After the pandemic the way business is conducted has changed massively. Clients are more than ever looking to seamlessly work away from a traditional office and do not have the opportunity to meet their lawyers face to face. As such, there is a rise in the shift towards virtual law offices, however starting a virtual law firm could be overwhelming. It is important to create an environment where clients can easily interact with their lawyer with confidence and without the unnecessary complexities.
To start, you will benefit from a single dashboard to control most aspects of your practice. Ideally, you would want to ensure you can organize cases and clients, manage and track your time and bill quickly and make it easy for clients to pay with ease. Two affordable options that offer a complete software solution from the start of client intake to billing client and online payment solutions are Clio Manage and MyCase. Though different memberships contain their own unique features, you start for under $49/month.
Though some case management solutions are configurable to best adjust to the needs of each practice, they are not all built dedicated to a specific practice area. Areas such as Corporate Law, Litigation, Family Law, Immigration Law, Contract Law and Real Estate Law require specialized tools to tackle the challenges of each practice area. We will continue to update you on practice area specific softwares that can help you either more efficiently manage your practice and increase productivity and profitability or assist you on starting your own law firm.
What lawyers focus on to ensure the fast changing world of business is not overwhelming for clients is outstanding communication. Clients often appreciate having a dedicated communication channel to their lawyer. This would provide a platform to stay informed and send documents back and forth for discussion in a secure and time efficient manner. Rather than sending endless emails and having parts of a communication split between email, phone and text messages, a software solution dedicated to communication would be best choice as it allows all parties (client, co-counsel, paralegal) to converse and upload files (which are stored as readable pdfs) through the chat box, without the need to send emails and copy all parties involved. Legal Connection which is a UK based company offers this dedicated service at affordable prices. For more information on their legal compliance with your law society please visit their website here.
Choosing the best case management software for law firms is tedious, with many different features and prices available, and with the ongoing pandemic law firm budgeting is more important than ever. In summary, below are a few examples of affordable options to start with for a smoother virtual practice:
