Ever thought how adverse choosing a wrong law firm management software can be? A management software can either help you draw higher profits or push you straight to the death valley. It is one of the most critical and vital decisions for an attorney as choosing the wrong case management system could really risk your business.
However, a right decision choosing a legal billing and case management software for your law firm. It offers legal billing, trust accounting, case management and document handling for an affirmative approach.
This brings the discussion to an important question. How to choose the right software with numerous law firm softwares rolling in the market? Simplifying it further, we have listed down a few suggestions that will help you choose the right legal software.
We assume lawyers keep an uptight schedule rolling around client onboarding, timekeeping & expense tracking, case management and more. Somehow, there’s a wall between lawyers and technology hindering the management of a law firm. While going through all this, an attorney also faces problems managing piles of documents and cases. Not only this, research says that a lawyer spends approximately three hours of day in timekeeping.
Embracing change and innovation in any business is a tough job to do. But, to avoid long working hours and other challenges it’s crucial for law firms to adapt to the tech trends.
Adapting a User-Friendly Approach
- Most of the law firm software providers claim that their system is easily adaptive and very easy to learn which is not always the scenario. The best part by which you can actually know whether it is easy to learn or not, is to request a demo. If a software company offers a free live demo of their software it is the best thing which you can opt for.
- Try using it for the free trial period or the free plan to know the software better. Many law firm software providers offer a 14 or 21 days trial period allowing you to get a detailed understanding of the product.
- However, CaseFox offers a free lifetime plan with countless premium features with endless boundaries. This allows the users to use it for a long period and decide if it fits your law firm.
Client-Level Data Collection
Having legal case management software will ultimately platform you to work on various management facets. This will include managing clients, cases, documents, billing & invoicing, and everything as a law firm. All the history of the case summary, payment, and billing according to the staff should be right in front of your eyes when you open a case. This ensures a smooth client experience as a lawyer. A separate case dashboard that captures all the relevant data is the top-notch need in case management software as it ultimately describes its name and if it fails to do so then the ultimate reason to have it stands unachieved.
Questions like-
- Can I have access to case-related details on my mobile?
- Are my case details secure?
- Does CaseFox offer everything as a Law Firm Management Software ?
Aggregating the overall details of your cases is one of the vital details you would consider. When compared to on-premise, cloud-based case management software serves to systematically manage your data all in one unified system.
Diving Deep Into The Management Portals
Explore every part of the software and learn if they are able to offer tools managing various niches which you need in your law firm. Learn and understand more about the system. Make a list in advance of problems that made you shift to the cloud and is the system able to solve all of them. Listing down the issues and tick-marking them plays one of the easiest roles in understanding whether the software is the perfect fit for your law firm or not.
Read the security guidelines which the software follows. It helps you to get through all the queries and enables you to have a system that follows all the data protection guidelines. Reading them and then signing to software is crucial as the law profession demands.
Factors Before Choosing a Law Firm Management Software
1. Role-Based Data Access
When it comes to data sharing, you do not want to do it with everyone. Not everyone who has access to the software needs to see your data, invoices, payments, and other confidential details. That is why having the facility to offer role-based access to law firms stands as one whole important feature. Moreover, adding and removing users easily is very crucial to know as there are employees who join and leave, which makes you remove their access from the software.
Not only this it also helps you to save costs. You have to peep through the knowledge that if you are removing a user, then from the next month the cost you are paying to the software provider should be automatically deducted for that user who was removed. This isn’t one of the most required functionality as it helps you to save cost as well as maintain transparency.
Also, role-based data sharing should be available and if the feature to limit visibility to certain users is provided in the system it is a win-win situation. Just like in CaseFox, you can easily customize the office secretary role and limit their visibility by adding limitations to their tab, this means that none of the other data will be shown to them until and unless they have been permitted from your end.
2. Integrations With Your Systems
Above all the features you witness in a law firm software, it’s important to have powerful integrations merged with them. With multiple software rolling in the market, it’s easy to find needful features. However, having integrations gives you a higher hand in the court. Imagine a situation wherein you have to store documents spacing 5GB, but the software only gives you 2GB. Stuck? Now if you have access to cloud storage things will be easier on various ends. Navigating between tabs for performing a task can be frustrating.
Many legal billing systems have integrations that some do not have. CaseFox offers integrations with leading systems like Outlook, Office 365, Google, DropBox, LawPay, and PayPal.
3. Ease To Extract Data
We have witnessed several times that lawyers face trouble migrating data from one software to the other. Many law firm software charge a certain amount to migrate data from the previous one. Also, the process turns out to be a pain at times.
While looking out for a law firm management system, learn in advance whether it provides free data migration from your existing system or not because then it will get very difficult for you to put the data in place.
Confirm the answers to the questions like-
- Will I have to pay extra costs for data migration?
- Will I be provided with support to help me extract data?
- Will a tutorial or live demo be provided to do it?
Keeping it crisp, just be sure about your data extraction process cost, CaseFox provides free data migration from the existing system which makes the user experience more seamless and friendly.
4. Customer Support
Customer support is the key to any business. Having good customer support for your legal software queries is a must. Let’s face it, lawyers are not that tech-friendly, we all know. To help lawyers get an in-depth understanding of the software, it’s important the software offers robust pre-sales and after service customer support.
Confirm with the answers of-
- Does the software provide 24*7 support?
- Easy Access to Knowledge Base Support Articles?
- How can I ask for support and help? ( chatbox, portal, etc)
- Does this involve extra payments?
Get through all the answers to these questions and then choose the right software for your law firm.
5. Pricing
As a customer, it’s your sole responsibility to know if you are making a value proposition. The value of the software and the price you are paying for it is the most crucial part for your law firm. Investing in software involves monthly dedicated costs which will come under your operational overheads.
CaseFox comes with affordable and fixed monthly pricing. Know in advance if there is the involvement of additional costs such as data migration costs, support costs, demo and training costs, etc. while taking a software subscription. This will help you with a better financial distribution of resources.
6. Ease of Use
With long working hours and exhaustive routines it’s important that you choose a software which offers ease and flexibility. Prefer considering questions like-
- How long would it take to learn the software?
- How much time would I have to spend understanding the functioning?
- Is there any cost involved in the training and support purposes?
Conclusion
It’s difficult to choose the perfect partner to manage your firm smoothly. The global legal industry is filled with ample options offering various software modules. However, to choose the right one, you need to filter down your needs as a law firm.
CaseFox – a law firm management software – offers top-notch features backed by high-end user friendliness. The software focuses on enhancing profit margins for an attorney offering robust features. If you wish to experience any such thing, we welcome you to go through our live demo and training videos.