If you're just starting out, building your network as a sole practitioner or small law firm, I’m guessing you’re also looking for ways to save on time and costs before needing to train or onboard additional support at your firm - right? So, how do you do that? We have some tips on affordable or pay-per-use tools that perform many of the tasks you would hire a paralegal for. If you’re nervous about committing to the expense of a full-time paralegal’s salary, see if the following tools can delay the need to hire an assistant a little longer.

Client Intake 

Oh the ‘digital age’, it has made us all so nosy, wanting to know exactly what’s going on at all times and having quick access to everything in an instant. Well that’s exactly what client portals can offer you and your clients. Client portals help with onboarding new clients, sometimes even replacing the process of client consultations by letting you communicate all information or address questions directly through the portal. It also lets you create files as new matters into your case management system and create electronic folders to divide these matters within the portal. It can even address administrative tasks like: doing conflict checks, sending client questionnaires, scheduling future appointments and sometimes even billing, all via  the portal communication functions so that you can avoid the back-and-forth that usually goes on when reaching out to your clients.  Here are some examples of client portals: 

• Settify: Clients are able to fill out pre-made questionnaires regarding their Family or Estate matters, which will help summarize their needs. Within the portal, this information is transformed into a brief that will then inform the lawyers’ advice and plan of action. 
• Moxo: Moxo manages client interactions allowing businesses to streamline deadline-driven interactions, account onboarding, servicing and handling as well as updating and managing workflows.
• Rally: whitelabels collaborative workspace uses automation technologies to automate legal documents, manage cases, onboarding and track further corporate information. 

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Court-Related Assistance 

Let’s not forget the paperwork! Filling out forms, drafting documents, sending letters, this is valuable time that can be redirected elsewhere. In many circumstances, a paralegal can take over these tasks but paying for someone’s salary might be more expensive than adopting a quick tech solution. We know some providers on the market that can help address this - check them out: 

• Tracument send mail from your computer… you heard that right. No more trips around town, this provider offers document delivery service to clinics and medical practitioners to help them provide documents and records to law firms, insurance companies, and other businesses.
• Korbitec ACL: document assembly and automation of civil litigation court forms and letters specific to the provinces of Ontario, Alberta and British Columbia… talk about eliminating tedious tasks! 

• CiteRight: Cites cases, generates a live book of authorities, and manages advanced document assembly with convenient integrations to Microsoft Word, you can avoid the oh-so-annoying switching back and forth you usually have to do between your document and your browser. 
• NotaryPro: If you’re busy and don't want to spend time on low-profit work, you can send your notarizations to NotaryPro instead of participating in an hour-long client consultation just for a notarization.  

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Legal Administration and Accounting

The fun stuff… right? Emailing, calling and scheduling meetings with clients, colleagues or even third-parties like legal accounting services for recordkeeping and finances. Administrative and accounting tasks might not be the most exciting but they need to be done… and they need to be done well in order to ensure your practice is running smoothly and efficiently. Here are some tools to help: 

• Athennian: offering incorporation of minute books. NOTE: what makes them stand out from other providers is that they offer administrative assistance from qualified paralegals to help you delegate work onto their paralegals and stay up to date on annual returns, registry expenses, or other back-ends managerial tasks. 
• Calendly: Having to deal with clients calling you to try to ask “just one more question”? Calendly allows you to publicly set your availability, allowing clients to book calls online/on your calendar. 
• Non-tech Solution: Hire a part-time paralegal or you could follow the UK's trends and give them a four-day work week! 

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Resources for Firm Growth

Can you get clients and do my research for me? Actually, marketplaces can. Lawyer marketplaces can help with client intake by connecting consumers to lawyers and legal software marketplaces can help connect lawyers to software providers. They help alleviate your stress when it comes to growing your business. Here are a couple to look out for:  

• Lumose Marketplace: Legal Software Marketplace; Lumose is a full-service platform to find and compare all suppliers for boutique law firms and solo lawyers. We compare legal software of all types from client portals, to case management, to client acquisition - you name it! 
• Goodlawyer: Lawyer Marketplace; Goodlawyer is a resource for startups. They provide legal services at affordable rates to businesses building their companies. They offer bundles serving the needs of startups in terms of incorporation, employment, intellectual property, and cybersecurity, privacy, & data protection. 

Look… if a SaaS tool addresses your needs then hiring (even an affordable or part-time) paralegal instead might undermine your efficiency goals. Researching tech solutions before hiring a paralegal will help you streamline your law firm’s business model, reduce operations costs, and create further opportunities for client acquisition and future referral pipeline. So what are you waiting for, check out our marketplace to find the right tools for you!  

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