As a lawyer, you must keep all of your customers’ information organized and accessible to provide the best possible service and maximize your billable time. Paper records and, to a lesser extent, a jumble of data stored locally on a computer are horribly wasteful. But what is the best legal software for small law firms?
It’s time to start using a CRM to make it easier to store and access your data and ensure it stays safe. Many law firms just starting their search for case management software find it difficult to know where to begin.
It’s okay, though. We’ve got you covered!
Why Choose Matterly?
Matterly is a trusted law firm CRM made by lawyers. We have had many discussions concerning legal practice management software with hundreds of law firms throughout North America.
What are the preferences of law firm businesses? What is it that they don’t care for? What are the new systems that they’ll be using?
It is possible to use Matterly CRM to run your legal company on a more or less comprehensive basis. Our CRM software generally does the following tasks, but specific features and capabilities may vary from our competitors.
Why Matterly Is The Best Legal Software For Small Law Firms
Client & Contact Management
Clients, courts, and other relevant parties may all access the same database.
Matter Administration
One place to keep track of all the many things going on in the world. Each matter’s important information is kept in this database.
Calendar
In addition to the individual calendars for each user, there is an aggregated calendar for the whole law firm.
Task management
Use a task management system to keep track of everything that has to be done. Set deadlines and assign responsibilities.
Expense & Time Tracking
Keep track of all the time and money you spend on a certain customer or topic.
Billing
Billing and invoices for billable hours, contingency labor, and fixed-fee cases.
Conflict Verification
Analyze the database for similar names and keep a record of any results.
Essential Accounting
Standard company accounting (P & L, Balance Sheet) includes all of the following: Chart of Accounts, Bank/Operating Accounts, and Basic Accounting Reports.
Trust accounting
Management of trust funds, including reporting on trust accounts, is handled by trust accounting.
Document Creation/Automation
Filling out certain court forms and papers automatically.
Document Storage
Storage of connected documents and data in the cloud.
Document Management
Some of the more advanced features of this software are full-text searching, document labelling and profiling, and version management.
E-mail Administration
Click2Mail integration allows you to store emails in particular folders, follow up with customers, and email parsing.
APIs
You can use an API (Application Program Interface), which allows you or third parties to build interfaces with the product.
Secure Client Portal
A client portal is an online platform for sharing documents and updates with customers and other third parties.
We suggest storing this list and ticking off each item that your legal company needs.
Why Use Legal Software (Even for Small Law Firm)
Your customers and connections are priceless resources. Maintaining and nurturing your early connections are important. A legal CRM like Matterly is there to help!
This may help you retain and expand your customer base, as well as strengthen your relationships with your most important referral sources. Using such a system could help with business development and, in turn, bring in more money for a company.
Although lawyers have been hesitant to engage in legal software in the past, this may be changing.
There is a belief that a CRM is not suitable for legal practice because of the failure of legacy CRMs to match a lawyer’s specialized demands. As a result, CRMs are becoming less effective because of the time and complexity required to operate them.
While certain CRM solutions are expressly geared to help business development and relationship management efforts in the legal profession (such as Matterly), there are many more out there.
When it comes to law firm CRMs, it’s important to know why you need one in the first place. Defining your company’s business growth objectives is the first step in the process. As an investor, you need a strategy in place so that you and your company know precisely where you’re going and what to concentrate on.
You should evaluate your efforts and monitor the outcomes of your CRM by generating a growth or business development action plan and defining certain targets.
These are some questions you can ask yourself to decide whether or not a CRM is good for you or your business:
- Has my team grown in size, necessitating the implementation of a new system?
- How much of my important time do I spend on spreadsheets and maintaining customer data?
- Has my data exploded in the last several months, and will it do so in the future?
- Do I have leaky buckets in my sales funnels that I’m not noticing?
- Is my company at a point where I want to concentrate on its growth?
If you answer “yes” to any of the following questions seem, it may be time to invest in a CRM system.
What Our Customers Like About Matterly (Why Matterly Is The Best Law Firm Software For Small Law Firms)
Rapid Setup
Matterly is one of the simpler apps to get started with because of how simple it is to use. Matterly, unlike other legal apps, does not need the services of a tech specialist to get up and running.
Business and Legal Accounting
All of your financial reporting needs may be handled by Matterly, which includes bank accounts, general ledgers, receivables and payables accounts, and financial statements. Matterly offers fixed-fee, split-billing assistance as well as detailed financial reporting.
Simplicity
Matterly’s user-friendliness and sleek design have propelled it to the top of the cloud-based practice management industry. Older software often has interfaces that are hard to use and don’t make sense, but Matterly Dashboard is easy to use and operate.
Useful Integrations
Matterly is compatible with a wide range of different products and services that your legal business employs (or may use in the future). Matterly is compatible with Office 365, Google Apps, QuickBooks, Zapier, Slack, and Zoom, to name a few. With the help of Matterly connectors, many law firms are able to successfully add to Matterly’s features and build a law practice management platform that fits their firm’s needs.
A Wide Range Of Payment Options
Invoices may be created in summary or detailed form. Monitor the status of overdue invoices, discount early payments, or charge late fees automatically. You can easily distinguish between hard and soft expenses. Maintain accurate financial records by recording reimbursable costs.
Advanced Case Management
In order to effectively gather, store, and search for case facts in your law firm’s procedures or practice areas, create custom data fields. Put each of your legal cases into a different category and give each one a unique task and payment.
All-in-One Dashboard
Your law firm’s most critical KPIs are readily available on the Matterly dashboard. Find out when deadlines are approaching, how many hours your company has logged, and much more, all in one location.
How Matterly CRM Helps Grow Your Small Law Firm
With Matterly CRM, your company can deeply understand your potential customers to develop strong, long-term connections with them. As a result, clients see the company as more cohesive, which enhances the quality of the business relationship.
Organized Client and Lead Information
One of the primary advantages of a well-structured system like Matterly is the ability to organize client and lead information. Your CRM solution incorporates this from the start.
Using an automated client intake procedure, you may be able to get and store information about your new clients.
Following the completion of electronic client intake forms (an essential aspect of building a paperless legal system), all relevant information is entered into your customer relationship management (CRM).
When contact is made, an account is automatically created, and the potential client’s lawyer may be called to talk about their legal needs.
Additionally, Matterly CRM software may gather and retain data about leads. Marketing automation on the CRM may be used to send emails or SMS messages to nurture your leads.
It is possible to increase the size of your legal firm’s clients by using these connectors.
More Effective Client Communication
Your law firm’s CRM software system provides a secure client portal for you to use with your clients. For confidential legal concerns or anything else, clients may communicate with their lawyers using this online portal.
You may securely exchange documents with customers, coworkers, and other collaborators by using the portal. Every legal document is kept safe and private with the same high level of security that is used for online banking.
As a result, your customers will be able to communicate with you more quickly and effectively.
To make people feel like they’re actually involved in the case, you may freely provide deadlines, reminders, or updates.
Digital Document Management
All of the legal team’s paperwork is being digitized in an effort to reduce the amount of paper used in the workplace. Even if your company isn’t completely paperless, the ability to access data from any location is a tremendous productivity boost.
If you’re still working from home, this is particularly true. Documents can be shared or changed right away with clients, coworkers, or other team members.
You don’t have to do it yourself; you can get a professional business to do it for you. But it’s worth it in the long run.
Legal papers may be stored, organized, and protected in a CRM system. Using a CRM to store and retrieve protected documents can save you both time and money in the long run.
The option to digitally sign papers is also available with digital files. Clients may sign papers electronically straight away thanks to the advanced features of most CRMs. Customers will appreciate the faster turnaround time and better service as a result of this.
Capabilities For Planning And Reminders
CRM software for legal firms helps prevent lawyers from being overbooked and saves you the time it takes to send out individual confirmations to each client.
A CRM system can take care of these chores for you and, in most cases, with more precision than you would be able to do on your own.
Our service lets you set up automated follow-up communications, reminders about payment deadlines, and appointments for all of your firm’s lawyers.
Staff meetings and client appointments are never missed thanks to an integrated calendar function. You won’t have to worry about an attorney becoming too busy to take on a case. Using the intake data, automatically invite customers or potential customers to meetings.
Email Marketing Automation
There are several ways email processes might assist your legal practice. It’s much simpler to schedule these marketing efforts when all of the information is in one place.
Tracking leads and categorizing them may be done by legal software for small law firms. If a lead signs up for your email newsletter or a customer eSigns a document, the system will be notified to begin sending out emails based on the trigger.
You may keep in contact with leads and keep them updated at all times.
Although social media is a great marketing tool in many sectors, email marketing still has a huge effect on the success of many companies. Prospects may be nurtured and subsequently converted most effectively through email. So, if you want to expand your legal practice, use a CRM and automate your email marketing.
One Streamlined Platform
Most legal firms currently use a wide variety of platforms and applications to perform the aforementioned responsibilities. With legal software for small law firms, you have access to all of your information in one place.
This approach makes it easier to manage your day-to-day tasks and cash. It’s easier for your staff to get things done when they’re all in the same spot, which in turn makes your customers happy.
Wrap Up – Legal Software For Small Law Firms
In 2022, there has been an accelerated trend toward using digital technologies for networking, services, and relationship management in the delivery of attorney-client interactions.
With a CRM system created exclusively for attorneys, you’ll be able to keep your firm’s connection with clients strong both online and offline.
You should check out Matterly’s CRM if you don’t already have one or if your existing CRM isn’t doing its job. Oh, did I mention that we also have a 30-Day Free Trial with no credit card required?
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