The features that take legal matter management to the next level
When it comes to legal matter management, features make all the difference. After all, this type of software is only as good as its tools and functions. Because you’re investing in a product to improve the organization and efficiency of your office, you want to make sure that it has all of the functions you need to manage what matters to you.
In part one of this series, we walked you through three important features to look for in your new legal matter management software. This included email and calendar integration, document legal case management, and reliability and scalability. However, this isn’t all you need to consider when you’re making your next big software purchase.
For this next blog, the team at Legal Files Software is diving a little deeper to look at three more critical features that can help streamline legal operations for attorneys, paralegals and support staff. Let’s take a look at reporting, customization and personalized training.
Feature four – Reporting
No matter what area of law you practice, you’ll likely encounter the need to generate reports. Legal professionals use legal matter management for a number of reasons, but without a way to view and interpret the information the software contains, it’s simply a database with no meaning on its own. The way that you make sense of all of this data and information is by generating reports to examine daily and big picture issues.
While most people think of matter management software as a way to manage day-to-day information, it’s so much more than that. By generating reports, you can gain insight into trends in case and matter types, workflow bottlenecks, and staffing needs. With this information, you and your team can make changes to improve your effectiveness and profitability. Basically, the daily file management helps your office survive, while reporting helps it thrive. Because both day-to-day management and big picture reporting are critical, you’ll want tools to manage both of these needs, and Legal Files Software offers them.
In addition to helping legal departments and law offices plan, the reporting function of Legal Files Software can help organizations that are subject to national reporting requirements, such as legal aid groups, stay in compliance with these important regulations.
Feature five – Customization and flexibility
Many legal professionals think that the only way to get exactly what they need from legal matter management software is to have IT develop a program specifically for their needs. However, this can be a time-intensive and costly solution that isn’t even necessary. Legal Files Software is a commercial, off-the-shelf (COTS) solution that features the flexibility to allow you to customize the program to fit your unique needs—without any programming knowledge.
Our team realizes that no law firm or legal department is exactly the same. That’s why we offer a wealth of different features in our software. You can implement and use the ones that are relevant to your practice, and ignore the ones that aren’t useful to you. Additionally, you can modify the language and fields within the program to match the terminology in your area of law and specific workplace. Because we believe that customization should be easy for our clients, we have designed our software to be user-friendly so that the IT department doesn’t have to get involved every time you want to make a change.
Flexibility is also important for growing legal departments and law offices. The legal field is always changing, so the needs and scope of your practice may also evolve. You want a program like Legal Files Software that is flexible enough to handle increased workloads and different case types in the future. Otherwise, you’ll have to build or purchase, and learn, a new system to accommodate the changing needs of your office.
Feature six – Personalized training and support
Although you might only consider features that are built into legal matter management software, it’s also important to think about training and support as features. If you purchase a new program, you need training to learn how to use it so that you can hit the ground running. Without it, you’ll be spending countless hours trying to figure out how to do tasks like retrieve case information and save emails to the program. That’s hardly efficient.
Legal Files Software has several highly trained and experienced team members who specialize in helping clients learn the ins and outs of their new software. When you license the product, you can count on receiving comprehensive introductory training to help you get started with your new legal matter management tool as soon as possible. After learning the basics, you can contact us about ongoing training opportunities that include comprehensive administrative and advanced user training, as well as training on new features and yearly refresher courses.
Best of all, the training is customized and hands-on, so you won’t be sitting in a conference room and watching a boring video. Instead, you’ll be learning directly from our trained team members as they walk you through the features that are relevant to the way you work. You’ll also receive plenty of hands-on training to help you get comfortable with your new software. If a company doesn’t offer this type of training, you should see it as a red flag.
All the features come together to make the perfect product for you
After reviewing both parts of this two-part series, you should have a clear idea of what features to look for in legal matter management. You see the value of features like email integration and legal document management, but you also understand the importance of reporting, customization and personalized training to help you make the most of the software you select for your legal department or law office.