Practice management software vendors tout a multitude of features. But how are you supposed to sift through this sea features to figure out which ones will aid your firm? You’re in luck, because I’ve done the legwork of sifting through features for you. In this article, I will dive into some features you should consider when you’re evaluating practice management software. For the sake of word count, I am not going to include billing features in this article.

Before you purchase legal practice management software, it’s important to understand the capabilities that most programs offer, so you can weigh each software’s strengths when narrowing down your selection.

Here is a list of the most common features found in a legal practice management software platform:

1. Matter management

Matter or case management is the base of any legal practice management software. It’s the glue that holds all the matter elements together in the software. In most systems, the matter manager will be your matter dashboard, which provides your staff important fields of information on the case such as Client, Matter Number, Open Date, (Important) Parties and other matter data that you’d like to track easily.

From the matter, you can navigate to all calendar appointments, tasks, documents, emails and parties.

A matter-centric system allows your staff to find all the information they need about a matter in one place. If you put processes in place at your law firm, your staff should know not to save anything matter-related outside of this feature (or program).

2. Firm calendar

A firm calendar helps your staff understand everything that’s going on in the office. Firm calendars can include staff calendars as well as resource calendars such as conference rooms.

The firm calendar makes it easier for staff to schedule attorneys’ time and if synced with Outlook, can reduce the number of clicks it takes to get a new calendar event updated to everyone’s devices.

Finally, if you’re using a firm calendar within your practice management software, you should be able to track the matter that each calendar event is related to. This not only helps with filtering and searching the calendar, but also allows you to pull a list of all the calendar events and deadlines associated with a matter.

3. Task management

In the last 12 months, a good amount of software seekers have asked me about task management. When asked, I tell them that the days of Outlook tasks are over.

Firms are starting to see the benefit of having a centralized, matter-centric task management system that allows them to push out tasks to members of their team and see when the tasks are completed. How could they not?

A lot of the practice management software vendors are adding more powerful task management (kanban boards) thanks to popular programs such as Trello and Asana.

Like calendaring, it’s nice to be able to see all tasks, across all staff, associated with a matter.

4. Contact management

Contact management (or CRM in other industries) is a funny topic in law firms. This is because many attorneys protect their contact and client lists at all costs and do not want them getting out to other members of the firm.

Having a central “rolodex” helps you in a few different ways:

  • You can see how a person is related to all the cases at your firm.
  • You can run more complete conflict checks.
  • You can segment your lists and do targeted marketing.
  • You have all important contact information in one central location that all staff can reference and use.

5. Document management

Every firm tracks documents related to their cases, but there are three different ways I see them do it. Law firms either have a drive on their server with a folder for each matter, keep track of documents in their practice management software, or they have a more powerful document management software (DMS) that they use to track properties, increase searching capabilities, and keep track of versions.

A lot of practice management software will either allow you to host the documents in their system, or connect a cloud-based document repository such as Google Drive/Box/Dropbox or a full-blown DMS such as NetDocuments or iManage.

Overall, you’ll want to have your documents connected to the matters in your practice management software because it will allow you to easily access your documents in the same place that you’re accessing other matter-related information.

6. Document automation

Document automation features allow you to pull pieces of information you’re tracking on a matter directly into a document template, saving you time and reducing the risk of errors (leaving the name of the previous client you used the document for, in the new document).

The main benefit of having document automation features within your practice management software is not having to do duplicate data entry.

If document automation is an important tool to your firm, I’d make sure to speak with the vendor about the exact capabilities the program has to offer. For instance, does their software include an interview format, meaning it has conditional logic to change the number of fields for things like the number of adverse parties or children, or is it a one-to-one translation from the matter fields in the practice management software.

7. Email management

I don’t know many people who enjoy reviewing emails in Outlook. It’s impossible to do with the number of emails people receive in a single day.

Many legal practice management systems will include a way to save emails from Outlook to a matter. Some will require you to drag the email to a folder that will update their practice management system, BCC a specific address or they’ll have a plugin that includes a popup dialog to save the email into the system.

If you’re storing emails in your practice management system, it’s easy to reference the emails later on without having to dig through your inbox.

Finally, understand how the practice management software stores the email once it’s brought into their software. This is important if you’re required to produce these emails. Some software will convert the emails to a special format instead of maintaining the MSG format which includes the metadata.

8. Workflow

Workflow automation is one of my favorite features some practice management platforms offer. When you’re speaking to a vendor, workflow is another feature you want to make sure you fully understand the capabilities of.

For some vendors, workflow means the ability to create tasks for different members of a firm when the case is opened. For other software vendors, workflow means the ability to complete those tasks automatically, reducing the administrative burden on your law firm.

Some of the ways I’ve seen workflows used in law firm practice management software are managing client intake, opening new matters, and AR collections.

9. Client portal

A client portal is one of the newest features to be added to this list as most practice management software vendors have only recently added one to their package.

A client portal allows you to collaborate with other parties involved in a case.

Most portals include:

  • Access to all matter bills and the ability to pay a bill
  • Document sharing/repository capabilities
  • Shared calendar or task list
  • Secure communication

10. Potential new client tracking

Managing a law firm’s potential new clients has become a hot topic for practice management software vendors. Mostly because they want to grow your business to grow their business!

Tracking potential new clients is big for consumer-facing law firms, but if your main practice deals with big corporate clients or insurance defense, it won’t be as important.

If I were to walk into a law firm and ask for a list of their prospective clients, most could not quickly produce a list. If you’re not keeping a record of your prospects, you’re probably not following up with them to close new business.

By tracking your potential clients, you can also begin to track your referral sources and get a true ROI on your marketing efforts.

11. Reporting

Finally, reporting is something you think about when you’re reviewing billing software, but it’s also important for practice management.

Here are some of the topics my clients run reports on from their legal practice management software:

  • Task reporting – due date/completion date
  • Deadline report per matter
  • Referral sources for holiday lists
  • Matter shelf life
  • Matter status report

What if I told you about a technology that would relieve 50% of the administrative burden from your legal operations 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.

1. What is legal 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).

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.

5. Types of workflow found in legal practice management software

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.

6. Legal practice management software that includes workflow

ActionStep

ActionStep is a cloud-based, legal practice management and billing and accounting software. Within ActionStep, you’re able to build a matter-centric automated workflow.

Their tool lets you create different workflows based on the type of matter. The individual workflows are broken into linear stages of a case. Once a matter is moved into a certain phase of the case by a staff member, the workflow can perform tasks such as generating appointments/tasks, creating merged documents or sending emails.

ActionStep also allows you to purchase prebuilt practice packs that have already been set up for you, if you want to plug in and go.

Centerbase

Centerbase is a cloud-based, legal accounting, billing and practice management software. Within Centerbase, you’re able to build advanced automated workflows on any record type.

Each step of a workflow can automatically or manually trigger different events to occur such as creating a record, updating a field, merging a document, sending an email or creating a calendar appointment/task. Workflows in Centerbase are not linear, they instead let you move throughout the workflow based on your needs.

Clio

Clio is a cloud-based, legal practice management and billing software. Within Clio you’re able to create intake workflows.

Clio’s intake workflow allows you to create forms for clients to fill out. Once the form is submitted, internal tasks can be assigned and personalized emails can be sent to the prospective client.

Rocket Matter

Rocket Matter is a cloud-based, legal practice management and billing software. Within Rocket Matter you’re able to create calendaring workflows on matters, based on status updates. These workflows can create tasks assigned to different members of your staff or the workflow can create calendar appointments based on relative dates.

Zapier

As Zapier put it, they’re “the glue that connects thousands of apps.” Their software is used to connect different applications in your technology stack, based on certain events occuring. If you’re using different siloed programs within your firm, this is a great option to integrate your processes and curb duplicate entry.

For instance, if you enter a new potential client in your practice management software, Zapier can create a task in your task management software for someone to follow up and add that contact to a specific marketing bucket within your email marketing software.

7. How to implement workflow software

For most, as soon as you pick a workflow tool, you want to get started right away.

If you can, I suggest taking a slower approach to implementing your new process automation tool. If you’re implementing a new practice management software that includes workflow tools, get into the software first before you start designing workflows.

By delaying your workflow implementation, you’re able to better understand how the new software works. Many firms that jump right into implementing workflow by designing their workflow process around how their previous software worked, which in turn makes the workflow effective.

Also, I recommend building your workflow out in pieces. Start small, use what you’ve built for a few weeks and continue to build from there. It’s common for a flow to sound good during implementation but isn’t practical once you begin using it. If you build your workflow out in pieces, it’s easier to tweak these changes as they come up.

Finally, if you’re new to workflow, work with a legal consultant. There are many in the industry that have spent their careers helping law firms implement workflows and can guide you through designing the right workflow for your firm’s processes.[/vc_column_text][/vc_column][/vc_row]