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Law Practice Management Software
Compare All Law Practice Management Software
PracticePanther Legal Software
PracticePanther Legal Software
PracticePanther Legal Software is a legal management solution for small to large practices specializing in areas including bankruptcy, personal injury, family, divorce, estate planning, litigation, criminal law and many more. The ...Read more
Zola Suite
Zola Suite
Zola Suite is a cloud-based legal practice management solution for law firms of all sizes. Key features include task management, built-in email, document management, client portals, calendar, contact management, automation, report...Read more
BQE CORE Suite
BQE CORE Suite
BQE Core makes it easier and more profitable to run your business. It organizes information, automates repetitive tasks and allows your firm to spend more time providing service to your clients instead of managing internal process...Read more
Rocket Matter
Rocket Matter
Rocket Matter is a cloud-based legal billing and management solution designed to cater small and midsize law practices. It features time and billing management, calendar, document management, payments and collaboration management ...Read more
Software pricing tips
Read our Law Practice Management Software Buyers GuideSubscription models
- Per employee/per month: This model allows you to pay a monthly fee for each of your employees.
- Per user/per month: Users pay a monthly fee for users—normally administrative users—rather than all employees.
Perpetual license
- This involves paying an upfront sum for the license to own the software and use it indefinitely.
- This is the more traditional model and is most common with on-premise applications and with larger businesses.
Rated best value for money
SmartAdvocate
SmartAdvocate
Conceptualized by a partner at a personal injury law firm, SmartAdvocate is a legal management platform that offers flexible deployment options and a modular suite of applications. In addition to case management, attorneys a...Read more
Needles Neos
Needles Neos
Over 2,500 top law firms trust Needles case management software to optimize workflow and maximize bottom line. Combining legal know-how with next-gen innovation, our web-based solution, Neos puts even more tools in your hands: a...Read more
Legal Files
Legal Files
For government agencies, corporations, universities and insurance companies, Legal Files legal case & matter management software centrally organizes your contacts, documents, emails, deadlines and other data. Rely on our seamless ...Read more
CoCounselor
CoCounselor
CoCounselor provides a cloud-based legal management solution tailored specifically to the needs of plaintiff’s lawyers. With CoCounselor, users gain access to a suite of solutions that provide information on the performance of the...Read more
Freshsales
Freshsales
Freshsales is a salesforce automation solution that enables businesses of all sizes to streamline lead management, client interaction, marketing insights, customer relationship management and other operations. The platform enables...Read more
Popular Law Practice Management Software Comparisons
Buyers Guide
Last Updated: January 21, 2022Attorneys and law firms have to manage several administrative tasks, such as scheduling appointments, handling documents, keeping tabs on court schedules, tracking finances, and communicating case updates to clients. Handling these processes manually not only requires significant effort and time but also increases the chances of human errors.
Law practice management software automates legal workflows to help law firms streamline their daily operations. It reduces the manual efforts needed for handling multiple clients/cases and delivers insights to improve overall productivity.
A wide range of law practice management solutions is available on the market, and choosing the one that best meets your needs and budget is important. To help you with decision-making, we’ve curated a buyers guide that includes all the information you'll need.
Here's what we'll cover:
- What is law practice management software?
- Common features of law practice management software
- What type of buyer are you?
- Benefits of law practice management software
- Market trends to understand
What is law practice management software?
Law practice management software is a software tool that helps law firms and individual attorneys manage case-related workflows, documentation, calendars, contacts, and client communication. It offers electronic billing and payment functionality to help users maintain an accurate record of client receivables.
The software automates routine administrative tasks, which helps save time and allows legal practices to provide better services to their clients. Automation also reduces the chances of manual errors and prevents any repetition or conflict of facts during documentation.
Reporting, activity dashboard, and rate management are some advanced features of law practice management software.
Common features of law practice management software
The software features you'll need solely depend on the scale and size of your legal practice. Here are some common features most law practice management solutions offer.
| Document management | Lets you collect, store, and share case-related documents and legal files. |
| Matter management | Allows you to manage and monitor the complete lifecycle of a case, including case activities and hearing schedules. |
| Billing and invoicing | Lets you generate bills and invoices for employee billable hours and other expenses. |
| Calendar management | Offers a shared calendar that helps view tasks, deadlines, appointments, court dates, etc. |
| Activity management | Lets you manage and track case-related workflows, timesheets, case updates, client updates, etc. |
| Contact management | Allows you to store clients’ contact details and case information, including name, address, billing cycle, and communication history. |
What type of buyer are you?
Before you start evaluating software options, you'll want to know which buyer category you belong to so that you pick the right software. Most buyers belong to one of the following categories:
- Individual attorneys: These buyers are individual attorneys with their own legal practice. They generally have fewer clients compared with large law firms and need help with streamlining daily operations to serve their clients better. A standard law practice management solution with case management, document management, billing, and invoicing capabilities would be a good fit for such businesses.
- Law firms: These buyers include law firms with many attorneys as partners. They have several clients and handle multiple cases simultaneously. Besides client management, optimization of team performance is a top need for such buyers. A fully featured law practice management solution with case management, activity and task management, and advanced reporting capabilities would suit their needs.
Benefits of law practice management software
In this section, we’ve listed the most notable benefits of law practice management software.
- Optimizes performance: Law practice management software automates the majority of legal administrative workflows, such as billing and case information management. This leaves you with more time to focus on your clients and their cases, which helps optimize the productivity of your legal practice.
- Centralizes document storage: The document management feature of law practice management software lets you store all case-related documents in a centralized repository that can be accessed by all users in the law firm. You can also save legal intellectual property in this repository for company-wide consumption. The software also allows you to set up access control rights so that your documents are safe.
- Bills accurately: Law practice management software lets you track the work done by your team members and records their billable time. This helps create accurate client invoices as well as ensures complete transparency of work.
Market trends to understand
Based on our research, the following is the key trend in the law practice management software market:
- Artificial intelligence (AI) to make legal due diligence and research easier and cost effective: AI can help attorneys speed up laborious manual tasks that are otherwise time-consuming. When combined with law practice management software, AI can assist with legal research and due diligence tasks, such as fact checking and background vetting. It can also improve the accuracy and speed of the document reviewing process to help law firms save costs and efforts.
- Smart legal contracts are on the rise: Law firms are witnessing an increasing usage of smart contracts over traditional paper-based contracts due to the former’s time-saving and cost benefits. Since they are computer coded, smart contracts can eliminate ambiguity in the language used for explaining legal terms, accurately interpret international contracts written in different languages, and even incorporate industry regulations into the code to make compliance easier for law firms.
Note: The application selected in this article is an example to show a feature in context and is not intended as an endorsement or a recommendation. It has been obtained from sources believed to be reliable at the time of publication.