1. Standard practice management software

The first category of legal practice management software is your standard practice management software.

Typically, these packages include your main features like:

• Matter Management
• Calendaring/Task Management
• Legal Timekeeping
• Legal Billing
• Trust Accounting
• Reporting
• Mobile App

Benefits

The biggest benefit to a standard practice management software is a low barrier to entry. Most of the software packages that fall in this category allow you to sign up for a free trial, enter information about your firm (address and billing rates), and then you’re off to the races.

Drawbacks

Although standard practice management software works for some firms, it doesn’t work for all. I find they require a lot of integrations, whether it’s with a document storage software application like Google Drive or Dropbox, an accounting application like Quickbooks or Xero, or a third party application that does anything outside of the main features I listed above.

These types of packages tend to have limited importing and exporting capabilities, especially around your billing data. This means you’re starting with a limited billing history and again if you switch off a standard practice management software application.

Best For

Standard practice management software is best for solo or small firms. A small firm can easily adapt to how the software works and most likely doesn’t have clients that require complex billing arrangements. Additionally, the firm itself probably doesn’t need compensation reporting or have enough accounts payable to require an integrated accounting system.

2. Specialized practice management software

Specialized practice management software tends to serve boutique firms that are highly-specialized in a specific practice area. These firms tend to only have one practice area (or run on their own inside a larger firm) and don’t require traditional law firm billing.

Benefits

Specialized practice management software means the vendor is only creating features that are needed specifically by that practice area. For general practice management vendors, they’re having to constantly add features that serve the majority of their client base, so you miss the very specific but helpful features one or two practice areas might need.

Because the package is specialized, it also requires less tailoring to fit your firm than a general package would require.

Drawbacks

The drawback of a specialized practice management system is the exact same as the benefit – it’s specialized. This means it can only serve a certain practice area, so it won’t work as well for a general practice firm or even a larger firm with multiple practice areas.

Best For

The majority of the specialized practice management packages I see on the market are geared toward personal injury and bankruptcy firms.

3. All-in-one practice management, billing, and accounting software

All-in-one practice management software gives you the majority of what you need in one product.

Benefits

These products are built for firms that expect to evolve over time, meaning their features are robust and deep and can change with the firm as it grows.

These packages also don’t require multiple software packages for your billing and accounting, eliminating the need for double entry. This is helpful for firms who receive a high volume of client billing and accounts payable. The elimination of this extra click ends up saving a firm a lot of time in the long run.

Finally, most of the all-in-one packages allow you to import billing data (some also allow for accounting data), which makes the transition much more tolerable for larger firms that simply can’t start from scratch.

Drawbacks

Powerful software tends to require more upfront setup, which can have high costs associated with it. This means your firm has to decide whether they want to invest in a product upfront that will serve the firm for the next 10-20 years, or if they’d prefer fewer upfront costs.

Best For

An all-in-one practice management, billing, and accounting software package is best for a midsize firm with multiple practice areas. The ideal firm for this type of software values the ability to save time by doing everything in one platform.

If you still need more guidance, check out: What Should Be Imported Into Your New Legal Billing Software and What Features Do I Need In a Legal Practice Management Software. If you know you want to pursue a cloud-based system, definitely read, 10 Mistakes to Avoid When Choosing Cloud-Based Software.

If you’re still unsure as to which box your firm fits in, feel free to reach out to us for a free demo. We would love to help you figure out the best solution for you.

1. Segment Your Staff by Job Function and Technical Aptitude

When you’re deciding how to train your staff, take a few things into account:

First, consider their job functions in the firm, because based on their jobs, they will need to learn different features. For instance, it doesn’t make sense to train a partner to enter payments into the program (unless it’s a very hands-on partner or you’re a really small firm) because the billing and accounting team will take care of the finances. But, it does make sense to train the partners to enter time into the system, which your billing and accounting staff won’t need to know.

At Centerbase, we typically break it down and do separate training sessions for attorneys, paralegals/assistants, billing staff, and accounting.

Second, consider each person’s technical aptitude. This is important because if someone catches onto the software quickly, they’ll lose focus if you’re having to stop the training session to help those who aren’t grasping it as fast.

If you can, divide the training sessions by job function and then technical aptitude, especially for larger groups like attorneys and paralegals. Since the attorneys’ and paralegals’ jobs are to interface with clients all day, they tend to become quickly distracted if they’re not being engaged with useful information.

2. Train a group of super users first

Super users will be your “boots on the ground” once the software company finishes implementation. Typically, the firm will save time and money by having someone in-house who staff can go to for basic ‘how to’ and troubleshooting questions.

If possible, I recommend doing super user training before the basic training. It is helpful to have a few extra people in the room who understand the software to help the general staff during their first training sessions (especially if the training is web-based).

3. Begin with the basics

Don’t overwhelm your staff with everything the software can do at once. At first, show your staff how to do things they could do in your previous software and/or a few of the basic new features such as navigating around a matter, using the calendar, etc. to get started.

If you’re also billing out of your practice management software, your billing/accounting team will have to dive right into using everything in the financial modules from the start.

For billing, I recommend requesting initial training to familiarize yourself with billing out of the software, and then request additional training for your first round of bills. Basically, during the second billing training session, you’ll have the trainer walk you through your first round of bills. This is very important as you don’t want to affect cashflow at the firm (that’s the quickest way to have a senior partner boot your new software right out of the firm).

Another good idea is to begin your rollout right after you send final bills out for a given month, so you have the most time possible before the next round of billing.

4. Offer a second training no more than 10 business days after the rollout

Once your staff begins using the new practice management software, they’ll generally have a list of questions or suggestions for modification (such as how the matter layout looks). To keep morale and adoption high, offer a second training session within 10 business days of your initial training. During this session, you can demonstrate additional functionality within the program as well as revisit what was taught during the first training session to tie up any loose ends.

10 business days can be a long time before you have a refresher on the software. Before the first and second training, I would recommend having a super user check-in with all staff members to see how they’re doing.

5. Continue quarterly training courses

For at least the first year, I would recommend offering quarterly training sessions on the software. If you roll out the program the way I’ve described in my article 4 Tips on How to Begin Using Practice Management Software at a Law Firm, you’ll have additional features to show them on a quarterly basis (also, most vendors offer monthly or quarterly new releases, so it’s inevitable that you’ll have new features to show your staff). Also, this is a good chance to boost the morale of those who are struggling with the change.

I hope this article was helpful – feel free to reach out if you have any additional questions on creating a legal practice management software training program.

1. Matter management

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

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

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

2. Firm calendar

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

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

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

3. Task management

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

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

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

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

4. Contact management

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

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

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

5. Document management

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

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

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

6. Document automation

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

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

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

7. Email management

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

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

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

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

8. Workflow

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

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

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

9. Client portal

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

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

Most portals include:

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

10. Potential new client tracking

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

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

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

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

11. Reporting

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

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

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