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Let’s face it: there isn’t enough time in the day for attorneys and staff to complete all the work that has to be done in a law firm. That’s why so many firms have turned away from manual processes toward law firm management software.
But not all legal practice management software platforms are created equal.
Almost every platform has basic features, including collecting client information, checking for conflicts, storing documents and templates, recording billable hours, tracking expenses, and managing invoicing.
Industry-leading law practice management software is different. Not only does this software take manual work off your plate, but it also streamlines the practice of law, improving productivity and smoothing operations.
Here are just some of the many ways that advanced legal technology can help your law firm simplify operations and optimize its overall productivity.
Too many law firms have multiple systems to corral their data and documents, including client details, case documents, emails, and more. Advanced software platforms centralize information, allowing firms to store and manage all client and matter-related information in one place, from client lead through intake, matter creation, invoicing, and payment. No more clicking tabs to piece matters together. Plus, using a single repository for the entire client lifecycle eliminates the redundant work of maintaining data across multiple tools.
Users can create, track, and organize cases, manage deadlines, assign tasks to team members, and send conflict checks and bills from a matter, ensuring everyone is on the same page regarding case progress and upcoming deadlines. Version control and audit trails help maintain the integrity of legal documents, ensuring that the latest versions are always accessible.
Many timekeepers don’t record their billable hours as they work. When they record their billable time days later, they lose up to 50% of their hours.
Market-leading legal software offers automated time capture that automatically records time for every minute spent on a matter, including phone calls, emails, and texts, even when you’re away from your desk. Leading platforms also coordinate time entries with matters, expediting bill creation and improving billing accuracy.
Advanced platforms enable law firms to automate repetitive tasks, such as document assembly for frequently used documents, client intake, and billing. For example, firms can automate workflows that send client reminders and follow-up emails for overdue invoices.
And configurable billing workflows can be customized to match your specific billing requirements including approval workflows. This flexibility ensures that the billing process aligns seamlessly with your needs, reducing the time you spend on manual adjustments and reviews.
Online invoicing and billing helps you meet client expectations for a seamless customer experience while shaving weeks off your billing cycle. Automated billing solutions like ePre-bills help your firm review, approve, and send out bills up to 20 times faster. Plus, solutions that integrate time and expense tracking make it easier to capture billable activities, costs, and expenses, reducing the time spent manually reconciling hours and expenses.
On the client side, leading platforms offer self-service portals that allow clients to access electronic invoices and make online payments. This convenience not only enhances the client experience but also accelerates the payment collection process. Clients can ask questions and make payments seamlessly, reducing the time spent on follow-up calls and emails.
The practice of law is complex enough — there’s no room for additional chaos. A commitment to leveraging law practice management software to its fullest potential can transform how your law firm operates.
Get a free demo to learn how Centerbase can help you hit your productivity and profitability goals in one fell swoop.
Written by Robin Neill
More and more law firms are recognizing how important it is to manage themselves like a business to survive in today’s competitive market. Businesses operate with efficiency, strategic planning, and a keen eye on the bottom line — principles that law firms can adopt to enhance their operational effectiveness. By embracing business management practices such as budgeting, law firms can optimize their resources, streamline processes, and invest in technology to improve their service.
A budget provides a structured roadmap for financial stability, strategic decision-making, and sustainable growth. Creating a law firm budget requires careful planning, collaboration, and attention to detail. Here are seven steps that can help your law firm create an effective budget.
Budgeting shouldn’t be a last-minute task. Law firms should initiate the budgeting process well in advance, ideally in the third quarter. Starting early ensures firms have ample time to assess their current financial standing, analyze past spending patterns, and anticipate future costs.
A fundamental step in budgeting is examining the firm’s profit and loss (P&L) statement from previous years. By comparing actual expenditures with previous years’ data, law firms can identify trends and patterns.
Areas to focus on include salaries and rent, which tend to be the largest expenses in a law firm budget. Don’t forget to consider inflation.
Setting clear, measurable, and realistic goals is fundamental to the budgeting process — and those goals must align with the firm’s overall strategic objectives. Whether the aim is to sustain current levels of success or to expand to new locations or practices, having a well-defined vision guides the budgeting process effectively.
For instance, a law firm planning to increase its partner count from 10 to 20 in the next year needs to account for higher advertising costs, additional attorney salaries, and potential increases in professional dues and liability insurance.
Successful budgeting necessitates collaboration between key stakeholders. This includes financial experts, managing partners, human resources professionals, and accountants. Each participant brings a unique perspective to the table, ensuring that the budget addresses all aspects of the firm’s operations.
Regular consultations and brainstorming sessions with these stakeholders can provide invaluable insights and foster a culture of financial transparency within the firm.
While analyzing the P&L statement, law firms often overlook certain unexpected costs. Items such as professional liability insurance, litigation expenses, or regulatory compliance costs can fluctuate, impacting the budget unexpectedly. By accounting for these variables and having a contingency fund, firms can avoid financial strain when unforeseen expenses arise.
Recognizing that employees are a firm’s most valuable asset, law firms should offer a competitive salary and benefits such as health insurance, retirement plans, and professional development opportunities. A comprehensive benefits package can attract top talent and ensure staff retention and satisfaction. Additionally, employee well-being initiatives such as mental health support programs or flexible work arrangements can enhance productivity and foster a positive work environment.
Law firms must factor in the costs of these employee benefits while budgeting. Firms should also take into account salary increases, such as cost-of-living adjustments, to stay competitive in the market.
Law firms should invest in advanced legal software with accounting features to track expenditures efficiently. These legal technology tools provide detailed reports on profitability based on various parameters, such as attorney performance, case type, and office location. Implementing artificial intelligence-driven tools can deliver insights into future financial trends and assist firms in making proactive budgeting decisions.
Transforming a law firm into a business entity demands a proactive approach to budgeting. Law firms can use budgets to position themselves for sustainable growth, client satisfaction, and long-term success.
Centerbase has a robust suite of tools designed to optimize law firm financial performance. Get in touch for a free demo of our tools and learn how our software can improve your law firm’s profitability.
Written by Carson Bailey, M. Ed.
Before you can implement new legal software, you must convince your lawyers and staff to adopt it. And to adopt new technology, legal professionals must understand its features and functions — and how they will benefit from them. That requires in-depth training.
But training can’t be one size fits all. After all, no two people learn the same, and you need to cater to their learning preferences to maximize their information intake — and the return on your technology investment.
The success of your new legal software hinges on user competence and confidence. In this article, we’ll share how to design a training program as part of your change management initiative when adopting new software that will appeal to your team and ensure your new solution achieves its expected returns.
But first, let’s explore why you should invest in training.
While balancing employee training and billable hours can be challenging, the rewards that stem from well-trained staff far outweigh the initial resource investment. Here are just some of the benefits of prioritizing staff training.
To achieve these benefits, you must ensure that your training follows best practices.
Setting up training for lawyers and staff on new law practice software requires a strategic approach to ensure a smooth transition to new software. To encourage lawyers and staff to engage with training, you must align it to their needs and make it valuable and motivating. Time is precious, so training must be efficient and effective, given the responsibilities already filling legal professionals’ plates.
Consider following these best practices to strengthen your next software training:
The successful implementation of new software in a law firm requires a comprehensive training strategy. Adult learners have distinct needs and preferences, and tailoring training to meet those needs is critical for a seamless transition.
By adopting the right training methodologies and involving the right stakeholders, law firms can navigate the challenges of software implementation and equip their teams with the skills needed for a competitive edge in the legal industry.
Contact us today to learn more about how Centerbase training is designed to ease the transition to new technology and accelerate your law firm’s productivity.
Attracting and retaining top legal talent is critical in today’s competitive market. A team of top attorneys gives your firm a competitive edge and ensures your firm will continue to impress clients with quality legal work.
In this article, we’ll cover four ways to attract (and retain) top legal talent, with an emphasis on how legal technology can help you do both.
With recent layoffs at large law firms and the incoming classes of law school graduates, there are great opportunities for smaller and midsize firms — if they can compete effectively in the job market.
Today’s top legal talent has high expectations: competitive pay, opportunities for professional development, a meaningful work/life balance, and leveraging advanced legal technology. While meeting these expectations may seem challenging, it’s essential for law firms that want to attract and retain the best lawyers and staff.
Let’s get into some specifics.
Top legal talent expects to be paid what they are worth. Offering a competitive salary and comprehensive benefits package is crucial to attracting new lawyers and staff. A higher starting salary and market benefits (e.g., health, dental, and vision) will translate directly into more applications for open positions and higher retention rates.
Of course, if you get into a salary tug-of-war with your competition, you’ll eventually run out of cash. Increases are only sustainable to a point. That’s why your firm should focus on the totality of what it has to offer, including training, work/life balance, and technology that makes the job easier.
Top legal talent typically wants opportunities for professional growth and development so they can stay ahead of the curve. As a law firm, it’s important to offer these opportunities at all levels of practice.
For both lawyers and staff, constructive feedback and positive encouragement are important. By providing personalized feedback and having one-on-one meetings and not just waiting for end-of-year performance reviews, your attorneys and staff members will feel supported in their learning and will believe that there’s a path forward for them in the firm.
More formal learning opportunities are also essential for attracting and retaining skilled attorneys. Incorporate opportunities for continuing legal education (CLE) sessions and conferences in your learning and development budget. Investing more in learning and offering growth opportunities means your lawyers will be prepared to deliver better work to your clients — and more satisfied clients mean more income for your firm.
Work-life balance is key in attracting top talent, especially if that top talent consists of younger attorneys. Lawyers work long (and often stressful) hours on cases and acquisitions, so offering a supportive environment is crucial in counterbalancing the other demands of the job.
By offering flexible work arrangements — like remote or hybrid work or adjusted work hours — you’ll provide lawyers with the tools to manage their personal responsibilities. This includes flexible arrangements for new parents or employees who might need to work remotely to care for an aging family member. By providing flexibility, your firm will emphasize its commitment to supporting its attorneys and staff, and in doing so will attract the best of the best.
Legal technology can be employed to make it easier for attorneys to get their work done anytime, anywhere. Cloud-based legal software that enables secure remote access of case files, documents, and other client materials means lawyers can work from home or on the road more easily. Leading legal software platforms can enable lawyers to communicate and collaborate seamlessly with team members and clients through document sharing, messaging, and videoconferencing.
Advanced legal technology isn’t only important for offering flexible work arrangements — it’s also an expectation for incoming top talent. Good legal tech makes life easier for attorneys by streamlining work processes and increasing efficiency. It allows lawyers to work smarter by calendaring deadlines, prioritizing billable tasks, and ridding themselves of mundane or repetitive tasks through automation. Time capture tools make it easier than ever to keep valuable billable minutes from falling through the cracks.
While lawyers may be wooed by an attractive compensation package, they won’t stay if they don’t like working for your firm. An important part of your firm’s culture rests on how well you enable your lawyers and staff to work. That requires an investment in the latest legal technology.
This means tools to help with everything from case management to removing the tedium of timekeeping and billing (maybe the most frustrating of all law firm tasks).
And tech that enables internal collaboration, helping teams build a collective knowledge base that everyone can access and improving work quality, avoiding duplicative efforts, and accelerating results. For instance, a fully integrated matter management system will help keep everyone on a team up to date on matter status and highlight roadblocks where someone may be able to offer their expertise. Teams can also collaborate in real-time and track matter status, allowing for greater flexibility while also building a sense of community.
Everything is connected this way: better tech leads to less tedium, allowing lawyers to get their billable work done more quickly, which gives them more time to focus on their personal lives and find their own preferred work/life balance.
Of course, one of the best ways to convey to talent that you are the right choice for them to excel in their legal careers is to have an up to date and professional website. today’s talent expects a robust digital presence, and the first place they go to research employers is online.
Your firm’s webpage should highlight your firm’s culture and include statements or videos on your website with partners, associates, and staff explaining the benefits of working for your firm.
Junior and senior lawyers alike expect access to advanced tools that make work easier, enabling them to deliver exceptional client service and improving their work/life balance in the process. Law firms that invest in legal technology platforms can attract better talent and position themselves as industry leaders.
Compliance is a priority for law firms. And legal software can be a key tool in helping you meet your firm’s compliance requirements.
In this article, we’ll cover major compliance issues that law firms need to monitor and solutions that can reduce your risks.
A primary compliance concern for law firms is staying on top of compliance related to both data and processes: for example, storing firm and client data safely in the cloud, managing online client portals, processing online payments, handling trust accounting issues, and following ethical requirements relating to online advertising and marketing.
In this section, we’ll go over a few major buckets of compliance risks in the digital world that your firm should recognize and address.
When it comes to storing data, security is the top compliance priority. Law firms must make “reasonable efforts” under ABA Model Rule of Professional Conduct 1.6 to prevent the disclosure of client-related information. That means law firms must understand what client data they store, where they are storing it, and what the potential entry points for data loss and disclosure are. Additional compliance requirements vary depending on the size and type of law that your firm practices, but it’s best practice to review applicable requirements and make sure that your firm’s cloud infrastructure has the robust protections necessary to safeguard your clients’ data.
Choosing a reputable provider of cloud-based legal platforms is the first step in ensuring compliance. The provider should have a proven track record and, ideally, have suffered zero data breaches in the past. Make sure that it offers robust security features like encryption and access control, such as password policies, two-factor authentication, and role-based permissions.
Much like the cloud, client portals require firms to pay special attention to how they secure client information. Your law firm should implement strong access controls, such as two-factor authentication and secure file transfer protocols, to prevent unauthorized access to client data. Law firms that use client portals also must comply with the ABA Model Rules of Professional Conduct, which include requirements for maintaining client confidentiality (Rule 1.6), establishing competence (including with technology) (Rule 1.1), and keeping clients informed of matters (Rule 1.4).
Processing client payments online
There are a host of considerations when deciding how to accept online payments from your clients. Clients overwhelmingly prefer to have the ability to pay online and to pay with credit cards. Turning to legal software to do the behind-the-scenes work of processing online payments for your law firm is your best bet.
The right legal technology platform can ensure that all online payments accepted follow the ABA Model Rules, Interest on Lawyers’ Trust Accounts (IOLTA) guidelines, and Payment Card Industry Data Security Standards (PCI DSS). The right legal payment and accounting software will ensure that your legal team does not commingle client trust account funds with the funds they use for operations.
Following rules for online law firm advertising
Law firm websites must meet certain ethical requirements set forth by their state bars. For example, websites shouldn’t advertise a lawyer as an “expert” or as “specialized” in a particular practice area unless they hold a specific qualification permitted by their state. They should also not hold themselves out to be the “best” lawyer to handle a type of matter. Attorneys may also need to include a disclaimer noting that the information on their website should not be considered legal advice. Lawyers should check their state bar’s requirements to ensure compliance. In some states, the bar may require or permit the submission of the law firm’s website content for ethical review.
Additionally, prospective clients want to see that your law firm is capable of handling matters like theirs. One of the best ways to highlight your expertise is through the words of satisfied clients. But there are limits to what you can share online — and you also need to prepare for how to handle a negative review. ABA Model Rule 7.1 requires that all communications about a lawyer and their services must be true and not misleading. Marketing statements, such as testimonials, could be misleading if they set an expectation that a lawyer can obtain the same results as another client without reference to the specific factual and legal circumstances of each client’s case.
Finally, law firms should make sure that their websites meet the requirements of the Americans with Disabilities Act. That means your site’s design and visual and audio content need to be accessible to everyone, including people with disabilities.
A digital marketing company that focuses on helping law firms can help identify and avoid online marketing pitfalls and help you comply with your state bar’s requirements.
True compliance starts with your people. Your law firm should have a data protection plan (especially when it comes to client data) that outlines steps and safety procedures. It should include policies on who can access client data, how and when they can access it, and how data is retained and backed up. Also, make sure that your attorneys and staff are trained on how to handle sensitive data and best practices for compliance.
Legal software plays a critical role in helping law firms remain compliant with laws and regulations. As touched on throughout this article, the laws related to compliance are plentiful, and navigating those waters yourself is unnecessarily risky.
With advanced legal software, your firm can ensure data security through the cloud, keep client information confidential, and process online payments both quickly and while fulfilling your legal and ethical requirements. By leveraging legal software, your firm will streamline compliance processes, reduce the risk of data breaches and other violations, and ultimately protect your law firm’s reputation.
