Streamline Firm Management with Legal Applications

Most law firms realize the benefit of using Practice and Case Management software. These tools help keep a firm organized, track performance, and balance workloads. They’re created especially for law firms, so—while they deal with quotidian details—they’re organized by case or matter.

Smaller firms may rely on this type of software because they don’t have the resources to put toward a case manager or law office administrator. Mid-size and larger firms may have managers, administrators, and other support staff who use this software as a tool for organization.

Whether a law firm is small or large, Practice and Case Management software can make a profound difference in efficiency of operation.

What Case and Practice Management software can do for you

Case Management software concentrates on doing one thing well: managing cases. These applications store information about matters and cases in a searchable database. Most Case Management software allows users to check for conflicts of interest and statutes of limitations.

Practice Management software can help a law firm with case management, as well as other day-to-day tasks, such as calendaring and contact management—even document assembly.

Some law firms cobble together their practice management technology by using a variety of specialized applications, such as Quickbooks for billing and Outlook for contact management. This can work up to a point, but one benefit of using Case or Practice Management software is that everything is in one place. And, many Practice Management software options integrate with other applications (such as Outlook) for ease of use.

The key is determining what needs your law firm has and finding the right software to address those needs.

Popular Practice and Case Management software

Here are some popular applications that will help law firms manage their practices and cases:

1. PracticeMaster: This option is made by Tabs3, so it integrates with their billing software. It also provides calendaring, conflicts and contact management, and document assembly, as well as research, email, and phone call tracking. Other programs with which it integrates include Quickbooks, CalendarRules, Worldox, and Outlook. PracticeMaster works well for small to medium law firms.

2. Needles: A good solution for law firms of all sizes, Needles features calendaring, document scanning and assembly, client contact information, case and matter management, and time and billing.

3. Time Matters: LexisNexis is the parent company of Time Matters, which works best for medium-sized law firms. It provides calendaring; task, client, and project/matter management; and calendaring. It integrates with Office suite as well as other LexisNexis applications.

4. LawBase: This software handles case and practice management for firms of all sizes. It also integrates with HotDocs and Outlook.

Questions to ask

Because Practice and Case Management software will have a direct effect on everyday issues, it’s important that law firms select a program that works for their specific needs. Here are some questions that can help you narrow the possibilities:
• If we’re already using Outlook, Quickbooks, and other applications, what other features in your software can we benefit from?

• What features are included in your application? Calendaring? Contact management? Conflicts of interest checks? Document assembly?

• Does your software integrate with applications we’re already using?

• Do you provide a client portal?

• Is customization possible?

• Is your software hosted on servers or in the cloud? Can I access your application remotely?

• Do you provide regular backups? At what intervals? How often do you upgrade your software?

• What happens if I have a maintenance issue? Do you provide training or support?

If you need assistance determining which type of software has the features you need, or if you want help integrating new applications with your existing system, Legal Workspace’s application support specialists can help. You can take advantage of Legal Workspace’s Software as a Service licensing model for certain Case Management or Practice Management applications. Legal Workspace can also move existing licenses for software to its cloud environment.

The work that goes into the daily management of a law firm can be streamlined with Case and Practice Management software. There are many good programs on the market that will save your law firm time and effort. The key is to select the program that integrates well with the applications you currently use and that provides additional features that you need.

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Reclaim 69 Billable Hours This Year

Everyone gets spam emails. It’s a part of life, so you deal with it. But do you realize how much time your employees spend reviewing and deleting spam emails?

The average worker receives 121 emails per day, and nearly 50 percent of those emails are spam. It takes some time to differentiate spam from the real thing—about 16 seconds per email on average—which doesn’t seem like a whole lot of time until you start doing the math:

If your employees are anything like the average worker, your employees and attorneys spend 16 minutes each day, 80 minutes each week, 5.5 hours each month, and 69.3 hours each year managing spam email. That’s over one and a half 40-hour work weeks per year spent just dealing with spam.

Worrying about spam is a waste of time and money when your staff should be concentrating on more productive and strategic initiatives, such as workflow management, assisting clients and maximizing billable hours. Free or included spam tools, such as Microsoft 365’s spam filtering, are not advanced enough to unburden your employees and protect your network.

Not just wasted time: Spam can be dangerous

Law firms store trade secrets, protected health information (PHI), and other high-value data which makes them valuable targets for cyber criminals. Some junk emails might be easily identifiable as spam, but others are more nefarious. For example, hackers have become increasingly clever when it comes to email spoofing and phishing. Both email spoofing and phishing look very much like the real thing and attempt to fool recipients into either giving away their information or downloading hazardous software.

Ransomware can be another issue for law firms if employees and attorneys aren’t properly trained to recognize malicious emails. An employee might receive an email with a seemingly benign attachment and open it—only to unleash a Cryptolocker virus in your network. The virus systematically enters and locks files on the infected computer (including network files), and the user can only regain access by sending money to the hacker, who may or may not release the information. Spam has the potential to directly compromise attorney-client privilege.

Get those hours back

Implementing the right spam solution is imperative to reclaiming billable hours and securing your law firm’s network. Technology is now available with advanced features such as opening attachments in a “sand box” to check for malware before sending the attachments to the end user’s inbox.

The time, effort, and expense it takes to set up a system for reducing junk email offsets the time, effort, and expense individuals sink into managing it on their own—and you’ll spend a lot more time, effort, and expense if a user in your firm finds itself the victim of a malicious cyber-attack.

Legal Workspace regularly implements spam solutions and provides end-user training to improve law firm efficiency and protect firms from email threats. We are serious about protecting data in a world where hackers and spam purveyors continually invent new ways to penetrate defenses. Get serious about stopping spam, and reclaim those hours back.

Reach out to Legal Workspace to learn more about spam filtering options.

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Is Your Outdated Office Hindering Law Firm Productivity?

Law firms are constantly buried in paperwork. The sheer amount of paper that a single lawyer can use is substantial: One survey found that individual attorneys use between 20,000 and 100,000 sheets of paper per year on average. Another study has shown that a document gets copied 19 times on average and that workers typically spend between half an hour and two hours a day searching for documents. Paperless workspaces have multiple benefits, both for the environment and for a firm’s bottom line.

1. Increased law firm productivity and efficiency

Chaos and wasted time are byproducts of an office that still depends on paper documents and filing systems. The application support specialists at Legal Workspace report witnessing turmoil surrounding lost files at firms. When you go paperless, that headache ends because everyone knows where documents are stored, and everyone has access to them whether they’re at home, on the road, or in the office.

Collaborating with clients also gets easier because there’s no need to search for and send physical copies of documents—and staff no longer need to spend as much time filing and making and distributing copies to involved parties.

Instead, attorneys and staff can concentrate on getting things done (GTD). Going paperless allows you to follow David Allen’s GTD system without impediments:

a. Capture your tasks and responsibilities: Creating an electronic to-do list gives you the freedom to achieve your goals from anywhere.
b. Clarify the steps it will take to achieve your goals: Breaking down your goals into attainable and discrete steps increases your productivity.
c. Organize and prioritize: Knowing what you must do when—and knowing where the tools are to get your work done—are key to productivity.
d. Reflect on your tasks and goals: Reorganizing and updating priorities is easily done electronically.
e. Engage: Getting things done is all about ticking off boxes so you have the time to concentrate on the more creative and engaging aspects of your work.

2. Workflow automation

Simplify, systematize, and promote efficiency with workflow automation. A paperless office makes taking advantage of the benefits of workflow automation that much easier because all an office’s important documents are stored in one place, rather than multiple copies scattered across the office.
The team that needs the file knows exactly where it is, and everyone can access it on all their devices. Then, workflows can be set up that automatically create new tasks once another task has been accomplished.

Once a firm locks down the basics of using workflow automation, they can begin to implement delegation systems in their practice management software or apply a document management system.

3. Integrate applications

Having a paperless office allows law firms to take advantage of other technologies. For example, you can now store documents in your practice management application or document management application. Integrating these applications helps with efficiency and workflow, too: When you use a practice management application, documents can be organized and connected with your firm’s cases.

And, if you use Legal Workspace, which hosts all the software applications you need to run your firm on the cloud, your attorneys will all have access to those applications (and those documents) on any of their devices, anywhere they want to use them.

4. More space, more money, more time

It’s probable that going paperless will have positive effects on your law firm’s bottom line. If you’re not storing and filing physical copies of paper, you don’t need all that extra equipment and space. That translates to reduced budgets for things like paper, copy machines, filing cabinets—and maybe even a decrease in rent.

5. Going Green

Of course, one consequence of going paperless is a reduced environmental footprint. If you eliminate the usage of one ton of paper (about 200,000 sheets), you save 17 trees. As more corporations are reducing their environmental impact they expect their law firms to do the same.

Tech leaps, no worries

Technology around paperless solutions has grown rapidly over the last few years, and with that growth has come improved security and convenience. Legal Workspace has redundancy built into every security measure, which means that its clients’ data is constantly being monitored and protected.

As most other industries adopt paperless systems, law firms can feel comfortable following suit and selecting a cloud-based platform like Legal Workspace to help them access and manage their applications.

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Workflow on your Workspace: Become More Productive and Efficient

Are you using your software to its full potential?

 

Many law firms own legal software applications to assist them with case management, time and billing, and accounting. The question is: Are you using your software to its full potential?

Most law firms use only a portion of their software’s features and integrations without realizing and maximizing the software’s full capacity. The application support specialists at Legal Workspace estimate that most firms only use about 40 percent of the functionality of workflow automation or case management software.

Law firms are particularly poised to take advantage of workflow automation because many of their processes are methodical and follow a set procedure. Developing repeating workflows not only increases efficiency, but also ensures accuracy.

To figure out what can be automated, firms should define their repetitive workflows and problem areas.

Here are five guidelines to help you understand how automation can work for you:

1. Standardize and implement. Different practice areas have different processes that are methodical or repetitive. Determine which processes fall into that category, identify common issues, then streamline them to make procedures standard.

Here’s an example: Most firms repeat the same process every time they take on a new client. The firm will go through an approval process, run a conflict check, and finally proceed with the client intake process. Those steps can be standardized to prevent bottlenecks and keep the process on track.

2. Checklists. Practice areas typically have sets of milestones or tasks that need to be accomplished. Two good examples of events that benefit from using a checklist are 1) when a new case is entered into the system and 2) when a case is closed.

 In both scenarios, there are many small to-dos that need to be completed in a certain order. At the beginning of the relationship, firms need to set up the file and the billing, assign staff to the case, send a thank-you letter to the client, and countless other administrative tasks. When the case has closed, there’s a similar laundry list of items to do, such as finalizing billing, document storage, and more.

Rather than having an individual keep track of all the small tasks—or hoping that everyone remembers their responsibilities and performs them in the correct order—a checklist makes certain that every task gets accomplished and that nothing happens twice.

3. Document generation and file-sharing. The application support specialists at Legal Workspace have seen data privacy issues arise out of human error when people recycle electronic documents, using them repeatedly for the same purpose. Let’s say an attorney pulls up Jane Smith’s document because he needs to create the same type of document for John Jones. He searches for all of Jane’s information and thinks he replaces it with John’s new information in the document—but he gets interrupted mid-stream and forgets to replace Jane’s social security number. Not only is this scenario inefficient, compromises sensitive data.

Increase accuracy, efficiency, and security when you standardize document templates in your firm based on practice area. Use case management or practice management apps, such as Amicus Attorney®, Practice Master ®, or Time Matters ®, to pull data and autofill the documents accurately. Then, share your files with the appropriate parties using a secure platform in the cloud, such as Legal Workspace.

4. Calendar templates. This workflow feature helps attorneys track standard tasks and deadlines that need to happen on a case. For example, a personal injury attorney might construct a statute of limitations calendar template, which includes the deadline and reminders going backwards six months, 90 days, the month, and the week before the deadline hits.

Automating reminders allows attorneys to worry about the finer points of their cases, rather than the administrative details.

5. Triggers. Often in a law firm, one action leads to another action. A more advanced feature in some practice management systems allow users to set up “triggers,” which simply means that once you indicate within the system that a certain event has occurred, another action that relates to the case automatically pops up. For example, if a status of a case changes, a trigger would prompt users to take the next logical step.

 Taking advantage of the features that likely already exist as part of your case management or practice management software is a simple way to increase efficiency, accuracy, and security. If you need assistance determining what you can do and how to do it, Legal Workspace’s application support specialists can help you fine tune your automation so firms can maximize their billable hours. Reach out now.

 

 

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