CRM usually stands for customer relationship management; however, from the analytics perspective, there’s really no difference between customers, clients, or even patients. This means that they can be used by retail stores, dental clinics, and law firms alike.
As long as someone’s interacting with you online, sending emails, chatting with your assistants, or just looking at your site or social media, you can track this interaction through CRM. Not only that, but you get all that client info available on demand, with some of the latest platforms even being able to generate insights directly.
With that in mind, let’s check out how these CRM systems can benefit lawyers and law firms.
Benefits of CRM For Lawyers & Law Firms
Here are some of the benefits that lawyers and firms can avail of by using CRM.
Organizing client information
An idealized version of a lawyer-client relationship has to revolve around the idea. The client just checks out your website, reaches out, hires you, and from that point on, you have a mutual history. You remember their case and every little conversation you had with them with no trouble, and that’s it.
Well, this could work during your first few months in law. When you can still count all your clients on your fingers, what happens after you’ve had hundreds and hundreds of cases? It’s hard to remember everything, but this doesn’t mean that your clients will not expect preferential treatment. You can use CRM for law firms to organize your clients’ data.
It’s only natural that people don’t reach out to lawyers unless they require help with something serious. Even if it’s just a business process, it’s something so serious that it requires you to bring in a specialist.
To you, it’s just one of hundreds of divorces that you’ve handled, but for them, it’s a defining moment. They won’t show sympathy because you can’t recall anything about them or the case. They’ll feel underappreciated and undervalued.
With the help of a law firm client relationship management, you have a much easier job of managing client information like contact details, case history, and communication history. All you have to do is look up this specific client in your database. It’s not just that you have all this data centralized; it’s also about the fact that you get it on demand.
Automated reminders
It’s not that far-fetched to say that it’s hard to find a 21st-century lawyer who doesn’t use any kind of time-management software. One of the biggest bottlenecks of being a lawyer is your schedule.
Sure, early on, while you don’t have too many clients. You won’t have to worry that much about it, but what happens when you have too much on your plate? It’s not just meetings and trials that you’ll have to attend.
Client meetings are just as important for your appearance and reputation, not to mention that submitting legal documents is often time-sensitive.
As a lawyer, you always have homework to do. You can’t just check on the facts of the document half an hour before the trial. But you need to take your time and study the case. You can’t develop a strategy without it, which takes time. This means that you have to start in advance.
You can use CRM for legal firms to get automated reminders (with enough time in advance) so that you’re never late for anything. In fact, it’s one of the many CRM software applications. The best part is that CRM for lawyers can be integrated with other platforms that you’re using, so if your office employs project management tools, you can easily sync them up. If not, you can always just connect it to your scheduling tool.
Now, remember, CRM is only there to give you notifications and alarms. You still need scheduling software, and you still need to develop a strategy on your own. Nonetheless, you should never underestimate the difference that this makes.
Client segmentation
Legal marketing is a complex matter. There are so many law firms out there, and they’re all going heavy on marketing. In this field, it’s all about prestige, so the majority of firms would try to get to the top of SERPs even if there wasn’t that much of a traffic increase.
You see, people want the best, and they’re willing to pay for it. After all, you don’t want the cheapest lawyer to represent you any more than you want the cheapest surgeon to perform your surgery. However, you need to know that you’re getting your money’s worth (that it’s not all just smoke and mirrors).
Ranking well is just one part of the equation.
The problem with the majority of legal firms is that they’re all practicing multiple branches of law, but they can’t just market themselves as generalists. Instead, they need to make a campaign for each of these fields. They need to rank for keywords belonging to different categories (compensation law, injury law, commercial law, criminal law, etc.).
This also makes your outreach significantly more complex. After all, you need to reach out to each part of your audience in a different way. Each of them is concerned about their own thing and even if there’s some overlap, as laypeople, they won’t be able to see it.
With the help of legal CRM solutions, you’ll be able to handle a far more efficient client segmentation campaign and develop a campaign for each of these groups.
Lead Management
One of the biggest misconceptions about marketing in the legal field is the idea that the outreach is always one-sided. In the minds of the majority of people, you need a lawyer.
Even though this is a common practice, it’s not always the case. Sometimes, it’s ok for a law firm to reach out to potential clients.
In scenarios we previously described as “more traditional,” outreach is not the end of the deal. The firm still has to capture and nurture leads; this field is where the best CRM for law firms can prove invaluable.
The first thing worth mentioning is that, even when they do reach out, your response time might set the tone for the entirety of your future correspondence. With the help of a good CRM, you can always prompt a great response time. The CRM can help you keep track of your lead generation process.
Not only that, but you can improve the rate at which you do these follow-ups, and you can do wonders to personalize your communication. Again, you can do this even without legal CRM, but CRM legal technology makes your job easier. It also scales incredibly well, which means that while it will be of some help even to a smaller law firm, for a major corporation, it will be completely indispensable.
Finally, if you decide to start a law blog, you’ll need all the insights from your traffic. With CRM, you can make gathering and analyzing this data a lot simpler. This way, you’ll track the performance of your content and the client’s interactions with it.
Understanding your clients is the key to making it in law
Sure, you need to be an excellent lawyer, but your firm’s success doesn’t depend on the percentage of your won cases. It correlates with it strongly, but the correlation is not direct. It comes down to your relationships with your clients, and this is where a strong marketing and great reputation (this is where your legal prowess plays a huge part) make all the difference. Needless to say, a good CRM platform can help you establish yourself in this field the right way.