The Power of Legal Automation: Make More Money at Every Step in a Case

Manual Client Management Can be Inefficient

The legal industry is a vast landscape of archaic processes from the start to finish of a case. Imagine this scenario of manual client management:

1. Verbal referral to your firm from a colleague

2. A phone call to your office manager who writes down the contact and case details on a Post-It note

3. You call the referral and begin the case (sending emails through Gmail or texting from your personal cell phone)

4. Your paralegal manually types up motions and notices based on templates downloaded from the court years ago

5. E-filing through the court’s website, forgetting to save documentation on your computer

6. Scanning/signing documents via a printer (relying on your client having access to one)

7. Creating a manual invoice (missing time you forgot to write down on your notepad)

8. Not getting paid because a client’s check has bounced or you forgot that the client has an outstanding payment

9. Thinking you need to hire more staff because your inefficient processes have led to an overwhelming amount of admin work, without an accurate process to report on the state of your firm.

The above scenario, at each step of the way, causes inefficiency and complex rudimentary workflows. While any of the points above can prolong a case unnecessarily, a combination of 2 or more of these is catastrophic to the survival of a law firm as a business.

Eliminate Inefficient Processes with Legal Software

There is one solution to eliminating inefficient processes. It is the use of up-to-date legal technology, specifically legal document and office management automation:

1. Referrals are managed by an online portal, where appointments can be scheduled at the times you set and intake forms are available to submit case information from the client

2. From the intake forms, cases are automatically created in a software database.

3. Email and phone communication is initiated and maintained through this software, ensuring the latest communication is saved against the case, all in one place for easy reference

4. Taking this specific case information, the details are automatically placed into the form necessary for this case based on the necessary court and area of law. The version you are working with is up-to-date directly from the court’s website.

5. E-filing, ordering searches, or process serving directly from the case in the software, saving disbursements ready to be passed through to the client, and documents from the courts saved directly in the case database

6. Printing of documents on either side is eliminated when e-signature requests are generated, notifying both parties of completed documents and saving them in the database

7. As any of the above steps are automatically completed, time tracking is available at every point. This means invoices are generated quickly and accurately.

8. From your online client portal that was used for intake, you can also have clients submit payment. Sending payment reminders, links to pay via credit cards, and the ability to accept online payments gets your firm paid faster.

9. Who has time to gather information to run Excel reports, trusting that the facts from every staff member are accurate and up-to-date? Reports generated automatically that provide information on fee earners, profit and loss, and an overview of your firm’s cases allows you to make strategic decisions. Without reports like these, there are gaps that you may not know exist.

Many software programs out there may only check one, two, or even four of the above. However, with legal practice management software like LEAP, every step of the case is enhanced with automation.

In fact, a LEAP client has increased profit by 30% just by implementing the software at their firm.

Are you interested in learning more about legal automation and increasing your profit by more than 30%? Visit leap.us and start revolutionizing your practice.

Learn more about LEAP in your state.