17 Dec How to Choose the Best Law Practice Management Software
When selecting legal software that best suits your law firm, it is imperative that you consider a case management software that offers a comprehensive plan that manages your caseload, while seamlessly allows for customer interaction.
Many firms seek a legal practice management software that solves their needs for legal billing, client interaction, scheduling, document control, timekeeping, and several of the other problems that arise in managing your caseload.
However, some firms do not consider how selecting the right software can help grow their firm. By selecting a case management software that offers intuitive solutions for your service issues, as well as offers in-depth support to assist in other fields, you have the opportunity to grow your law firm.
Selecting the case management software right for your firm
Your choice in case management software should offer effortless practice management at the scale that you require. No matter the size of the firm or the number of the attorneys, your legal software should be able to handle the busyness of an attorney’s life, as well as satisfy the needs of your clients.
With the busy schedules that attorneys keep, you need to be able to rely on a legal software and its support that offers a calendar and scheduling application with two-way integration. This feature should allow any integrated user to see calendar events posted, in order determine availability.
Your legal software also may require a client portal, in order to make scheduling easier. When pursuing legal action, new and returning clients may require the ability to request meetings with their attorneys. This type of portal should create seamless attorney-client scheduling and should not synchronize with any external calendar, allowing for discretion.
The necessity of time and contact management
Keeping time for the attorney-client meetings often can be a challenge. With so much going into the preparation prior to every interaction, you need to be able to rely on your legal software to have the ability to record and categorize time worked with a built-in timer.
It also should have the capability of determining how much a client should be charged for work performed, attributing and legal billing time against the given client or the matter at hand.
Your case management software should allow your law firm to become more efficient with its time. It should take the pressure off the timekeeping process and foster a more productive meeting between you and your clients.
Your choice in legal software should include organizational options for potential clients, as well. It needs to be able to recognize the difference between a potential client and a client, and be intuitive enough to convert one into the other, when such an instance occurs.
With so many interactions taking place, it is vital that your legal software have the capability of managing the names and contacts of clients, employees, and the office, as a whole, as well as have the capability of exporting this data. This data also should be organized separately from legal matters, which should be able to interface with the legal billing aspect of your chosen legal software.
Legal billing and accounting capabilities
The legal billing features in your software should be comprehensive. It is critical to the success and growth of your firm that you carefully consider a legal billing software that is capable of handling matter disbursements and sending invoices with ease.
In order to use your time more efficiently, the legal software should do the organization for you. Your legal billing software should offer payment history with the capability of adding updated disbursements on client matters, as well as seamlessly interacting with the accounting features of legal software.
With the busy schedule of attorneys, you and the fellow attorneys at your firm do not have the time or energy to be devoting to creating accounting reports and organizing the billing of your matter disbursements. By making the legal software choice with those capabilities, you will be better equipped to service the needs of your clients.
Understanding the legal software marketplace
This requires learning more about all of your available legal software options. The specificity of the software makes researching each of the available options a necessary component in making the selection that is right for your firm. When selecting your practice management software, it is important to consider the features you would be interested in utilizing, as well as the support that the company responsible for the software is willing to offer.
Whether your firm has one attorney or ten, your firm has the potential for growth through the use of the right legal software. By researching the market and determining what software features your firm needs, you can serve your clients more effectively and efficiently.