The success in law practice directly depends on the types of legal software we use in our work. Not using special applications in the 21st century is a crucial mistake. The lawyer who uses special law manager software will always be more productive than the one who does not.
Investments in business intelligence tools, including dashboards, must be taken into account by companies and law firms’ legal departments in today’s economic climate. Decent software can aggregate and display all the key statistical indicators of operational activity in a convenient format, which can be easily generated for yourself or management later.
The effectiveness of legal software depends on:
- the development’s quality in code/technology,
- the correct definition of the collected and displayed information.
- Both tasks can be performed within the company on their own (development, configuration), and a ready-made solution can be purchased from external developers. They will help with installation and configuration.
The legal sector has lagged behind technological advances until recently. But in recent years, solutions have increasingly appeared in this area that is aimed at translating complex and voluminous information into a simplified digital format. It allows law firms to store, manage, and exchange information from secure databases more easily.
The legal software case management is designed to assist individual attorneys or law firms in managing their affairs, including client records, schedules, appointments, deadlines, billing and accounting, computer files, and documents. It also facilitates compliance with policies and requirements set by the courts and legal authorities.
The legal profession’s practical and business side is not usually taught in law school, so litigation calendaring software and law practice management software’s primary purpose is to help law firms and practicing lawyers run their cases smoothly. Thus, the software contains functions for solving such tasks as maintaining a database, checking information for conflicts of interest and meeting the statute of limitations, time tracking (for invoicing), assembling documents, managing contacts, documents, calendaring, and scheduling for better customer interaction. The improvement of your law work begins with choosing the right computer system.
Some of the most popular functions of the best legal practice management software:
- the number of open court cases or non-judicial projects (for example, within the framework of corporate practice or registration of intellectual property rights), at what stage they are, in what category;
- total expenses by date with a percentage rise/fall schedule; expenses by category, by practice (for example, corporate, litigation), by region (if there are branches or subsidiaries), etc.
- income as a whole, broken down by dates with a graph of growth/decline in percentage; income by category, by practice (for example, corporate, judicial), by region (if there are branches or subsidiaries), etc., by employees;
- projections for income/expenses for future periods;
- time spent by employees on certain categories of cases/projects;
- the number of invoices submitted but not paid by external counterparties, etc
The essence of software
The best legal practice management software incidentally uses beneficial to modern law firms technologies, including word processing, desk notes, hard drive encryption, password protection, email management software for law firms, and CRM systems. Overall, the software helps improve the law firms’ efficiency and marketing, attracting more clients.
Companies specializing in the creation of computer programs for lawyers have an obvious advantage: they have been in the industry for a long time, collect feedback from many customers, and can quickly refine their functionality.
The proper software allows you to customize and visualize data from a company/case/person card on one screen. The computer programs for lawyers give you access to full business information on dashboards:
- business and risk statistics
- a forecast of the company’s state
- information about the pledge holder
- financial indicators compared to last year
- important claims
Thanks to this opportunity, you no longer need to spend time collecting and analyzing data from different sources. Today programs have become an indispensable tool in the daily assessment of the state of legal practice. And if you had to spend time collecting information from various sources (CRM, Excel, etc.) earlier, now it is presented in a convenient format, which allows you to make certain management decisions quickly.
This information will help lawyers or their managers answer questions:
- Are we spending the budget correctly?
- Are we using human resources efficiently?
- What is the processing time for requests for specific categories?
- Do we close the set goals for the projects?
- At what stage of the work process do you experience regular delays?
- How effective are certain external lawyers?
Conclusion
The software simplifies case management by allowing you to open and use it on the IT device of your choice: smartphone, tablet, or laptop. You get flexibility in setting up client files and cases, synchronizing documents and calendars, accessing the system from anywhere at any time. You can manage all aspects of business and legal practice, including organizing files and documents, scheduling tasks and appointments, creating professional invoices, and accepting payments online.
The legal department software also allows you to track progress with a timeline, record the time spent working on the case, store customer communications such as emails, letters, invoices, and phone calls, and customize the case files according to chosen parameters, such as practice area, structure, work environment, etc.