These video and instant messaging tools can help bridge the gap and get answers and efficiency better than constant calls or text messages on personal devices. Division between work and home is going to be pivotal to helping your team not feel overwhelmed.

What tools jumped out at you? Be sure to let us know what’s best for your team in the comments. If you have any questions about how a mobile app can help your firm and sync with software securely, send us a message, and let’s chat about how Centerbase can simplify everyday tasks and put more time back in your billing and day-to-day operations.

 

Thanks for tuning in! If you have some time, check out our blog on Everything You Need to Know About Communicating With Your Clients Via Text: The Good and the Bad