Modern law firms and legal professionals continue to find new solutions for better productivity and efficiency. A report suggested a major percentage of efficiency is still lacking in law firms due to workload and mismanagement.
Are you overworked? It’s common within the solo and small law firms, it leaves many frustrated because there’s just not enough time to do it all. Many attorneys feel pressure to require more and more work because they don’t know when clients will knock on their door. more clients don’t just mean more lawyering. It means more administrative work, billing, and client demands with other countless tasks. This leads to attorneys either becoming so busy that they’re not effective or they reach the verge of collapse.
It’s crucial to have the right tools and solutions like matter management software to combat this workload and maintain a clear flow of work-life management.
What is Legal Matter Management?
Matter management software solutions are tools to combat and manage the process during litigation. A matter and its entire matter information like the sort of case, the attorney on the case, legal documents, calendar, evidence, financial data, bills, e-discovery are managed and tracked by the firm throughout the matter lifecycle.
Matter management software assists the attorneys to maintain a clear workflow with organized information through maintaining all parts of litigation.
Essential Features to Look in Legal Matter Management Software:
1. Case Management
A good matter management software gives you an overview of a case on its software’s dashboard. Matter management software enables legal professionals to have everything organized in one centralized place. You get an overview of all relevant information from documents to the history of the client through the case management feature.
2. Legal Calendaring
Lawyers deal with many cases round the clock with different dates and meetings. It becomes difficult for attorneys to maintain all dates, meetings, and schedules on hand. Legal calendaring helps lawyers to schedule all case hearings, trials, and meetings, it also sends out timely reminders. You can also sync your Google and Outlook calendars with it. Now you never have to worry about missing a single date with matter management software.
3. Client Communication
Client communication is a vital part of a law firm’s growth, a good matter management software provides features to fill communication gaps between you and your clients. Features such as client portals, automated emails, and message portals help clients instantly communicate with their attorneys and law firms.
4. Contact Management
Lawyers deal with hundreds of clients in their entire lifetime, it is hard to keep track of every past client, details and documents about their cases. With legal cloud-based software you can have features like contact management where you can just access your details by typing just a few keywords and voila you have all details in front of you in a matter of a few seconds.
5. Document Management
Since the pandemic has hit the legal industry, most businesses operate from remote locations, and in situations like this one must have the tools to conquer this battle. Sending documents with emails increases the risk of breach. With a document management feature, you can collaborate seamlessly with colleagues and clients through portals and features. With document management software for law firms, you can easily store all your documents in one single centralized place and through cloud-based technology, you can instantly retrieve, edit and access them from anywhere.
6. Online Payments
Matter management software integrates with top payment applications like LawPay, PayPal, online credit and debit cards, and other such applications. Matter management software enables lawyers to accept payments through credit cards or allow clients to make ACH payments upon receiving the invoice.
Conclusion:
Being a lawyer is a great responsibility with stress and countless tasks to be accomplished. Working in a stress-free work environment can substantially increase your efficiency and maintain a clear and streamlined workflow.
Adapting to a matter management software in your practice and firms will allow you to have extra time and organized practice.
Guest article written by: Simran Sinha is writer and marketing manager at CaseFox & MatterSuite who publishes articles with the view of revolutionizing technological reforms in the legal industry. Her ideas, concepts, and insights are based on legal professionals and the author argues for approaches to resolving legal matters when it comes to technology and law.