iThe legal industry is in the midst of a rapidly changing technology landscape. Until relatively recently, lawyers have lacked software solutions built specifically for the unique needs of their industry, including nuanced timekeeping, billing, document security, and data collection. Lawmatics CEO Matt Spiegel recently joined the podcast Everything Except the Law to share how legal-specific software can address two critical issues for legal businesses: saving time and acquiring more business.
Save Time
The most direct way to save time is to have a legal software that can do your work for you. Automations save so much time that they’ve essentially become mandatory for a modern law firm. An average firm saves 15 to 20 hours a week because they automate tedious tasks like appointment confirmations.
Increase Business
In addition to saving time, automations increase your capacity beyond what you could ever do with human power alone. Take this example from Matt’s experience as a criminal defense attorney in California: you represent a client who is charged with a DUI. That client has potential to become repeat business because they want the DUI expunged from their record after California’s three year waiting period. It wouldn’t be practical for you to manually track such a timeline, stay in contact, and maintain necessary records for all of your clients with that kind of repeat potential. An automation system does all that work for you. It can even automatically email that client to let them know they’ve become eligible for expungement.
A CRM system provides all kinds of data, like insights into how maximizing your capacity to handle repeat business increases the ratio of revenue to your client acquisition cost. You can define key progress indicators (KPI) that are relevant to your firm’s business model, and make sure you’re spending your money in the most effective way possible: what types of cases provide the most revenue, what types of cases cost the most to acquire, what marketing efforts provide the most bang for your buck. Those KPIs are essential in making strategic decisions for optimizing your firm’s business.
