Breaking up is hard to do — we all know this. And while any divorce or separation can be painful, the stakes are higher when children are involved. Having a parenting plan in place can help with both logistics and healing and, most importantly, ensure that the best interests of your children are kept at the forefront. Stability is important, and a well-drafted parenting plan can help any family achieve it.

In this article, we’ll cover all aspects of parenting plans, from what you should include to how to avoid common pitfalls to specific state law requirements. A good parenting plan will help you and your co-parent navigate new waters and ensure that your children are cared for.

What is a parenting plan?

A parenting plan is just that — a plan for parenting children. Generally, a parenting plan is drafted and put into place in connection with divorce, separation, annulment, or child custody disputes. Parenting plans are sometimes referred to as parenting agreements, custody agreements, or co-parenting plans, and they may or may not be required by a court.

Essentially, a parenting plan is an agreement between parents that outlines the schedule, duties, and responsibilities of each parent. The agreement may contain specific information regarding guardianship, and if there are other parties involved, such as stepparents or grandparents, the parenting plan will likely also cover their rights and role in the child’s life. A parenting plan is drafted by the parents, the attorneys involved in the dispute, or the court itself, and the plan may be created even if not required by the state.

By having a parenting plan in place, you can reduce conflict and friction by setting clear guidelines and expectations of your former partner while also understanding what is expected of you. Parenting plans benefit both parents and children alike, and drafting a good one is important to creating a harmonious co-parenting situation.

What should a parenting plan include?

What is a good parenting plan for one family will be deficient for another, which is to say, it depends. The best parenting plan is one that is specific to your situation. However, there are general components that should be included in all parenting plans. The key is specificity.

Parent and child information

Your parenting plan must include the general information of the parties involved. This includes the names, contact information, and phone numbers of each parent and the names and birthdates of all children.

Legal and physical custody

Legal and physical child custody are perhaps the most important (and contentious) components of a parenting plan. However, it is important that the specifics regarding custody of the child be laid out clearly and agreed to within the arrangement. There are several custody options available:

• Sole legal custody. Sole legal custody means that only one parent has the right to make legal decisions for the child. These major decisions include major choices like education, religion, and medical care.
• Sole physical custody. Physical custody determines both where the child lives and outlines visitation rights for the other parent (oftentimes referred to as the non-custodial parent). A sole physical custody arrangement is where a child lives full-time at just one parent’s home (the custodial parent).
• Joint legal custody. A joint legal custody arrangement provides that parents share decision-making responsibilities as well as the equal authority to make legal decisions for the child.
• Joint physical custody. A joint physical child custody agreement provides that both parents have an equal or significant amount of time with the child and also share joint physical responsibilities.

Custody or visitation schedule

A custody or visitation schedule sets forth when each parent will have parenting time with the child. The specifics of this parenting time schedule will be based upon which legal and physical custody arrangement you and your former partner have settled on. When building this schedule, consider how visitation might work for the non-custodial parent. What will the details of your holiday schedule be? How will birthdays be spent? New Year’s Eve? What about school breaks? Shorter breaks, such as Labor Day or Memorial Day? While some of these things might seem minor, ironing them out in your parenting plan now might help you to avoid conflict later.

Duties and responsibilities

Along with determining your custody or visitation schedule comes establishing the duties and responsibilities of each parent. It’s important to outline each parent’s rights to see their children during day-to-day activities. Do both parents have the right to attend the child’s extracurricular activities? What about pick up from the children’s school, daycare, or childcare on transfer days? Your proposed parenting plan should also state clearly in which situations a parent is required to contact the other, such as in the case of a mental health crisis.

Child support and expenses

Your parenting plan should also detail how you’ll split expenses related to the child. Will one parent provide child support? Who will pay for health insurance or health care? What about private schools? Who will claim the child as a dependent on their taxes? Your parenting plan should lay all of this out clearly and carefully to avoid future contention and to ensure that your child is properly financially supported.

Other specifics

Because your family is unique, you’ll also need to include details specific to your family in your parenting plan. Consider any particular day-to-day decisions that might need to be made as well as anything in connection with special occasions. Maybe spending Mother’s Day, Father’s Day, Easter, or Diwali with your children is particularly important to you. If that’s the case, have it in the plan. Further, if you are separating from a partner because of domestic violence, that is something that should also be addressed in the parenting plan with specificity.

While all of this may seem overwhelming, particularly in the wake of a divorce or separation, the most important thing to keep in mind when writing your parenting plan is your child’s well-being. It’s a balancing act between specificity and flexibility.

What about writing a parenting plan for family court?

The parenting plan that you write specifically for a court should contain all of the core elements discussed above. In fact, in many states, courts prefer that parents submit their own detailed parenting plan (as opposed to having the court order a specific arrangement) because they understand best what their children need.

Typically, you and your former partner will come up with your parenting plan either outside of court or during formal court proceedings. If you are able to come to an agreement outside of court, generally you will present your parenting plan to the court for the judge’s approval. If approved by the court (pending any specific state law concerns (as discussed below)), your parenting plan will become enforceable by law. A parenting plan that is informal, not in writing, and not approved by a court may not be enforceable.

In the situation where parents are unable to agree on a parenting plan, the court may issue a plan for them. To the extent possible, it’s best to avoid a court-ordered parenting arrangement because, as discussed throughout this article, you, as a parent, are in the best position to determine what arrangement will work best for your family. Alternatively, a court may allow each parent to present their own plan. The judge will then listen to each plan and pick one (likely with adjustments). If only one parent presents a plan, it’s likely that the court will adopt that plan. So it’s important to develop your own parenting plan and to do so thoughtfully.

Though it will vary from state to state and judge by judge, when assessing a parenting plan, courts will typically consider the following factors:

• The child’s age and maturity: If the child is old enough, the court may take the child’s preferences into consideration
• Each parent’s capacity to care for the child, including financial ability as well as physical, mental, and emotional ability
• Each parent’s proximity to important aspects of the child’s life, including schooling and other organizations, as well as proximity to extended family
• Each parent’s custody preferences

You may want to consult a family law lawyer to help you draft your parenting plan, particularly if your divorce or separation has been contentious. There are specific state law concerns that you may want legal advice on, and a law firm will be able to help you. Alternatively, many parents find it helpful to use a parenting plan template or worksheet, many of which are available online. These resources allow you to customize your parenting plan to cover what is most important to you and your family.

The more harmonious and detailed your parenting plan, the smoother co-parenting will go for you and your former partner. Court wants to see how your parenting plan will create a stable and loving environment for your children.

What mistakes should be avoided when writing a parenting plan?

Your parenting plan is about your children. One of the biggest mistakes parents make when determining their plan is to put their own needs ahead of their children’s. As discussed throughout this article, the best parenting plan is one that is agreed to by both parents and focused on the best interests of the child.

Other common mistakes include creating a parenting plan that is too vague. This generally leads to disharmony between co-parents and the need for regular day-to-day negotiation, which isn’t fun for anyone. The terms of the parenting agreement should be laid out clearly and specifically. Specifics that are regularly left out include forgetting to specify what happens when one parent wants to relocate and failing to include specifics on tax deduction issues.

Additionally, there should be a provision about how to handle changes to the parenting plan. As time passes and your children grow older, it’s inevitable that revisions will need to be made. Make sure that you follow the proper legal process as set forth in your parenting agreement for these changes—doing so will only protect you.

Do parenting plans differ from state to state?

Though there are specific laws that differ state by state, the core elements of your parenting plan will remain the same regardless of the state in which it’s drafted or enforced. You will always want your parenting plan to be specific, clearly drafted, and legally enforceable. However, the way in which it is drafted and becomes legally enforceable will differ in each state.

Some states require that specific information be included in a parenting plan. For example, in Arizona, a joint legal custody agreement requires that a written parenting plan include a way to resolve conflicts about custody and parenting time; additionally, Arizona also requires that certain language stating that joint custody does not necessarily mean equal parenting time to be included in the parenting plan. Further, many states require that a parenting plan be signed before a witness or notary public to be enforceable, while others do not.

The key is knowing and following your specific state custody guideline when drafting your parenting plan. If you and the other parents live in different states, this gets a bit murkier, and it’s likely to your benefit to consult a family law lawyer. You can use this resource to start considering more specifics.

Protect your peace of mind

Divorce and separation are hard. By drafting and implementing a well-thought-out and complete parenting plan now, you’ll protect your peace of mind later. Remember what’s most important during the process, and be sure to take advantage of all resources available to you. This is an opportunity to start defining your new family.

You want your law firm to thrive, not just survive. Profitability management is the best way to ensure that your firm stays at the top of its game both in the short- and long-term.

But increasing profitability is no small task. It requires a complete understanding of your law firm’s current performance in all of its functions with an eye toward the future. Profitability fine-tuning will help your law firm figure out how to bring the most effective combination of resources together to address clients’ needs and to do it at the right price.

In this blog, we’ll cover how you can raise your firm’s bottom line, including steps you can take and how technology can lend you a hand. But first, let’s review the basic concepts behind law firm profitability.

Where does profit come from, and what is law firm profitability?

Profit and revenue are different. You know this, and we know this. Yet the terms are always conflated when it comes to law firms. While boosting your firm’s revenue through things like lead generation is great for short-term growth and can lead to an increased profit over time, increasing your firm’s net profit is the only sure way to be successful in the long term.

Think about law firm profitability in simple terms. Revenue is the money your firm receives from clients for legal services rendered. The matter cost is just that: the cost to your law firm in connection with a matter, including attorney and staff time and client costs paid. You subtract matter costs from revenue to get your firm’s gross profit.

Revenue – Matter Cost = Gross Profit

But we’re not done yet! To figure out your law firm’s net profit, you must also subtract overhead costs such as office space, supplies, attorney bar fees, and the like.

Gross Profit – Overhead = Net Profit

If your law firm is increasing revenue without increasing net profit, it means you have room for improvement. For example, your firm might acquire new clients and thus have increased monthly revenue. But if your firm also needs to hire new lawyers and paralegals to deliver client service and expand office space to house them, your profit margin might not be as high as you expected. The key to increasing net profit is a balancing act: maximizing revenue and minimizing unnecessary costs.

What financial statements and key metrics are useful for measuring profitability?

Measuring profitability requires taking full stock of your law firm: the good, the bad, and the unprofitable. As Covid-19 continues to loom and the market remains unstable, measuring profitability and setting a clear path forward is more important than ever. Your firm needs to measure in order to manage. Below are some key metrics for your firm to track and consider.

Billable hours: Utilization and realization rates

You already know the virtues of monitoring your law firm’s key performance indicators (KPIs). KPIs reflect your firm’s success in achieving certain goals with forward-thinking data collection used to analyze productivity. Monitoring KPIs keeps your firm accountable to itself. This valuable information allows your firm’s management to make informed decisions on hourly rates, hiring, and expansion.

When it comes directly to profitability, tracking certain KPIs like utilization and realization rates is important. You calculate utilization by dividing the total billable hours of a timekeeper by their total working hours. This percentage is subject to fluctuation throughout the year based on workload. While monthly tracking is a best practice, yearly tracking might prove a more useful metric for employment and bonus considerations.

You calculate realization by dividing the total number of billable hours invoiced by the number of billable hours worked. Essentially, realization rates measure the difference between recorded time and the percentage of that time paid by clients. This measure is an accurate indicator of your law firm’s profitability. For example, if you billed a client for 20 hours of work and the client only paid for 10 hours, your work realization was only 50% (and it’s probably time to set up a call with this client to discuss payment).

While tracking KPIs is important to making informed decisions, manual tracking is time-consuming and subject to human error. Instead, we suggest using the wonders of tech and reporting tools to give your firm the metrics it needs and to help your legal professionals track their billable time.

Nonbillable hours

A simple and direct way to boost profitability is to limit your attorneys’ nonbillable hours. Some non-billable time is unavoidable, but much of it can be outsourced and given to non-attorney staff as part of their normal workload.

Delegation is a key management skill. Encouraging your junior lawyers to delegate their nonbillable tasks is a great way to help them build their skills so that they can focus their time, energy, and efforts on billable legal work. Having your timekeepers focus on high-value work will benefit your firm’s profitability.

Cash flow

Positive cash flow is important to keep your firm afloat. Thankfully, it can be managed with forethought and planning. Assessing your law firm’s financial health is the first step. Consider your firm’s overhead costs like fixed expenses (e.g., rent and utilities) and fluctuating costs (e.g., payroll) and determine any opportunities to reduce those expenses.

It’s also important to project your firm’s expected client revenue in both the short- and long-term. These steps should be followed by establishing a data-driven cash flow forecast. With the right practice management software, you’ll quickly generate billing and accounting reports so you can understand your incoming receivables, study where you’re making and losing money, and compare your firm’s cash flow over time.

Collections

Another way to increase profitability is to get paid. But it’s not that simple, right? We all know that billing and collections are often among the most dreaded aspects of operating a law firm.

One way to ease the frustration is to make it easier for clients to pay you by setting up a system that accepts different payment options, including online payments, to streamline your firm’s invoicing and collection processes. Following up on unpaid invoices is also necessary. Your firm did the work and deserves to be compensated properly for it. By improving your firm’s collections process, you’ll also boost profitability.

How can my law firm increase profitability?

This article's central question is how to increase your law firm’s profitability. There are many ways to start the process, but the best way is to do so intelligently. The most profitable firms in the legal industry are the ones that keep tabs on their key metrics and use data to drive their decision-making. Here are a few things to think about and ways to get started with maximizing your firm’s profitability.

Reducing expenses

Reducing expenses is a simple place to start. Begin with reviewing your law firm’s spending over the last quarter. Are there things (e.g., subscriptions or online services) your firm is paying for that you aren’t using or that you could live without? With the increase in work-from-home arrangements, it might be that your firm can give up some office space, and hopefully, your firm is also using the right integrations and tech to free up cabinet space. Another way to reduce monthly expenses is to require clients to pay filing fees in advance. This frees up cash for you and means less waiting to get reimbursed. By reducing overhead, your firm will directly increase net profit.

Productivity reporting

We discussed KPIs above, but there is much more to financial and productivity reports for legal practices. With the right reporting tools, you can drill into how your attorneys and staff use their time and predict future billing based on historical data. Your law firm should generate and review attorney productivity reports a few times a year and certainly in connection with performance evaluations. Regular monitoring of this information will allow your firm’s management to identify problems along the way rather than waiting until the end of the year or when the issue boils over.

Monthly productivity reporting is also helpful for tracking matter timelines. With this information at your fingertips, your firm can identify matters that have been sitting stagnant in every practice area, address the causes of the delay, and rectify the issue while also strengthening the client relationship.

Increased timekeeper efficiency and billing

Your lawyers are your firm’s biggest asset. The more efficiently they bill, the higher your firm’s profitability. Removing any hurdles to billing and promoting best billing practices will serve your firm’s bottom line. Concurrent timekeeping is key. Your law firm should encourage its attorneys and staff to enter time daily and release monthly or as otherwise required. At the end of a billing cycle, your law firm should review its billing processes to evaluate the timeliness of entries and submission of the bill to the client. With regular evaluations, your administrators can fine-tune your firm’s billing procedures to maximize the timely receipt of payments, increasing client satisfaction and reducing the risk of write-offs.

How can legal technology help increase firm profitability?

Using tools and legal tech can transform a law practice’s net profitability. Tech can help keep costs low through workflow and document automation, which frees up your lawyers and staff to work on billable matters to bring in more revenue. The right legal tech will help your firm simplify nonbillable tasks like client intake, practice management, billing and collections, and time tracking.

With more time for billable work, your firm can raise its revenues. And with the right tech that offers a streamlined experience and integrations, your firm will minimize its use of subscription services and administrative time and thus minimize your overhead costs. The result is the perfect recipe for increased profitability.

“Do more with less.” This oxymoron of a saying seems to imply that lawyers have a Costco-like quality; there’s always a way that they can commoditize their work and charge less for it. This concept is anathema to the legal industry.

So, while clients have expectations that lawyers should deliver more and more value to them, meeting those expectations can seem impossible to a law firm with traditional staffing structures, billing protocols, and technology.

The good news is that there is a way to accomplish the same legal work more efficiently: by building disciplined, repeatable legal processes that you can apply to every matter to keep budgets and workflows in check. This process improvement, in a nutshell, is legal project management (sometimes abbreviated as LPM).

What is legal project management?

Legal project management is the “application of project management principles and practices to enhance the delivery of legal services,” according to the International Institute of Legal Project Management. Susan Raridon Lambreth, the chair and founder of the LPM Institute and the founder and chair of the LawVision Group, suggests, “LPM is what lawyers already do, just more systematically and using the language of business.” (For more of Lambreth’s insights, check out The Power of Legal Project Management: A Practical Handbook, published by the ABA.)

To put it more simply, legal project management is a structured way to manage legal projects based on consistent, repeatable processes. A “project” is the creation of a product or result with a finite beginning and end. For example, a project may be a lawsuit, a merger or acquisition, a regulatory filing, an investigation, or a contract.

Typically, the project management process consists of five steps.

1. Defining the scope

In this initial stage of project management, you identify the goals of the project, which will serve as the guiding star for all of your work. So, during intake, you’ll need to gather information from your client to understand their expectations for your work. You’ll also assign the primary lawyer or other person serving as the project manager for the matter.

When the scope is clearly defined, you can better set the initiative’s milestones, timeline, budget, and staffing. You should also clarify with the client what the deliverables will be.

2. Establishing the project plan

With the project’s goals firmly established, you can define which tasks and activities you need to accomplish to achieve your desired outcome. Start by dividing the project into phases punctuated by milestones. Then you break down each phase into specific tasks and activities. Finally, you prioritize and schedule the tasks.

The schedule should be detailed, setting the starting and ending dates for each task and for the entire project. Work backward to develop the schedule from the deadline or due date for the project.

This step is when you also assign the work to the appropriate people, whether lawyers, paralegals, support staff, or third-party providers. If your deadline is tight, you might need to retain additional personnel. A checklist for types of work that should be outsourced can accelerate this process. Once you’ve chosen your team members, clarify the responsibilities of everyone assigned to the project.

Finally, set the overall budget using estimated costs for each task and activity. Be sure to get quotes from any third-party vendors when developing the budget to avoid surprises on the back end.

Once you’ve created a project plan, you can use it as a template and checklist for future projects.

3. Carrying out the legal work

Kick-off the project with an initial meeting that reviews the expectations of every legal team member as well as the timeline and budget. Thereafter, set a regular cadence of meetings to check in on the project’s progress. The frequency of meetings depends on your deadline: you’ll meet more frequently for urgent projects with a short fuse and weekly or monthly for longer-term projects.

At each meeting, the project manager should review the team’s progress against the project plan. But you’ll need to do more than review the project’s status. It’s also critical to review key performance indicators to make sure the project is on time and on budget. For example, you may want to run a budget-to-variance report to understand whether spending is on track.

You’ll also need to monitor the project for any risks to its progress. For instance, you might identify bottlenecks in your processes that you need to resolve or other issues that might cause delay.

If any changes in scope, schedule, budget, or people are necessary, you’ll need to revisit the project plan. Often, new information will surface and require adjustments, considering their effect on downstream activities and tasks. If the changes necessitate pushing back the timeline, you should communicate the adjustments to your team, client, and other stakeholders immediately.

4. Evaluating the outcome and reviewing the process

When you’ve achieved your goal, you aren’t done yet. Review the final product with your client and receive their feedback. Their input will be invaluable if you’ll be completing similar projects in the future.

This is also the time to share any lessons learned with your team. You may need to adjust the timing or scheduling of activities in the future. If you had to adjust budgets and responsibilities midstream, make a note for future projects. Consider what went well and what didn’t, how accurate your original project plan was, and how well the team worked together.

What do legal project management roles do?

Legal project managers take full responsibility for planning, managing, and executing legal projects. They have day-to-day oversight of the entire project plan, from personnel to budgets to schedules.

Accordingly, project managers really need a special closet to house all of the hats they wear! Here are just a few examples of the work they do:

• Oversee the project team and coordinate their work
• Establish and manage the project budget
• Set and manage the activity and task schedule
• Review the project work for accuracy and completion
• Adjust the project plan to changing circumstances
• Keep the team and client apprised of the project’s status and timeline

Most law firms don’t have the budget to hire a project management professional. Instead, they may bring in a specialist to lead a legal project management training session for their team, then assign a lawyer or paralegal with project management skills to handle projects.

What are the benefits of implementing legal project management?

Legal project management can deliver a host of benefits for both clients and law firms.

On the client-side, more matters conclude on time and on budget. Throughout the project, there is greater transparency, so clients can jump in to address the course of a project and ensure legal spending stays in check. There are also fewer surprises for clients at the end of projects.

For law firms, the benefits include these and many more:

• More efficiency because a project plan helps law firms make smarter use of their resources and better use of their time
• More accurate forecasting because the more projects your firm completes, the better you’ll be at estimating your budget, timeline, and chances of success
• Higher profitability because there are fewer write-offs and write-downs since you’ve thought through the budget up front and kept the client apprised throughout the matter
• Stronger client relationships because clients are happy with the work, leading to more referrals
• Lower stress because lawyers don’t have to fret about unanticipated risks and costs or about losing clients because of cost overruns

What are some ways my firm can implement legal project management into already established processes?

Implementing legal project management can seem like a heavy lift — especially for a profession that’s change-averse. But it’s easy to start implementing project plans, templates, and checklists for recurring types of projects.

For example, law firms that handle mergers and acquisitions can likely develop a series of checklists and tools that prepare legal teams for every transaction. The team can develop a task list to ensure nothing falls through the cracks if they’re handling an acquisition. They can also create a template for a kickoff meeting agenda to ensure they touch on every important topic for the project team, from deal documents to timetables and communication protocols. Finally, they can use a post-mortem checklist after the deal closes to debrief, capture lessons learned, and improve the process for next time.

Litigation matters are also a good way to start testing out legal management principles. Law firms that have agreed to alternative fee arrangements can apply legal project management principles to ensure they adhere to their budget. Firms can use checklists for e-discovery processes, including data identification and collection, to make sure that no stone is left unturned. They can also use project management tools to assign the right level of resources, whether attorneys or paralegals, to the right task to deliver high-quality legal work products.

How can legal practice management software help with project management?

Legal practice management is complex. Fortunately, legal practice management software has features built right in that are designed to tackle much of the work of project managers.

• Task management: Practice management software can help you assign tasks to team members, establish a list of to-dos, and set a schedule. It can also show you the status of projects and notify you when a team member completes a task.
• Calendaring: Software with a calendaring feature lets you schedule important deadlines in your project plan.
• Document management: Teams can use document management features to build a central repository where you can corral, categorize, and edit project documents.
• Collaboration and communication: Software with a built-in chat system makes it easy for team members to collaborate in real-time on matters.
• Work balancing: A work balancing report helps avoid overloading your resources so they avoid burnout and can deliver the highest-quality work on time.
• Work prioritization: A dashboard helps you understand what tasks are the most urgent so you can allocate resources to them.
• Time tracking: Team members can enter time through a mobile app or in integrations with their Word applications, so you can see how much work has been billed against a task or activity budget in real-time.
• Reporting: Built-in and customizable reporting show a variety of important metrics at a glance, including the work billed against a budget and team member productivity.

Through proactive planning, risk management, budgeting, and resource allocation, legal project management helps law firms streamline the work they do on legal matters. Applying disciplined legal project management also helps lawyers build greater consistency around law firm processes, which, in turn, delivers greater predictability, meeting client expectations regarding cost and experience. Combine these benefits of legal project management with technology, and lawyers can achieve their growth and client satisfaction goals faster and with less effort than ever before.

Your law firm’s matter management systems matter. In fact, they’re the lifeblood of your law firm.

It’s taxing to try to maintain multiple manual systems to track all of the details about your law practice. Why subscribe to several platforms to manage different aspects of a matter — from document management to practice management and client intake solutions — when you could just pay for one that can do it all? Why risk noncompliance with a time-consuming, manual approach to tracking all of your case details and documents?

Why not look to tech to help achieve operational efficiency by moving to an all-inclusive legal technology platform?

The future of the legal industry lies squarely in innovative tech solutions that integrate matter data with essential client intake, client service, billing, and legal operations details. Upgrading your firm’s matter management systems will help your firm keep humming along — and we don’t mean that annoying buzz in your head from constant worrying about what work hasn’t been done or what information you don’t have at your fingertips.

So, where should you get started? Fortunately, this guide on matter management systems can walk you through the benefits of matter management and help you start moving forward to improve your practice.

What is matter management?

Put simply, matter management is overseeing all of the business processes of a law firm for individual matters. It may sound straightforward, but it’s anything but.

Matter management encompasses the ways that your law firm reviews, tracks, and administers data, documents, emails, meetings, tasks, all-important deadlines, statutes of limitations, filing requirements, client records, billing, financials, and more for each and every matter. It involves managing both internal and external processes and information.

Your firm’s matter management systems track each aspect of the lifecycle of a matter. For example, your firm’s matter management system might track a complex legal case with multiple parties and claims, keeping track of expert witnesses and filing deadlines. If your firm has multiple practice areas, your matter management system might also analyze the productivity of various practice groups and which matters have the most time billed and by whom.

In essence, matter management solutions keep a finger on the pulse of your firm and ensure it remains steady.

Why does my firm need a matter management system?

Effective legal technology solutions, including legal matter management software, are crucial to every law office. There is no other way to sift through and manage the chaos. The more time you spend integrating and updating your firm’s matter management processes, the less sifting through spreadsheets and stacks of paper you’ll have to do. Your legal operations professionals can leverage matter management software to streamline almost every aspect of the firm and allow your lawyers to get back to lawyering.

A firm may bring in hundreds or even thousands of new cases every year. Your legal operations teams need to have the tools to properly manage those matters, and your lawyers must be able to keep track of the intricacies of them all. It sounds like a lot, and it is. Proper matter management might be the most important function of your law firm: it’s how your firm stays afloat.

Imagine an integrated digital workspace where your legal operations professionals can run the firm’s daily operations, manage matters and projects, and collaborate seamlessly across practice groups and clients. The good news is that this magical digital wonderland exists.

While this guide focuses on matter management systems, it’s important to also consider your firm’s case management systems and how technology might help you optimize them too.

Our recommendation? A comprehensive, one-stop-shop technology solution that can handle it all.

What features and capabilities should I look for in matter management software?

If you’re looking for a way to simplify your team’s workload and handle your firm’s matters more efficiently, we’ve got you covered. Managing the lifecycle of a matter in a single, integrated system is the key to suffering fewer headaches while searching for information as well as less duplicative data entry. We recommend streamlining operations by moving to a technology solution with a range of dynamic capabilities so it will become your firm’s single source of truth.

Enhanced collaboration and knowledge sharing

Your law firm is a team, and legal teams work best when they’re able to collaborate seamlessly. Your matter management system should work to enhance teamwork and eliminate friction in communication.

Features like shared task lists and comprehensive calendaring systems boost organization and make sure your lawyers never miss another deadline. It’s especially helpful when your matter management system seamlessly integrates with your calendar continuously, such as with Microsoft 365, so you’re always on top of your schedule. And the most advanced systems can automatically populate deadlines in your calendar based on court rules. All you have to do is choose your jurisdiction, and your deadlines will appear on the appropriate date.

Additionally, matter management software can make it easier for legal professionals in your firm and corporate legal departments to collaborate on legal documents by providing access to shared documents with the ability to review and compare previous drafts. These features and more, like keeping track of the contact information for all parties, make working with outside counsel and other external partners more effortless and faster.

Some platforms also reduce the tedium of your email inbox with chat features. Real-time conversations help you get work done faster because you can get answers to pressing questions or immediate feedback on the work you’re doing. To make sure your team members are up to date, you can mention them and send an immediate pop-up notification. You can also keep track of your conversations by matter rather than going on an endless hunt for the needle in the haystack of your inbox.

Increased visibility through comprehensive reporting

Your matter management tech should do more than just track billable hours and generate invoices. It should also create comprehensive, usable reports to give you critical insights into the functioning of your law firm.

The alternative is sorting through spreadsheets and hundreds of emails from various timekeepers and case files to locate essential data, reconcile gaps and inconsistencies, and then manually create reports, which will cost you both time and money. Reports generated in your matter management system make it easy for your firm to break down spending, gaining visibility into each legal practice area and individual biller. With this information, your business team can analyze budgets, set realistic pricing, and forecast future needs. More reporting through an integrated matter management system means greater access to data and gives you deeper insights into the health of your firm.

Improved savings in costs and time

Time is money, and at law firms, this saying proves even truer. The minutes that timekeepers spend on time-consuming administrative tasks are minutes they aren’t spending on valuable client matters.

By centralizing your firm’s matter management system, your lawyers can access the documents and information they need more quickly and efficiently, serving both your clients’ purposes and your firm’s bottom line. A better matter management system allows your firm to track filing deadlines and statutes of limitations, helping you meet deadlines as well as avoid malpractice claims and compliance risks. Automated reminders about impending filing deadlines sure beat those sticky notes that are likely to get buried on your desk or fall off your computer.

Tech also allows your law firm to manage all types of costs proactively. When you centralize matter data, you improve your visibility into your workload as well as your costs. And you can wind up optimizing the allocation of your resources, which can help you save your clients — and your firm — money.

Effective matter delegation

Your law firm has a lot of moving parts. Matter management software will help you keep track of those parts by assisting in effectively delegating and keeping track of those delegations, both internal and external.

You can create cross-functional workflows within your matter management system to assign tasks to your team members, including other lawyers, paralegals, service providers, and outside counsel, thus increasing efficiency and reducing the possibility of errors. The right software can help your firm oversee any external stakeholders working on a case, such as local counsel or expert witnesses. And general counsel will really enjoy the real-time visibility they have into matters and their timelines and budgets as well, improving their client experience.

Increased security

Your law firm has an ethical obligation to protect client data and numerous incentives to protect its own. Firms considering a cloud-based matter management system for the first time may feel some trepidation — it’s a big transition, with lots of moving parts to coordinate.

The long and short of it is that cloud-based matter management systems offer your law firm improved security and compliance practices for both data and document handling because that’s their key focus. However, not all cloud-based legal service providers are created equal.

When choosing a cloud-based solution for matter management, look for a variety of features, including physical security measures, certifications, disaster recovery and business continuity plans, user authentication and authorization, infrastructure security, and data ownership. Although you won’t be able to see all of these security features, they’ll be vigilantly safeguarding your firm against threats every minute of every day.

Stronger automation and more streamlined workflows

Sound matter management tech will give your firm the gift of automation so you don’t need to keep reinventing the wheel. This is particularly helpful when it comes to opening and managing matters. Without a standardized template, it’s hard for a law practice to both establish and enforce matter standardization, which is the linchpin of enhanced efficiency.

With an integrated matter management system, your firm’s administrator won’t need to manually move data between systems, reducing the risk of human error. Tech will help to automate matters from open through close and can automatically assign or complete tasks for you while also keeping information up to date using a workflow system (and freeing up your lawyers for billable activities). It’s also easy to keep clients in the loop with automatic updates. Automation in matter management is your friend.

How can my law firm get started with matter management?

Lacking a reliable matter management solution can have a ripple effect throughout a matter’s lifecycle — and the profitability and productivity of your timekeepers and the entire firm. That’s why it’s important to start putting the proper systems in place to open matters effectively and track them throughout their lifecycle with customized reporting.

Centerbase matter management puts everything you need to know about every matter at the touch of a button. And what’s better is that you’ll be able to stop worrying about details that you’re forgetting or those sticky notes cluttering your desk with tidbits of information. Not only will a comprehensive matter management system like Centerbase serve both your firm’s and your clients’ needs, but it will also help you get out of the office in time for dinner and help you get a better night’s sleep.

In short, Centerbase can help your law firm reach its full potential with better matter management — with just one simple move to a comprehensive, easy-to-use technology solution. Sign up for a free demo on our legal matter management software and learn more about how Centerbase can help you streamline your firm’s operations.

If you’re the administrator of a small or midsize law firm, you’re probably wearing a lot of hats. In fact, you probably have a closet full!

You’re overseeing the bookkeeping, ordering supplies, managing the budget, and running payroll. You’re handling equipment and facilities issues. You’re creating and implementing policies and procedures and setting long-term goals. You’re probably also handling the human resources side of the firm for non-lawyers, including recruiting, onboarding, training, and managing administrative assistants and paralegals.

In short, if it’s part of day-to-day legal services operations, and it doesn’t involve the practice of law, it lands on your desk. (There is a desk somewhere under all of the piles, right?) That means when your firm’s leadership team wants to find new ways to increase efficiency and drive law firm profitability, those tasks are automatically yours too.

It’s a daunting task, no doubt. But fortunately, there are legal technology solutions that you can implement quickly so you can demonstrate progress toward your goal. Here’s a list of typical efficiency problems that plague law practices along with some suggestions for how to solve them:

Getting paid by clients

Legal billing is the lifeblood of a law firm. Because it’s so important, it often becomes a tedious process with many steps and approvals. But just because billing is critical doesn’t mean it has to be cumbersome.

Law firms can take the pain out of the billing process with an automated system that streamlines the billing workflow. Look for an e-billing system that allows lawyers to edit bills online — not in hard copy — to avoid the need to print and reprint or track versions of pre-bills. A system that allows reviewers to see previous markups means that bills are approved in less time and eliminates friction in the approval process, getting money into your accounts faster.

Tracking time

No one likes to measure their life in minute-by-minute increments, and lawyers are no exception. But, as you know, time tracking is essential if your firm wants to stay out of the red.

While you can’t eliminate the need for billable hours, you can take some of the pain out of the time-tracking process. Lawyers often don’t record all their time. Sometimes that’s because they’re writing down what they’re doing and don’t remember to note down every detail. Other times that’s because they’re on the go and don’t have their computer open, so they can’t recall the work they did when they get around to recording it later.

To make it easier for your timekeepers to track every billable minute, choose a billing system with a timesheet that integrates with the technology you use. Look for a platform that integrates with your firm’s software, such as tracking the emails that lawyers send in Outlook or the documents they work on in Word. And some platforms have mobile apps that automatically record phone calls, texts, and calendared appointments as billable events.

Spending too much time on administrative tasks

Lawyers regularly complain that their administrative workload takes too much of their billable time. In addition to billing, lawyers are spending too much time on non-legal work such as looking up matter information for clients and tracking deadlines. It’s difficult to manage a matter when information is stored in hard copy as well as in multiple systems online.

A matter management system can keep every matter detail in one place, from details for parties to all documents, emails, meetings, and calls. The most comprehensive platforms can track the outcomes of calls and meetings and the current budget status of a matter. They can also alert lawyers about upcoming milestones and deadlines. Additionally, they provide a searchable place to store notes about matters, substantially reducing the time it takes to find pertinent case information.

Improving the client intake process

There’s a lot of competition in the legal industry. The firm that responds faster to the inquiry of a prospective client is often the firm that wins the business. Two out of three prospective clients say their decision to hire a firm is influenced by a firm’s responsiveness to their first contact. And when clients are impressed from the get-go, they’re much more likely to stay with your firm.

But manual intake processes create roadblocks to bringing in new matters. And all too often, form submissions from your website may not be a priority in an overflowing inbox.

An online onboarding process can expedite the conflict check process and ensure that you get the right information in the right hands, so you can contact a new prospect more quickly. Some platforms allow you to customize the intake form. Then not only can you route the collected information to the appropriate staff, but you can also automate workflows. This way, you ensure that no steps are missed, assign and follow up on tasks, track the progress of the matter, and smooth the intake process for the client.

Keeping clients informed

Clients often complain that they don’t know the status of their matters. When lawyers don’t keep in touch, clients get frustrated. They call and email your firm’s lawyers, asking them to give them an update. That means lawyers have to drop the work they’re doing and comb through their files to inform their clients. And that means extra frustration for your lawyers too.

A system can make it easier for your lawyers to remember to send emails—without the need for the clutter of sticky notes or calendar reminders. Matter management systems can automate client emails whenever a matter moves to a new stage, so your clients are always in the loop. And they can also meet your clients’ expectations for 24/7 digital access to their case information via a client portal. Happier clients have stronger ties to the firm and are more likely to refer new business your way.

Ensuring your legal professionals are busy and engaged

In this environment, it’s critical to make sure your people are happy at work. That means they can’t be stressed with too much work, nor can they be twiddling their thumbs at their desk. Striking the right balance means you need insight into their workload and productivity.

A platform that offers productivity tracking and timekeeper budgeting tools can give you critical insights into your team’s upcoming assignments and deadlines. You’ll be able to see how much time people are billing on certain tasks and projects. Perhaps most importantly, you’ll be able to ensure that tasks are being distributed fairly throughout the firm and reallocate work to avoid overload.

Generating standard documents

Though no two matters are alike, they still have many documents in common. From retainer agreements to settlement agreements and from requests for production to interrogatories, there’s often no need to recreate the wheel.

A document management system can make it easy to get even greater value from work product by organizing it for creation and reuse. You can set up templates and auto-generate documents with client information built in. Or you can search for a prior work product for a client or a similar project that you can repurpose for a new matter.

Managing collections

Hounding clients about overdue bills is a serious pain point for many firms. Accounting or billing staff have to send manual reminders and call clients who are overdue.

An automated billing system can send out reminders once a bill is overdue and then periodically until the client pays off the balance, eliminating that headache from your billing team’s workflow.

Simplifying reports

Law firm managers and partners often want quick access to reports so they can make decisions. Pulling together a report that collates all the data and metrics they need is easier said than done when you have multiple systems that store firm accounting and matter data separately. Before you can create a report, you have to gather, sort, and compile that information into a readable form.

But a system that integrates accounting, billing, and practice management software enables you to assemble comprehensive reports at the push of a button. Better yet, the right system will give your firm’s leadership team a dashboard view that offers real-time insights into how the firm is performing.

How can practice management software help improve a law firm’s operational efficiency?

Modern law firms would love to hire a professional to drive innovation, efficiency, and profitability within their firm. But for many small firms, that just isn’t in the budget. Instead, they have to look for other ways to improve case management and your law firm’s productivity. Enter legal tech management tools: namely, practice management systems.

While a practice management platform can’t replicate all the functions of a legal operations guru, its automation of time-consuming tasks and simplification of workflows can take some of the burden off a law firm administrator’s plate.

A practice management platform that integrates matter management, timekeeping, calendaring, billing, accounting, reporting, document management, and more in one system can serve as a resource for quickly increasing a law firm’s efficiency. And, in turn, it can help you improve your law firm’s bottom line, alleviate the bottlenecks of manual work, and help turn your law firm into a pillar of productivity.

Benjamin Franklin famously said that “nothing is certain except death and taxes.” If he had been talking about law firms, he would have also added: “and time entry.”

We all know how tedious and frustrating time entry is, but it’s, unfortunately, a necessary evil for nearly all lawyers at firms. Your law firm must bill to be paid.

The key to minimizing the frustration and allowing the lawyers at your firm to cut back on nonbillable time so they can get to higher-value work is to implement legal tracking software that actually works. Your firm administrators and bank account will also thank you for the heightened efficiency and accuracy.

As always, we have you covered on how to start making changes for the better.

Why are attorneys hesitant to change how they’re tracking their time?

Change is hard! Many attorneys, particularly more senior attorneys, are reluctant to modify their time-tracking ways. “Why fix what isn’t broken?” they might ask as they keep handwritten time-entry diaries.

There are a number of reasons why lawyers stick with tried-and-true ways of manual time recording: simplicity, efficiency, and accuracy. We understand that convincing holdouts to stop tracking time offline isn’t an easy task, but we promise you that it’s easier than deciphering your legal professionals’ handwritten scribbles and going through call logs and calendars to manually enter their time at the end of each billing period.

Simplifying the time-tracking process and offering your attorneys a streamlined, integrated time-tracking tool may help to convert even your most adamant holdouts. At a minimum, it will make the process easier and less painful for administrators and staff who assist with time entry in your billing system.

What are some common time-tracking mistakes that attorneys make?

For lawyers, time is always of the essence. But when you have court in the morning, a filing for another client in the afternoon, and a conference call for yet another client in the evening, simultaneously tracking, keeping, and entering time understandably slips.

The real issue is the culmination of those slips and delays that results, usually, in the attorney and their admin playing detective at the end of the week (or worse, month) and trying to piece together the story of their billable time from fragments in your legal billing software. This method almost always results in underbilling and loss of productivity (not to mention stress, frustration, and other headaches too).

Other offenses include simply not tracking time accurately or efficiently, which is a problem that tends to plague junior attorneys. They might lose track of the time spent on phone calls, forget to start their timer, forget to bill for time emailing or texting with clients, or underbill for a meeting that went long. These attorneys are trying their best but need a little help on the back end with better tech.

Luckily, all of these mistakes are easily remedied with time-tracking software and integrations.

How can legal technology help my law firm track time more efficiently?

We’re so glad that you asked! Legal technology can transform the way the lawyers at your firm track their time, and a comprehensive, integrated legal tracking system is the best way to do so.

With so much on their plates, it can be difficult for lawyers to remember every time they perform billable work. In the middle of deadlines, they may lose track of the time they spent on research, emails, text messages, or phone calls. Travel time may slip through the cracks. An organized system helps prevent this chaos from occurring.

Additionally, productivity tools take the tedium out of billing, so lawyers feel more engaged. When your professionals feel better about their work, they do better work — which, in turn, affects your profitability and client satisfaction.

Not only can these tools help lawyers capture more of their billable time, but they can also help lawyers understand where they’re spending most of the time. If that time happens to be nonbillable, they may need to rethink their workflow or approach to matters.

What are some tools for improving time entry?

Consider the following tools and features courtesy of tech:

• Better timesheets. Time spent keeping and entering time is nonbillable, distracting, and, frankly, not very fun. Helping your attorneys get to the important stuff by providing a convenient, easy-to-use timesheet template is the first step in helping them track more efficiently. No one should be using an Excel spreadsheet or handwritten diary for time management (or law practice management, case management, or document management for that matter!).

• Timers. Attorneys love timers. They’re an incredible tool when working on multiple client matters in a single day. Providing software where attorneys can create client-specific templates and pre-written narrative entries for larger matters like ongoing document review or diligence will save them time and headaches.

• Mobile apps. Mobile applications for tracking and entering time, which are available for iOS and Android mobile devices, provide more flexibility. Attorneys can enter time while away from their computers, at the courthouse, or when reviewing paper documents at home. More ways to enter time means more accurate timekeeping and billing. The time-tracking features in this type of legal billing tool have also become increasingly invaluable in an environment where attorneys are working remotely.

• Integrate your system. Automatically capturing time through system integration is a game-changer for your lawyers and administrative staff. There’s no tool with functionality quite like it.
  o   Inbox and calendar entries. By integrating your billing software with Outlook, time spent drafting emails or attending appointments and meetings will be automatically captured as billable time. This will save the attorneys at your firm time by lessening manual entries and will heighten accuracy, making sure that all time is accounted for and properly billed. Automatic time capture from the right platform can help law firms bill, on average, an extra 8 hours every month.
  o   Individual tasks and documents. Your attorneys will be able to track their time right in Microsoft applications that they already use, such as Word or Excel, and can enter billable hours in real-time while working and switching between tasks and client matters.
  o   Calls and text messages. Your firm can track inbound and outbound phone calls made from integrated mobile apps or received from your clients. These calls are tracked and automatically recorded as billable events, so your attorneys don’t need to manually enter them. Attorneys can also automatically capture text messages to clients as billable events. When you automate these integrations, you help attorneys bill more accurately by ensuring they’re keeping track of every billable minute.

It's time to take your timekeeping to the next level

With the right tech, your legal practice will be off to greener pastures, both literally and figuratively. We know the process of getting the lawyers at your firm to bill in a timely and accurate manner can be a struggle.

By getting the right legal practice management software in place, you’ll minimize friction in workflows, help lawyers enter time more regularly, and save the administrative staff at your firm time and headaches. Plus you’ll increase your firm’s profitability. It’s a win-win-win-win.

Legal technology is great, but it can feel overwhelming for lawyers who aren’t sure how to maximize the benefit of the features of the software — especially those who are more comfortable storing their information in Excel spreadsheets or in Microsoft Outlook.

If you’re new to legal practice management software, you may have noticed that you can manage almost everything under the sun. With features to oversee everything from employee productivity to client satisfaction, you can also manage individual cases and matters as they relate to certain employees or the law office as a whole.

With all the ways to collect metrics and analyze case information, you may be left wondering what’s the difference between them all? One of the most common questions is the difference between case management and matter management solutions and the benefits your law firm can derive from them.

Are matter management and case management the same?

Matter management and case management are not the same thing, but they’re related. Many people are confused by these two terms because they’re used interchangeably. After all, sometimes lawyers refer to cases as matters and vice versa.

It’s easiest to think of these two concepts as an umbrella. A law practice’s business is made up of individual clients who have cases that form the bulk of the work. Lawyers and staff manage these clients and cases on a micro level, keeping track of the discovery, communications, and billables per case and client. But the cases exist under the security of the larger umbrella.

Matter management is the larger umbrella. It governs the practices and processes that makeup case management and the business of the law firm relating to a particular case or client (or set of cases and clients). It is more complex and higher-level than case management because it involves more moving parts.

What is matter management?

Matter management is overseeing the business processes of the law firm for individual cases. It involves managing both external and internal processes. Law firms can also use matter management to manage complex litigation with multiple clients and related cases progressing simultaneously.

For law firms with multiple practice areas, matter management may include analyzing the productivity of multiple lawyers working in particular practice areas or the billable hours spent on certain types of cases. It can also involve tracking budgetary and financial metrics by practice area or by cases with a similar feature. Matter management gives partners the opportunity to review spending and productivity-related to a matter as a whole and the impact that it has on law firm resources.

Legal matter management isn’t just about tracking internal processes but also managing external processes as well. It often involves overseeing any external providers working on a case, like expert witnesses or local counsel. This can mean assigning internal and external lawyers and administrative staff to cases and specific tasks and examining the overall operational efficiency of the case management process.

When a matter management system is used to manage complex litigation, multiple attorneys can upload their legal documents, work products, and data into the cloud-based system so that they can review and download documents from anywhere. Plus,  the system serves a useful project management function because each contributor can see the work that their colleagues have completed in real-time through task lists and collaborative features, like a comprehensive calendaring system.

What is case management?

Case management is managing everything that relates to the lifecycle of a particular legal case or client. It is internally focused and is more about the processes of managing a case than the implications that the case has for the larger business of the law firm.

Think of a case management system as a single source of truth for a digital case file. Legal case management software usually includes managing appointments and court dates for a particular case, storing and organizing documents and discovery, managing client and witness communications in a client portal, time tracking, and billing and invoices for a particular case or client.

Case management is a great way for lawyers to manage cases that involve other attorneys, administrators, and clients but that don’t quite rise to the level of complex litigation. Unlike matter management, case management collaboration is more limited to the case at hand rather than a larger matter. It is less of a tool for law firm management because it isn't designed to provide the same high-level insights into workflows related to case management.

How can legal operations professionals leverage software to streamline processes?

Legal operations professionals can leverage practice management software to streamline almost every business process, like billing and payments, metrics reporting, and client intake. Certain key features can also be used to organize workflows related to matter management and case management in several ways.

Increase automation

Increased automation is the number one way that legal technology streamlines legal processes, including those related to matter and case management.

The benefit of automation is that you don’t need to recreate the wheel every time you do something. Instead, you can rely on legal technology to do the legwork for you. You also don’t need to hire a dedicated employee to perform tasks that can be automated and can rely on the legal operations team to oversee the use of the technology.

Automation is handy for case and matter management. Instead of having an administrator draft, print, and send out a bill, the software can automatically create an invoice for a case or a matter. Then the technology automatically sends it to the lawyer for editing and then to the client for payment. This process reduces the time that administrative staff spends collecting payments and following up on delinquent accounts.

Legal matter management software and case management solutions are also highly intelligent. They can automate the timekeeping process by detecting billable hours from appointments on a calendar and correspondence sent to a client through the system. This eliminates the time that a lawyer needs to spend tracking billables and inputting data.

For matter management specifically, the software can automatically pull data and generate helpful reports that allow law firm management to keep an eye on the firm’s profitability and overall health. This means that stakeholders and timekeepers can spend less time digging around for the right data and metrics and more time being productive.

Standardize routine administrative tasks

Legal technology can also help legal professionals standardize administrative tasks, like invoicing, calendaring, and organizing discovery. Standardizing routine tasks gives your legal team members more time to direct their efforts elsewhere and minimizes human errors made in manual tasks.

While lawyers still need to understand, research, and apply the law, they can lighten their workloads from administrative tasks that are time-consuming when they are standardized by technology.

For example, instead of conducting an in-person client intake, case management software can automate the client intake process and send out standard templates without needing a lawyer or paralegal to set up an appointment. This cuts down on the need to have an intake appointment for every new client, which saves time. It also reduces the need for administrators to print out intake documents, schedule intake appointments, and correspond with the client.

Intuitive document management

Legal technology has revolutionized the processes related to document management, especially for case and matter management.

With legal software, lawyers can upload and organize discovery and documents as part of a case or matter management system. This feature streamlines the discovery process by giving users (including clients) 24/7 access to the documents and incorporates useful features like the ability to search for frequently accessed documents. That means no more sifting through a cluttered desktop or irrelevant discovery when you’re only looking for one particular document. It also helps facilitate a remote work system where employees need to access documents from home.

Case and matter management software also make it easier for teams to collaborate on documents. Lawyers and administrators can review changes and past versions of work products and opt into notifications when documents are accessed by certain parties. This makes follow-up more immediate and keeps the discovery process moving. It also gives clients the ability to upload emails directly into the case management or matter management system, so that they can be easily produced in the future.

Intuitive document management can increase the overall productivity of the law firm by cutting down on time spent managing documents.

Comprehensive finance management

Case management and matter management undeniably play a role in financial management since the revenue stream starts and ends with cases. Legal technology makes it easy for legal operations professionals to streamline financial management practices and implement a comprehensive financial management system.

With the right technology, lawyers can easily track their billables and nonbillables on certain cases and invoicing for a case. Management can then track billables and nonbillable hours on a larger scale as part of their matter management and employee productivity analysis. This provides insights into larger financial trends that may affect the law firm as a whole.

Technology does more than just track hours and generate invoices. It also generates financial reports and can inform management about how a particular case or set of cases is affecting the law firm’s bottom line. It helps management track financial trends, allocate resources, and get a picture of the firm’s overall financial state. This makes it easier for the firm to stay on top of key performance indicators and achieve long-term financial goals.

Look for a tool that offers the best of both worlds

If you’re looking for new ways to simplify your workload and manage all of your cases, you need a better system than Excel spreadsheets and a desk full of clutter. If you’re ready to look for a technological solution, look for a matter management and case management system that helps you keep every important detail in one place.

Check out a free demo so you can see for yourself how Centerbase is the one system to rule all of your case and matter details.

The Pareto Principle is the theory that 80% of your results come from 20% of your effort. This principle applies to client retention, meaning that 80% of a law firm’s revenue comes from just 20% of its clients.

This principle is incredibly powerful for law firms that want to use minimal resources to maximize their profits. By focusing on retaining and improving the client experience for the top 20% of your current clients, you can significantly increase your revenue and grow your law firm.

One way to start the client experience off on the right foot is to offer a new client welcome kit.

What is a new client welcome kit?

A new client welcome kit is a collection of documents that you give to new clients after the intake process or initial consultation. The welcome kit introduces the client to the law firm and its employees, provides practical and necessary information for reference throughout the case (like billing processes and key contacts), and sets the client’s expectations for the representation.

What should a client welcome kit contain?

Client welcome kits will look different depending on your law firm’s practice area. Some law offices create a physical welcome kit, while others prefer the ease of an electronic version. Either way, the kit should include, at a minimum, the following six items.

Administrative information

Your welcome package should include a billing document outlining your fee schedule and expenses, invoicing and billing practices (such as whether you accept credit cards), and the signed retainer or engagement letter. It should also include an introduction to the client portal, plus instructions on how your client can use it, and a list of the common questions that a typical client has.

Case synopsis

A short document summarizing the client’s legal matters and the legal services that you plan to offer goes a long way. It shows your client that you were listening to them and planning to meet their needs and should include details beyond those in a standard retainer agreement.

Key contacts and bios

It’s a good idea to include a short bio and key contact information for each lawyer, paralegal, and support staff member working on the case. You can also outline the best ways to communicate with each person and list an emergency contact option for after-hours or urgent legal issues.

Summary of the legal process

A clear flowchart describing the different steps in the legal process is a great tool for your client to reference throughout different phases of the representation. This helps keep your client informed every step of the way.

Client responsibility checklist

Lawyers do a lot of work on clients’ behalf, but some responsibilities lie squarely with the client. A concise checklist gives the client an idea upfront of what their responsibilities will look like throughout the case. These may be responsibilities like acquiring and producing documents in a personal injury matter or the timing for making important decisions in an estate planning case.

Personalized welcome letter

We all love automation, but sometimes a personal touch is what you need to show clients that you care. Include a handwritten or digitally personalized welcome letter to thank each client for hiring you.

Is there anything specific a family law firm should include in a client welcome kit?

Unlike other practice areas, family law firms handle similar matters over and over again. The client welcome packet is a great way to focus on the specific nuances of family court cases and prepare clients for the road ahead.

One option is to include an overview document explaining the basics of common family law topics, such as divorce, child custody, or the mediation process. If you create a few different documents for each topic, you can easily include something relevant for new clients.

Discovery is also particularly important in family law cases, but it can be daunting for new clients. Including a specific intake checklist in the welcome packet helps family law clients begin to track down the documents that they need to disclose at some point. This makes discovery go faster and also helps clients manage the process in an organized way.

Why is a new client welcome kit important?

A well-prepared welcome kit builds trust between the new client and the lawyer, which benefits the overall attorney-client relationship.

A welcome kit is an important tool to communicate with the client and one that presents the law firm in an organized and professional manner. A welcome kit can help manage client expectations so that your clients feel satisfied and don’t become overwhelmed. It also serves as a great point of reference for clients throughout the legal process, leading to happier, less-stressed clients who are more likely to hire you again.

Additionally, clients who trust their lawyers and have a past positive experience with a law firm are more likely to rehire and give you referrals. A new client welcome kit starts representation off on the right foot because it signals to the client that their case is important to the law firm. It also gives new clients a sense of transparency about the law firm and legal process.

When clients have realistic expectations, they are less likely to be disappointed in their lawyers. This keeps clients coming back time and time again.

Why is client retention important?

Since 80% of profits are typically made from 20% of clients, retaining that top 20% is essential. Finding new clients is also expensive, so keeping clients on board is a great way to maximize profits and decrease costs.

By spending too much time trying to turn unsatisfied clients into satisfied ones, law firms ignore the happy, easygoing clients who make them money. A better business model is to maximize revenue from happy clients by keeping them on in the future. This doesn’t mean ignoring other clients and their needs but instead using thoughtful business practices that allocate resources to get the most bang for your buck.

Best practices beyond the welcome kit

The welcome kit is a great way to increase client retention, but it’s not the only way. It’s best to use a welcome package in conjunction with other practices designed to create happy clients. Some other tools to increase client retention include streamlining the intake process, implementing easy-to-use legal technology, and generating retention reports to monitor your progress.

When law firms use all of these tools together, they can have a huge impact on client retention. 

While modern technology has changed the way that many lawyers connect with their clients, it hasn’t changed the fact that confidentiality is key when it comes to the attorney-client relationship.

In fact, the American Bar Association (ABA) has addressed the rise of cybersecurity threats (like hacking) with an attorney’s ongoing obligation to safeguard confidential client information and communications. Not only do lawyers need to stay informed about the benefits and limitations of new technology, but they also need to try to prevent unauthorized and inadvertent access to their clients’ information.

So, how can you take advantage of the benefits of modern technology to optimize the client experience at your law practice and maintain your clients’ confidentiality at the same time?

There’s an easy answer: it’s called a client portal.

What is a law firm client portal?

A client portal is cloud-based legal software that creates a secure space for lawyers and clients to connect and share information about their cases while automating administrative tasks. It’s a tool that helps you standardize representation so that you can consistently provide an excellent experience for every client, every time.

In the portal, both the attorney and client can upload, store, and share documents; calendar appointments; set reminders for court dates; send bills and make payments, and communicate easily via chat features and automated text messages. Using a centralized client portal also creates a digital client file that is easily referenced in future court hearings or meetings and ensures that all of the information shared is stored securely away from hackers and accidental exposure.

A client portal is a means to streamline and improve the client experience from beginning to end, to keep client data completely confidential, and to cut down on the overall cost spent on administrative tasks related to managing clients.

Why does your law firm need a client portal?

If you plan on staying competitive in the modern legal world, your law firm needs to start using a client portal to better manage current clients and increase client conversion through automation. You’ll turn more potential clients into actual clients by looking at the data collected by the client portal, and you’ll save money by making your staff’s job easier and faster.

A client portal is one of the easiest ways to get clients coming back for more because, aside from providing valuable analytics, it makes being your client easy. For example, it’s a lot easier for a client to upload standardized intake forms and documents in a secure portal online rather than dealing with encrypting an email to their lawyer or sending confidential information without it. It’s also easier than coming into the office, especially in the era of COVID-19. This makes a better overall client experience and saves time and effort on the part of the lawyer and administrative staff.

Portals also make it easy for clients to communicate with you, and that makes them more likely to have a positive experience. The client portal creates one place to easily send and receive messages to one another 24/7, so they won’t need to call at inconvenient times or leave messages with administrative staff. Plus, lawyers won’t need to give clients their private cell phone numbers. You and your clients can also easily review past conversations to quickly find information and maintain a record for the future.

With a client portal, law firms can streamline workflows, like legal billing and payment, which saves money for the firm. It’s an easy way to send invoices to your client and to receive payments through a secure online system without needing the assistance of staff. Clients can download the bills at any time and send questions directly in the portal instead of calling the office and leaving messages. This leads to happier clients who feel informed about billing and organized at all stages.

A client portal is also a great way to give administrative staff access to all documents and a complete history of a client’s representation. This helps staff in charge of billing, legal operations, and paralegal and investigative work do their job better without needing to go digging around the office and asking questions. A client portal also facilitates remote work, which can cut down on costs associated with office space and keep your entire staff working within one system.

Basically, a client portal doesn’t just make you money because it makes clients happy. It also makes you money by cutting costs and increasing productivity across multiple different areas of the firm.

What features should a client portal have?

The point of the client portal is to optimize the client experience and streamline client management processes around the law firm. With that in mind, a great client portal should have the highest functionality and include the following features:

• a client profile tab with personal and case information;
• a place to upload documents;
• a client communication tool that enables you to converse with clients and store those conversations securely, like a chat function with automatic text notifications;
• conversation tracking and analytics;
• 24/7 client and attorney access to the portal;
• a billing tab to download and send invoices and a place for online payments; and
• a calendar populated with appointments, deadlines, and court dates, plus the ability to send reminders.

All of these elements should be included in a professionally designed portal that is customized with law firm logos and colors to create a personalized touch.

Of course, a client portal must be intuitive and helpful, but the most important feature of a client portal (or any legal technology) is reliable security and firewall protection.

Law firms are not immune to data breaches. At the end of the day, lawyers must use due diligence to keep client data, online communications, and shared documents confidential. If they don’t, they might risk breaching their ethical obligations and losing their clients’ trust.

Computers are easily hacked, and cell phones are sometimes lost or stolen. Plus, in the era of remote work, there’s a risk that lawyers and staff might opt to use piecemeal platforms or apps that you haven’t vetted for security. You shouldn’t assume that your email is secure either. Law offices are prime targets for hackers, given the valuable secrets they hold.

That’s why it is more important than ever to shift to a client management model that includes a secure client portal with top-notch protective features, like encryption and two-factor authentication. These protections will safeguard confidential information and store data securely, so you’ll never have to worry about someone stealing your client’s data or taking the hit of a dreaded data breach.

How can a client portal assist with client intake?

There are many ways to upgrade your client intake process, but a client portal is a great first step.

A client portal can streamline client intake and standardize the client’s first experiences with the law firm, so you’re always putting your best foot forward. It’s also a great way to automate administrative tasks and workflows related to intake while boosting productivity among other staff and reducing costs across the board. There’s no reason to rely on outdated client intake practices when you have a client portal to make it easy and cost-effective.

Standardizing intake forms

For example, client portals make it easy to send intake forms for clients to fill out before your first meeting and for clients to enter personal identifying information all in one place. This data is usually populated in a larger system to cut down on data-entry-related tasks around the office. It also minimizes the time that each lawyer or staff member must spend meeting with and gathering information from a client.

Targeting ideal clients

Certain platforms can even track the metrics when it comes to intake, which is great for a legal operations department that works tirelessly to maximize resources and save money. Since intake starts from the moment a potential client reaches out to your firm, you can use the portal to track where potential clients are coming from and customize intake to target your ideal client. You’ll also be able to look at the ROI on your marketing spend over time so that you get a clearer picture of the law firm’s finances.

Automating conflict checks

Let’s not forget that a client portal can automate conflict checks that are usually performed during intake and conveniently generate a report that protects the confidentiality of your clients. Conflict checks can be costly and complicated for legal practices, but the power of computing makes it fast and simple with the right platform. Some even offer the ability to create a “virtual wall” to adjust permissions settings and prevent certain lawyers with a conflict in the office from accessing sensitive information on a particular case. This reduces the risk of accidental exposure and confidentiality breaches among coworkers.

Setting up client portal software

If you’re thinking about incorporating a client portal into your arsenal of practice management software to improve your client service, you should try out a free demo for an introduction to our platform. We’re happy to show you all the features so that you get comfortable with the functionality of our client portal and can see how it will help your law firm become more client-centered and profitable.

You know that your law firm is a business. But only recently have firms started focusing on how to improve their business. (After all, the leading legal industry organization dedicated to legal ops, the Corporate Legal Operations Consortium (CLOC), has only been around since 2016.) To date, few firms today have hired dedicated legal operations professionals, much less created a formal legal operations function.

An easy first step on the journey toward more effective legal operations is hiring an experienced legal operations manager. A driven and dedicated legal operations manager can make all the difference for a law firm that is looking to optimize business processes to increase revenue and productivity.

What is legal operations?

Legal operations is the business of running a law firm.

While lawyers may spend the bulk of their time engaged in the practice of law or strategic planning for matters, the legal operations department works behind the scenes to make sure all of that is done as efficiently and profitably as possible. Strong legal operations departments work to streamline processes within the law firm to maximize operational efficiencies, helping lawyers work smarter and faster so they can earn more revenue.

Day to day, this might look like monitoring lawyer productivity, identifying new legal analytical tools, budgeting for the firm, and managing third-party providers. Over time, it means implementing new processes and practices that will guide the law firm along the path to becoming a thriving business.

A legal operations team is no longer a luxury reserved for large firms. It’s now a valuable resource for small and midsized law firms that live and die by the bottom line. Legal operations should be a priority for law firms of all sizes, especially those looking to grow.

What does a legal operations manager do?

You can’t have an effective legal ops department without a fearless leader. That’s why near the head of the table in the legal operations department sits the legal operations manager.

A legal operations manager oversees various legal ops team members’ day-to-day activities and ongoing projects. Depending on the size of the law firm, the legal ops manager might report to a director of legal operations and be responsible for a larger team or just one or two legal operations specialists or analysts.

Either way, the legal operations manager must take stock of the current state of affairs of the law firm and come up with ways to make it better.

Handles the law firm budget and billing

Legal operations managers take a deep dive into the firm’s budget. They break down where money is going within the firm and where money is coming from. They also provide stable financial planning for the future.

Legal ops managers use past yearly spending to build forecasting models and proactively identify new, creative ways to optimize financial resources within the firm. Many legal ops managers will also analyze processes related to e-billing to streamline outdated, tedious, and repetitive workflows. They study peer law firms as part of benchmarking exercises, always looking for innovative ways to price work and trim expenses.

Evaluates lawyer productivity

But legal operations managers do much more than just budgeting! They also look at individual lawyer productivity and identify ways to make everyone at the firm work smarter. Sure, legal ops managers can’t step into the shoes of the managing partner, but they’ll have valuable input on staffing questions that firm leaders will want to listen to. Among other metrics, they analyze data related to billable hours, assigned cases, and revenue generated as a result of each lawyer’s work.

From that data, a strong legal ops manager comes up with ways to assign certain cases to lawyers who are more or less productive, depending on the needs of the firm and the ideal legal spend per case. They might also plan training for lawyers and staff and develop policies designed to increase firm productivity. Some legal ops managers even go as far as making recommendations on hiring and firing decisions.

Manages third-party vendors

Legal operations managers oversee third-party vendors, such as alternative legal service providers, freelance lawyers, and other professionals, like experts and consultants, who provide services to the law firm. In the past, firms might have relied on word-of-mouth recommendations or professional connections to decide where to outsource work rather than choosing the best, most efficient vendor based on objective criteria.

Proactive legal ops managers challenge traditional sourcing models. They also look for opportunities to rethink pricing arrangements and work to negotiate favorable rates from third-party vendors to maximize the value for every dollar spent. They scour the job boards and vet candidates to ensure that their firm avoids wasting money in the recruitment and onboarding process.

Collects and analyzes data

At the heart of it all, legal ops managers must collect, analyze, and translate the firm’s data. That means breaking data down for partners in the firm who might not be so business inclined.

Legal ops managers are responsible for data that extends across many different areas of the law firm. Their most common focus is the budget, scrutinizing data from their e-billing system to understand their revenue by practice area or case. They also collect data about lawyer productivity and translate that into smart hiring practices and case-assignment strategies that save money.

To collect this data, a legal ops manager will spend time researching and trying out innovative technology to choose the best tech for the firm. They’ll need to understand the latest trends and the opportunities to expand and incorporate new platforms into their work and the work of others in the office. This technology is important to optimizing processes and saving time (which means saving money) throughout the firm.

What background is ideal for legal operations manager jobs?

Most legal operations managers have a bachelor’s degree and at least some experience in legal project management or operations, whether in another law firm or in-house. Optimal candidates often have a blend of corporate legal department and law firm experience, which will ensure they have a deep knowledge of the inner workings of law firms along with the know-how and skills to position the firm as a leading outside counsel capable of addressing the needs of even the most demanding general counsel.

A job description for a legal operations manager will focus on competencies such as analytical skills, problem-solving skills, and communication skills that enable ops managers to speak to a variety of stakeholders at all levels of the firm. They should also have experience managing projects, developing policies, and collaborating with legal teams to deliver results.

Successful legal ops managers often have strong backgrounds in vendor management and change management initiatives. Extensive knowledge of technological solutions, including contract management, knowledge management, and matter management, will help the legal ops manager harness the inherent value in the firm’s data and inform their recommendations for procurement and service delivery strategies.

How can a legal ops manager increase law firm efficiency?

Hands down the best way for a legal operations manager to increase their firm’s efficiency is to leverage technology.

Legal technology has dramatically improved over the years. Instead of toiling away in the law library, lawyers can find relevant cases and statutes with just a few keystrokes. There’s no need to struggle to estimate the likelihood of winning a case because artificial intelligence and machine learning tools can do that for you. And - let’s not forget technology that helps with client recruitment, management, and correspondence.

Not only does a legal operations manager need to understand how to use these types of technology to make lawyers' work more efficient, but they must also understand how to leverage technology to make the entire law firm more efficient as a business.

Luckily, there are platforms that can help legal operations managers monitor key performance indicators (KPIs) like legal spending as a percentage of the firm’s revenue, the cost of a case per matter, and the cost per lawyer. This technology can also crunch the numbers so that legal ops managers can see whether the firm is optimally productive. Platforms can track the percentage of cases resolved vs. litigated, staffing and paralegal spend by lawyer, legal hours vs. administrative hours, and deadline compliance. Legal ops tools can even track the amount of time that a case takes at each pivotal point and the overall satisfaction of each client.

By leveraging innovative technology and continually re-evaluating the firm’s current processes, legal ops managers can get a clearer picture of the firm’s financial status and use the data to come up with new ways to make things run smoother, make the lawyer’s jobs easier, and make the law firm more profitable.

What is the future of legal operations management?

The future of legal operations management is constantly evolving.

Law firms’ financial, strategic, and internal decision-making is increasingly based on quantitative data instead of guesswork. That data is valuable for legal ops managers who need to evaluate productivity and streamline efficiency within the law firm. Instead of merely reporting on the data to firm leaders, future legal ops managers will play a vital role in redefining how law firms can work smarter and build a better business model.

This is a tremendous opportunity for legal ops professionals to engage in the business management of a law firm and to take part in the legal technology revolution. It is also a chance for law firms to differentiate themselves from competitors by creating value and to leap headfirst into the modern era.

Of course, there will be challenges: changing the status quo in a law firm can be difficult at times. But once law firm leaders see the value created by a great legal operations team, headed by a strong legal ops manager, it won’t take long for them to get on board.

By spending time now to build a strong legal operations team headed by an experienced, tech-savvy legal operations manager, you can modernize your firm and situate it to capitalize on future trends in legal operations.