Legal software investments have continued to rise in recent years due to the increasing pressure to better manage the growing legal workload and drive efficiency. Gartner estimates in a recent report that legal departments will increase their spend on technology threefold by 2025. In today’s economic climate, where hiring additional staff is often challenging, adopting legal software empowers teams to achieve more, streamline workflows and meet the rising productivity requirements.
Once you’ve decided to make an important investment in legal software, the next step is implementation. A successful software implementation process is critical to your organization’s success—so it is important to do it right. Here are five steps you can take to help your software implementation process go seamlessly:
1. Assess your current legal operations.
Just like any good goal-planning session, understanding your current position is vital for determining where you aim to be in the future. If you take the time to assess your current technology usage, processes and staffing, you can better understand what areas are working and where improvements need to be made. It’s important to choose a legal software partner who can join you in this assessment process and can provide expertise where you may be lacking. Armed with a comprehensive understanding of what works and what doesn’t, you can take this information to your team of legal software experts and they can help you build a customized platform for your organization’s unique needs.
2. Examine your legal operations workflow.
A legal organization’s workflow consists of the many tasks and information processes that occur for each case/matter. A common workflow is submitting a request for legal services. It’s important to assess how your organization manages its workflow so that you can uncover possible areas of improvement. If you always do the same thing, you will get the same results. Since you are in the mode of analyzing your processes, this is a key area to keep in mind since many legal software providers offer automation tools to help your workflow process run automatically behind the scenes—eliminating extra work for you and increasing efficiency in the process.
3. Evaluate tracking needs.
Legal organizations vary in the type of information they need to track and why. This can be related to government regulations or industry-specific standards. No matter the case or the industry, it is essential to understand what information your organization needs to track to stay in compliance and ensure that no critical piece of data gets overlooked. By determining your tracking and reporting needs for each department or area, you can make a list of daily tracking and strategic needs.
This information will be critical in setting up your legal software with the best possible chance of success in capturing all the information you need it to. Sometimes it is a good idea to get best practices and advice from your legal software provider who can provide an outside perspective of what a good tracking/reporting program looks like. There may be gaps you haven’t even thought of that can give you a new perspective on data you have previously overlooked or neglected.
4. Consider ROI.
When assessing the potential return on investment (ROI) of legal software, several categories should be considered. You’ll want to see how the legal software can lead to process efficiencies that make life better for your organization and also result in cost savings. Some of the key areas to look at include: workload, risk management, response time and spending versus savings.
By selecting the right legal software provider, you can track metrics that help you determine the true value you are receiving from your investment. You can also possibly avoid costly issues by ensuring compliance and being proactive in setting up a program that works for you. Good legal operations combined with the right legal technology leads to less risk and more reward overall.
5. Help facilitate positive organizational change.
The transition to a new legal software program doesn’t happen in a day. It takes time to transition your team to a new way of working so you will want to be patient with yourself and your team members as you adjust. By having the right mindset that there will be bumps along the way, you can better respond to problems or issues as they arise.
The best way to transition your organization is to partner with your software provider to guide employees through the multi-step process. Ideally, you will want to slowly make changes and move to the next step once everyone has mastered the previous step. By incrementally rolling out new features, you can build competency slowly before hitting your staff with more complex features they will encounter. How detailed and complex your system becomes is all based on your organization’s unique needs. The best legal software system is designed to manage what matters to you.
Foolproof Your Implementation Process with Trusted Tools and Advice
If you want a better way to manage your legal activities and are looking to increase efficiency and productivity, then legal case management software is the tool you are looking for. You can lay the foundation for successful legal operations by implementing basic functions while having the freedom to adapt and add-on as your organization evolves. Finally, you can say goodbye to siloed systems and manual, outdated processes that no longer serve you.
With Legal Files Software, you can consolidate all your contacts, email, file progress and documents into manageable, collaborative containers that give you a 360 degree view of your cases/matters. With support for an unlimited number of cases, matters, documents and users, there is no limit to what Legal Files can offer you.
As a partner in the implementation process, Legal Files Software, Inc. offers 30+ years of experience supporting organizations across numerous types of industries. Expertise is offered by full-time, professional team members who are committed to your success. Based on our years of experience helping other organizations improve and thrive through legal software, we can help you configure a system that meets your unique needs.
“We were as lost as a ball in high weeds. We weren’t sure exactly what we wanted or how we wanted it. Our Legal Files project manager was great. She was knowledgeable and fun, and we worked together to customize the system to our needs. She was also very helpful in building reports with us.”
Lynn Dunlap, West Virginia Department of Environmental Protection
A Legal Files Customer
Request a demo to learn more about how we help organizations like yours manage what matters to you.