The Need

Law firms are paying increasing attention to technology and innovation in these competitive times. The 2018 ALPMA/Global X "Shaping the Firm of the Future" survey found that about 78% of law firms had an increase in efficiency brought on by new technology in the past 5 years. Furthermore, the new technologies they were looking to invest in were as follows:

• Electronic Signing  had the highest priority for 56% of firms.
• Document management was on the agenda for  41% of law firms.
• Practice Automation was to be invested in by 40% of law firms.

Alternate billing and time estimation is a problem for many law firms. Some law firms, depending on their area of specialisation have some of their clients on alternative fee arrangements (AFAs). They are not billed according to billable hours like the majority of clients. Managers of many law firms have difficulties working out AFAs that are profitable, or have trouble making them profitable. They need help estimating the work and time necessary to complete the legal work.

68% of law firms believed that technology would not effect their job security. However, they acknowledged their employees would need a greater technological skill set in the future. 21% of these firms admitted that the reason they had not updated their technology was due to fear of change within their law firm. However, most firms saw the automation of standard tasks as a necessity for future business.

Practice Management Software

A practice management solution is important because it integrates many parts of the legal practice into a single unified platform, take for example LawMaster. Correct utilisation can have many benefits; such as a paperless office, which has the potential to drastically reduce day-to-day costs.

LawMaster is also cloud-based. Though many know what this means, we'll give you a quick refresher.  Data is maintained, managed and backed up remotely. This enables remote work from a home office or a mobile device. The freedom to work directly from locations outside of your office without relying on communication with staff vastly increases your efficiency. All documents can be securely accessed on a phone or tablet with our iBench technology, as well as computers outside of the office and printed or forwarded from remote locations.

Documents can be intelligently stored, accessed and edited from within the software. Require a signature from a client? Use our integration with Infotrack's SignIt technology to allow for digital signatures. The process is simple and the software does most of the work for you. Not only will this save you tremendous amounts of time, it also removes the need for couriers, further reducing your costs. 

Create intuitive workflows to assist you with new client enquiries to make the process as streamlined as possible for admin staff.

One of the features of our practice management software is that it integrates fully with the word processing software you are using. LawMaster's latest release allows for file note numbers to be edited from within Word documents. Do you need to store email attachments separately to your emails? Simply drag and drop the email into LawMaster and follow the prompts.

Our integration with Dragon Dictate software enables voice to text conversion which saves dictating time. Create automatic receipts and use the disbursements capture feature to keep your accounting up to date. 

Automation of such repetitive tasks means that you and your employees can greatly simplify processes, allowing you to focus your attention on tasks of greater magnitude and profit. Speed up your office and legal practice and provide your team with the tools they need. Invest in an intuitive Practice Management Solution to invest in your future. Contacts us today to see how we can improve your efficiency by at least 30%.