With over 1.3 million legal professionals in the national lawyer population in the USA alone and the majority of the time spent in offices, the legal firms are one of the economic sectors with a dire need for technology.
Law practice management software, legal research software, case management systems, CRM for legal firms compound the foundation of a tech stack of modern law practice.
American Bar’s Association’s Technology Training report reveals the troubling facts about the state of things in the legal realm in one of the most technologically advanced countries, the USA. The report showcases that only 60% of respondents have technology training available to them in 2019, while 97% of respondents employed by big firms of 500+ confirmed the training was available to them.
The state of things with technology adoption in the USA legal practices is so uncomplimentary, that the report provides the following recommendations and draws these unflattering conclusions:
“For those attorneys who may not be using technology in their practice, we recommend they go outside their comfort zone and attend technology conferences to learn what’s out there that would help them practice more efficiently. These non-technology using attorneys will hopefully gain insight at those conferences and will explore what technology they need to practice more efficiently (and competently) and then obtain the necessary training.
Lawyers must also learn to overcome the Dunning-Kruger effect that is likely coloring their own (mis-)perceptions about their technology competence to understand that training would benefit them. Once they do, they will hopefully seek out educational resources that are already available to them. Many of these resources can be located by conducting more effective Internet searches.”
Not all of the systems even need much training to start using them, to be honest. Some of the Customer Relations Management tools, like Nimble, are made for plug & play operation. User experience is as easy as if it was a social media, not a working tool.
In this piece, we’ll quickly run through the key legal practice management software systems and review some of the best CRMs for law firms & lawyers.
Furthermore, we are looking at the specific methods to bring added efficiencies into the lives of the legal professionals: from junior associates or attorneys to managing partners.
If you work for a big company or if you are a solo attorney looking to use the technology to free up time in your busy schedule and bring more clients to your office – this article will help understand legal technology in just 5 minutes.
Law Practice Management Software Overview
Legal practice management systems are the most widely used solution by the sector, that combines some of the features of a general-purpose CRM system, like calendaring, emails, scheduling, but also has some legal features, like case management and time tracking.
Main Features:
- Legal Case management
- Billing & Invoicing
- Conflict Management
- Time tracking
- Document Management
- Trust accounting
- Client Portal
Best Legal Practice Management Solutions
Legal CRM: Features
When it comes to legal CRM systems, it should be noted that most of the general-purpose Customer Relationship Management will be the best choice for solo attorneys and bigger firms.
For small legal practices, they can fully be responsible for the entire contact management, case management, scheduling process at a fraction of the cost of regular legal software. Nimble, for example, starts at $19 per user per month if billed annually.
For bigger law firms, Nimble is a must-have for the marketing and sales departments, but many of the junior associates will find it amazing for research work too: Nimble Prospector provides top-level contact enrichment.
Features of Customer Relationship Management System:
- Contact Management & Profile Enrichment
- Task, deal, pipeline management
- Calendar & scheduling modules
- Email marketing & automation
- Social Media Insights
Benefits Of CRM Law Software
Save Time Managing Routine Processes
Whether you are a solo practice or work for a big firm, there’s always time to be saved from routine.
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Businesses that start using Nimble when switching from excel file type of contact management find themselves saving 90 minutes a day on average. With over 140 thousand professionals from industries across the board using the system, those are years saved in inefficiencies in one day.
So if you feel like routine is overtaking and you would like to spend more time doing law and less time managing organizational chores, consider trying the system for free.
Manage Team Better
Legal firm hierarchy is a complex yet straightforward arrangement. But managing a team and assigning matters is not as simple.
The customer relationship tool will help ensure all tasks are attributed to the right people at the right time.
Convert More Clients
Marketing automation is one of the strongest features of any CRM, but Nimble is a social one. We created this SaaS tool in a way that recognizes the growing role of social media in business.
Your contact data gets enriched with social media data, so you can nurture stronger relations based on deeply meaningful personal insights.
Turn Data-Driven Observations Into Bottomline Increase
Whatever industry-specific technology your firm may be using, integration with a CRM like Nimble will provide an extra valuable layer of data and reporting possibilities.
Due to the customization features, Nimble has the power to turn any data point into a reportable traceable feature. Users can turn any custom field into a column in a report with custom tags.
If you ask the right questions, the analytics module will provide a visually comprehensive actionable output.
Use Of CRM Technology In The Legal Sector
CRM For Lawyers And Legal Professionals is the only tool for smaller or solo players and is an absolute must for marketing managers of the big law firms.
Let’s see how exactly they can help drive more clients, save time, and save costs in the law domain.
Contact Management On Steroids
Managing clients, prospects, partners, colleagues, associates takes time. Manual input is mundane and time-consuming.
Many of the digital immigrants still remember the times, when they created their excel sheet for contact management and named columns respectively:
Name, gender, address, email, telephone, etc.
Not only you don’t have to create columns now, in most cases you don’t even need to do much manual data entry.
For example, you can add contacts with Nimble Prospector right from Twitter or email. The system will pull the rest of the available contact data for you alongside with company information.
Users can perform several functions from with the contact profile: send an email, create a tag, schedule a meeting, comment on social media post, add to as many segments as you need [think “Corporate Law”, “Intern”, “Bankruptcy”, “Judge”, “Injury”, “Tax”, etc.], and more.
Research Like A Sherlock: Matter After Matter
Research may take quite some time for your entry-level positions. Nimble helps users to source info from all over the internet in a click.
Nimble Prospector tool allows you to pull info on a person from anywhere on your desktop, not only from inside your CRM:
- Social media
- Internet
- 3rd party apps
The profiles come enriched with data available on the internet, so you will have to do a minimal manual entry if any.
Case Management Alternative: Task, Deal & Pipeline Management
Case Management can be performed in the Deal Management module of a CRM in the legal sector in case you are only a small operation or a solo attorney.
Creating a deal in Nimble is simple, users can fill in multiple field options, like the name of the deal, contacts, and companies associated with it, probability, amount, expected close date, team members, privacy status, pipeline, and notes.
Nimblers can also schedule events from a created deal entry, set tasks, check attachments, activities, and notes.
The feature is customizable as everything inside Nimble CRM, so you can adapt the system to fit your legal process needs by adding more fields in settings.
You can mark the deal as lost or won when the time comes.
Calendar & Scheduling: Be On Top Of Every Day
Things get busy, schedules get packed and overloaded.
With the Nimble calendar feature, changing your middle name to “Punctual” is so much easier. [Yes, I am talking to you, Mr. John Punctual Smith.]
So, first things first: your dashboard view has a list and calendar view to check your day’s agenda to start with. You can also get an overview of your team’s to-do-lists with proper permissions.
It is compatible with all major Calendars, like Outlook, Google, and Office 365 calendar, so everything is synced properly and no meeting goes unattended.
Sending an invitation to the entire team is a one-click matter too. With this useful gadget, there’s no more time wasted on setting repeat activities and reminders.
Reporting That Allows To Optimize Your Budgets & Processes
Optimization is a modus operandi for small businesses, but it’s a matter of survival for bigger ones.
When all processes are established, noticing a flawed procedure is so much tougher.
The analytics and reporting module helps get answers to all of the right questions.
If you want to know how much time one prospect from the corporate department takes to convert and why it is so much longer than in the international law department – no problem.
Customizable fields allow you to turn any data into a reportable digit so that you can gain insightful actionable revelations with the help of these helpful visual graphs.
Document & Template Sharing & Distribution
Sharing docs and giving respective accesses to team members can be done from pretty much any feature of the law firm CRM like Nimble.
The tool is compatible with DropBox and GDrive for the team’s convenience.
How to Integrate CRM for Legal Firms
Once you decide to give Nimble a try, you can do so for free with just an email for 2 weeks.
The set up is easy, you can export your contacts via an excel file, API, or an email account.
If your company has technology in use by a team, we highly recommend integrating all the systems via API, Zapier, or Piesync.
Zapier, for example, offers connectivity with Filevine, PracticePanther Legal Software, and other law case management solutions.
Is Nimble CRM Right Fit For Your Law Firm?
Lets quickly run why Nimble is so popular with over 140 thousand professional worlds over and 1500 genuine reviews and top 5 rankings on Capterra?
- Intuitive interface that needs little-to-no training to start using the system.
- Reasonable price [$19 per user per month if billed annually and 25 if monthly]
- Free trial for 2 weeks without a credit card but with full access.
- High rankings on independent review sites, like G2 Crowd, Capterra.
- Over 90 minutes of time-saving in a day for each worker.
- Extensive sophisticated yet user-friendly features.
- Powerful research tool: Nimble Prospector extension.
Smaller legal entities will find that Nimble CRM is all they need to run a one-attorney practice. Bigger companies, meanwhile, love getting Nimble on top of the specialized Legal Practice management software to boost their sales and marketing teams.
It’s free for 2 weeks, no credit card.
Just insert your email to see for yourself how fast you can convert those clients and how much time you save to find more by optimizing the routine.
Let’s get those cases won in a shorter time and cheaper together!
