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No Lead Left Behind: How Answering Legal Powers Smarter Intake for Law Firms

When you’re building a client base, every missed call could mean a lost opportunity. Answering Legal built its name on elite 24/7 phone answering. But in 2025 leads come from many sources. And Answering Legal has responded. While retaining top-tier receptionist services, it also serves as a lead-capturing command center designed to meet clients wherever they are.

Whether your next client calls your office, visits your website after hours, or speaks a different language entirely, Answering Legal makes sure no opportunity slips through the cracks.

Answering Legal remains proud of its phone-answering roots. Since 2014, it has staffed live, legal-only receptionists around the clock—trained to deliver a calm, professional intake experience tailored to the needs of law firms. Their receptionists qualify leads, gather details, and schedule consultations, even outside business hours.

But now, the platform offers a broader range of tools supporting law firm growth in a digital, multilingual, and client-expectation-heavy world.

AI-Powered Chatbot: Your Digital Intake Assistant

This summer, Answering Legal launched an AI-powered chatbot. This free, install-it-once tool meets prospective clients online—instantly.

Unlike generic bots, Answering Legal trained its chatbot for the legal context. It responds empathetically, respects boundaries (no legal advice here!), and guides visitors through a structured intake process. The bot learns your firm’s services, pricing, jurisdiction, and scheduling protocols, allowing it to field questions in a way that builds trust.

Answering Legal's chatbot conversing with a prospective client about a back injury and hospital visit

The chatbot integrates with major CRMs, automatically pushing intake data into your existing workflows. And installation? Handled by Answering Legal’s experts.

Live Translation Services: Seamless Communication for Multilingual Clients

For firms serving multilingual communities or expanding into new markets, Answering Legal’s Live Translation Services feature bridges the communication gap by adding live, professional interpreters to your meetings via video or phone.

Attorneys can host secure, translator-assisted conversations in over 180 languages, with short-notice scheduling available. For Spanish-speaking clients, Answering Legal produces a full PDF transcript after the call ends.

Whether you’re handling intake, explaining next steps, or reviewing sensitive issues, Live Translation Services removes the language barrier that too often limits firm growth or client trust.

With 75+ direct integrations, including Clio, MyCase, Smokeball, Lawmatics, PracticePanther, and Lead Docket, Answering Legal becomes a seamless part of your tech stack.

Here’s what that means in practice:

  • When a new lead calls, their intake data is auto-filled into your CRM or practice management system.
  • When a website visitor uses the chatbot, their message and info are routed instantly to your pipeline.
  • When a receptionist books a consultation, it’s synced with your calendar and logged in your system of record.

Even better, the integrations are managed for you. Answering Legal sets up the connections so your tools behave like one cohesive system, not a web of workarounds.

No Missed Leads. No Missed Growth.

Together, these tools ensure every lead is handled professionally and consistently across phone, web, and video.

In short:

  • Phone intake captures leads 24/7 via trained legal receptionists.
  • Chatbot converts web visitors into qualified leads instantly.
  • Live Translation Services make language access seamless and secure.
  • Integrations ensure your firm’s existing tools are always in the loop.

With more ways than ever to contact a law firm, and higher expectations for instant, humanized responses, Answering Legal ensures your firm can show up wherever and whenever the prospective client is ready.

Want to See It in Action?

Discover how your firm can capture more leads, streamline intake, and never miss another opportunity. Schedule your free consultation with Answering Legal today.

Mind the Data Gap: CARET Analytics Bridges the Law Firm Insight Divide

Modern law firms generate tons of data that could help them make good business and case management decisions. Often, the problem isn’t having the data – it’s making sense of it; turning data into actionable information.

To do that, firms need more than reports—they need visibility. CARET Analytics delivers that in spades with its new role-based dashboards and smart alerting system. Instead of hunting for insights, your insights come to you.

With the power of CARET Analytics, your firm can:

  • Gain insights that turn complex data into clear, actionable guidance.
  • Optimize operations by streamlining workflows, improving efficiency, and reducing costs.
  • Boost profitability by uncovering new revenue opportunities that accelerate cash flow.
  • Enhance client service by better understanding how to deliver exceptional client experiences.
  • Make smarter decisions by using data to prioritize high-value cases, refine client acquisition strategies, and optimize fee structures.

One Dashboard Does Not Fit All

CARET understands that not everyone at a law firm needs or wants to look at the same data. That is why CARET Analytics includes prebuilt dashboards tailored by role. Responsible attorneys see productivity and effective billing rates by matter and team member. Administrators monitor accounts receivable aging, pre-bills, and resource allocation. Each user gets a personalized lens on firm performance without needing to build anything from scratch.

For example, a supervising attorney can quickly spot which team members appear to be underperforming and drill into their time entries. Perhaps reviewing the time entries, grouped by entry type (e.g., standard, non-billable, and no charge) and client, answers the supervisor’s questions. If not, the supervisor can ping the team member directly without ever leaving the dashboard view. With the right data always available, course corrections are made visible to take action promptly.

CARET Analytics dashboard showing firm performance in 4 colorful charts

Smart Alerts Prevent Missed Deadlines

Let’s say you have a client agreement capping billable hours at 200 per month. CARET lets you create an automated alert to notify the team the moment that threshold is crossed. Instead of learning too late that you’ve billed for work you cannot collect, the system nudges users in real time. These smart alerts help preserve profitability and reduce write-offs with minimal oversight.

You can also schedule recurring reports (daily, weekly, monthly) to land in inboxes like clockwork. Want to track effective billing rates or overdue balances? CARET will serve them up, Excel-ready if needed, so your team stays aligned with firm goals.

From Reactive to Predictive

What sets CARET Analytics apart is its move from descriptive reporting to predictive insight. For example, with accounts receivable, firms can analyze historical collection rates by client or matter and project future revenue more accurately. These forecasts let you adjust operations before problems escalate.

Need to track revenue by referral source or custom field? Power users can link those fields to matter and invoice data to create bespoke reports without exporting to Excel or Power BI. You can even build custom profitability metrics inside the dashboard using formula-style logic. The report builder includes Excel-style functions with built-in tutorials for each.

CARET designed its embedded business intelligence features to be powerful yet approachable, and ready to answer the questions law firm leaders ask. Everything lives inside the platform, reducing the need for extra tools or data exports. And as AI capabilities expand, CARET Analytics sets the stage for deeper automation and smarter decisions down the line.

The Bottom Line

In a profession where time literally equals money, CARET Analytics helps firms cut down on spreadsheet wrangling and focus on delivering client value. With role-based dashboards, proactive alerts, and custom visualizations, law firms gain operational clarity without the need for an in-house data analyst, tons of training, or costly third-party products.

In short: You get the insights you need, when you need them, tailored to the way your firm actually works.

If you’re ready to turn your data troves into business decisions, visit CARET’s website to learn how CARET Analytics can help your firm.

From Paper Piles to Polished Drafts: How Autodoc Transforms Discovery

Law is one of the oldest professions, and it comes with no shortage of pithy maxims. You’ve probably heard: “When you have the facts, hammer the facts. When you have the law, hammer the law. When you have neither, hammer the table” Or “A lawyer who represents himself has a fool for a client.”

Discovery has its own set of colorful aphorisms: “trial by paper,” “a war of attrition,” and, as Judge Victor Marrero of the Southern District of New York once put it, “a virtually unpatrolled no-man’s-land of litigation.”

In litigation, the question often isn’t what you know—it’s what you have the time, money, and staff to prove. Discovery is long, combative, and expensive. And most e-discovery tools are too complex and too costly for small firms.

Discovery, at its core, is reading, summarizing, and responding to questions. And AI is built for that.

Autodoc: AI that Reinvents Discovery Drafting

Briefpoint’s new Autodoc tool delivers on AI’s promise: affordable efficiency and scale. It cuts the drudgery out of discovery. Imagine turning thousands of pages into ready-to-serve responses, complete with Bates numbering and page-level citations in just seconds. That’s not hyperbole. That’s Autodoc’s claim. In 3–10 seconds per request, it finds responsive documents, drafts answers, cites sources, and packages everything into a production-ready bundle.

Autodoc Finds What Matters…Fast

Point Autodoc at a folder, and Briefpoint’s AI will find the documents that matter. It tells you what’s relevant, flags when nothing is, or finds a needle in a haystack. In a recent Lawyerist demo, Autodoc sifted through 1,000 pages in seconds, and surfaced two single-line entries that were directly relevant. The output even cites to the Bates numbers in both the request for production and the production package.

Three Steps to Fast, Accurate Discovery Responses

As an AI-powered tool, most users should feel comfortable with Autodoc’s interface.

All you need to get started are PDFs of your requests for production and the production received from the opposing side.

  1. Upload your RFPs and production or case files.
  2. Autodoc detects responsive documents throughout the folders.
  3. It drafts your responses, adds Bates-stamped citations, and packages everything into a polished, exportable response bundle.

Those three steps are so simple. Yet, done manually, they can be slow, painful, and expensive. Autodoc brings the power of AI to save time, money, and level the legal playing field for discovery.

Autodoc Builds on Briefpoint’s AI Discovery Tools

Briefpoint helps lawyers draft RFPs, interrogatories, and requests for admission, both propounded and responded to, across all U.S. jurisdictions. It’s SOC 2 certified, HIPAA compliant, and uses firm-standard objections and templates to ensure consistency.

For example, Briefpoint’s propounding discovery module takes a PDF of your complaint and auto-generates three sets of outgoing discovery requests: admissions, interrogatories, and production. Each is written to avoid objections like overbreadth or ambiguity.

Autodoc isn’t a standalone feature. It’s a force multiplier, built on Briefpoint’s existing AI foundation.

Autodoc Saves Time, Money, and Sanity

Founded by a former litigator, Briefpoint appreciates the value of “trad[ing] weeks of review for one upload.” But, of course, speed alone is not a virtue. Briefpoint combines quickness with courtroom-ready quality. Autodoc’s drafts are built to meet both standards.

Ultimately, you spend less on grunt work: less time, less money, and less energy. This isn’t about replacing you or your time. It’s about freeing it. With Autodoc handling the rote, you can focus on research, reasoning, and rhetoric—the strategic areas where your litigator’s time makes the biggest difference.

Sign Up for Early Access

For firms ready to save time on discovery without sacrificing quality, Autodoc is worth a look. You can request early access today at Briefpoint’s website.

A Better Law Firm Website: Built for You, Owned by You

For solo attorneys and small law firms, your website has to do more than show up. It’s your receptionist, intake screener, scheduler, and mailman—and more importantly, your first impression.

Yet too many lawyers still settle for generic directories or templated designs that say little more than “I exist.” These sites bury you in a forest of sameness. They don’t communicate who you are, what you’re great at, and why clients should trust you.

Worse, they often come bundled with long-term contracts, bloated services, or vendors you quickly outgrow.

To avoid those traps, you need a website partner who understands your world—your business goals, your daily pressures, your time constraints.

The Modern Firm gets it. With 20+ years of experience serving only small firm lawyers, they’ve built a process and product tailored to what your practice really needs: clarity, flexibility, and control.

Why Modern Website Design Matters

A modern law firm website goes beyond pretty colors or slick animations. It helps clients find you, understand you, and feel confident about trusting you with their concerns. That means:

  • Clear, jargon-free language that speaks to client needs;
  • Thoughtful design that reflects your practice personality;
  • Mobile-responsive pages that load fast;
  • Secure, encrypted contact forms backed by up-to-date software; and
  • Intuitive structure with accessible information.

It also means control—being able to update your bio, adjust service descriptions, or add new blog posts without calling a developer.

Getting to Great: The Modern Firm’s Process

Many website vendors promise sleek design. Few take the time to understand what makes a law practice unique. The Modern Firm starts every project with a deep dive into the firm’s story, goals, and clients. Rather than relying on questionnaires and tech acronyms, you work with a team who listens first.

From that foundation, they build a fully custom WordPress website that your firm owns outright—including all design files and content.

The custom website design process includes branding and visual identity work (e.g., layout, fonts, color scheme, and logo), collaborative reviews, attorney-written content (yes, actual lawyers write the copy), and optimized coding that supports SEO and fast performance.

The Modern Firm also offers content migration, optimization services (e.g., keyword, metadata, and image improvements), and optional marketing support (e.g., local SEO, article writing, and Google Ads management). But unlike many all-in-one vendors, The Modern Firm does not require long-term contracts or bundle in services lawyers don’t need. Each law firm chooses only the services it wants.

Why The Modern Firm Works for Solo and Small Firm Lawyers

Lawyers are not web designers. Few enjoy spending their evenings tweaking navigation menus or comparing hosting plans. But they want a site they can be proud of, that works well, and that they actually own.

The Modern Firm’s approach meets lawyers where they are. They provide straightforward onboarding. Their editing tools are simple. And their team responds quickly when a lawyer needs help with a website update or guidance on expanding their marketing efforts.

They offer hosting with performance, backups, and security built in. But you’re never locked in—if you want to host elsewhere, no problem.

It’s a rare blend of custom design, practical support, and deep legal experience.

Start by Turning the Page on Your Web Presence

If your firm’s website feels outdated, underwhelming, or off-brand, consider a redesign. A well-crafted website elevates your credibility, improves your client experience, and supports your business goals.

Plenty of vendors will build you a site. Fewer will help you build one that reflects your practice, offers client-centric tools, and grows with your firm. The Modern Firm does just that with a proven process built for small firms.

Visit The Modern Firm’s website and tour their client portfolio.

Book a consultation by September 30 and mention “Lawyerist” to save 10% on the base price of their website design services.

Your Contracts Are a Mess. Let the AI Deal with It

For attorneys in business-focused practices, whether it’s small business formation, large corporate clients, or in-house counsel, contracts play an enormous role in daily activities. They govern risk, revenue, and relationships—but managing them efficiently still feels like an uphill climb. At every stage of life, contracts require attention and upkeep.

Even with CLM (contract lifecycle management) platforms, you spend too much time digging for details, tracking dates, and re-entering the same data across systems. Fortunately, it’s 2025 and artificial intelligence is really good at summarizing and extracting information from documents. Concord harnessed cutting-edge tools to build an AI-centric system to help law firms and legal teams.

Concord’s AI tools—AI Extraction and AI Copilot—deserve serious attention. These tools offer AI that goes beyond the merely functional. They’re intelligent and approachable in ways that save time, ease attorney burdens, and improve client service.

Concord’s AI Extraction: Legacy Contracts Come Alive

No attorney starts with a blank screen when drafting a contract for a client. Neither should we expect our contract management systems to help only on a “going forward” basis. A truly valuable tool improves both your existing and future state.

Concord’s AI Extraction analyzes your library of existing contracts and retrieves pertinent details. As you add contracts to the system, Concord automatically pulls out essential terms: parties, effective dates, renewal windows, termination notice periods, dollar amounts, governing law—you name it.

AI Extraction’s accuracy impresses, even with complex or multi-party agreements. Importantly, the process is transparent. Once Concord extracts the terms, you can verify and adjust any fields before finalizing. The result is a structured dataset from what was previously a mess of static documents.

What was previously folders of Word and PDF files, perhaps with a “seasoning” of an Excel spreadsheet, sporadically updated, becomes an organized information system, complete with reporting capabilities.

This alone shifts the role of a legal operations or in-house counsel team. Instead of sifting through folders or email threads to answer, “When does this contract renew?” or “What’s the payment obligation?” you simply search or filter. You can even generate reports showing all contracts with 60-day renewal terms or aggregate your exposure based on agreement value.

Then there’s AI Copilot, Concord’s new conversational assistant. Think of it as a chatbot for your contracts—one with actual domain relevance and speed. Open any contract in Concord, activate the Copilot, and you can ask plain-language questions like:

  • “What are the key obligations of each party?”
  • “When does this agreement renew?”
  • “Are there any indemnification clauses?”

Copilot responds instantly with context-aware answers. It highlights relevant language in the document and often includes helpful summaries.

Crucially, Copilot isn’t replacing the attorney’s legal analysis. Rather, Copilot helps the attorney perform that analysis in a way that’s both quicker and more thorough than before.

Copilot doesn’t attempt to ‘replace’ legal interpretation—it enhances it. Copilot helps you get oriented faster, spot red flags earlier, and reduce context-switching during contract reviews.

In that role, Copilot improves first-pass reviews for routine agreements or serves as a triage tool for busy in-house teams.

Targeted AI Tools to Solve Specific Bottlenecks

Everything in Concord’s toolbox, from the AI triggers to the review interface, is built with actual legal workflows in mind—minimal clicks, clear audit trails, easy override controls.  AI Extraction and Copilot redefine a lawyer’s contract stack. These tools both make existing processes faster and change what’s possible.

Getting Started with AI-powered Contract Management

If you’re tired of staring at Excel trackers or re-reviewing PDFs for dates you’ve seen three times already, Concord’s AI features are worth serious consideration. They won’t write your contracts for you—and that’s a good thing. But they will let you spend more time on legal thinking and less time on administrative grind. Visit Concord’s website to schedule a conversation.

How Kollect Helps Law Firms Get Paid Faster and Smarter

Think of the things that law school prepared you for: logical reasoning, research, analysis, writing, perhaps even courtroom presentation. What did law school not prepare you for? Managing people and running a business. No class teaches you how to handle invoicing, chase overdue payments, or reconcile trust accounts.

Kollect helps you handle it.

Kollect provides three core financial services designed specifically for law firms:

  • Accounts Receivable (AR) Management – including invoice generation, delivery, and tactful follow-up;
  • Collections – focused recovery of overdue debts from former clients; and
  • Accounting – including bookkeeping, financial reporting, and monthly IOLTA reconciliation.

Whether you choose one service or all three, Kollect’s deep understanding of each function enables us to deliver more effective results across the board.

Kollect Delivers Results with Proactive AR Management

Managing AR in a law firm can be time-consuming, uncomfortable, and inefficient. Kollect offers an AR service that goes beyond chasing payments and conducting follow-ups; it begins at the invoice creation stage and continues through final payment.

Kollect specializes exclusively in the legal market. With decades of experience, their professionals understand the nuances of legal operations, client expectations, and professional communication standards. Kollect ensures that your billing processes run smoothly. Their skill and focus enable smoother invoicing cycles, faster payments, and a more professional client experience.

How do they deliver? Kollect assigns a dedicated person to handle your firm’s AR. This specialist becomes an extension of your firm. They build relationships with clients, know the firm’s tone and style, and tactfully navigate the balance between assertiveness and empathy.

How do you judge success? Look to improved cash flow, reduced outstanding balances, and fewer awkward client conversations for attorneys.

Start Strong with Kollect by Collecting What You’re Owed

Sending out timely, accurate invoices is a core strength of Kollect’s AR management service. Proactive AR management also prevents a “pileup” of unpaid, aging invoices. If practicing law, and not firm financial management, has been top-of-mind, as it should be, then the best first step to financial health may be evaluating outstanding bills.

Kollect helps here too. Kollect’s Collections service is designed for recovering unpaid balances from former clients—those your firm no longer represents. Kollect offers this service when they begin working with clients to get them on solid footing going forward. Addressing aged invoices lays the groundwork for a cleaner financial slate moving forward. It also highlights why effective AR management is so critical: to prevent the need for collections in the future.

“Kollecting” Invoicing and Accounting in One Place

Kollect’s holistic approach to financial operations means they can handle day-to-day bookkeeping and accounting, in addition to AR management and collections work.

When your AR team also manages your books, they have full visibility into your financial workflow.

What does integration mean for your firm? Proactive, timely, informed follow-up, without duplicated effort, miscommunication, or the blind spots that occur with siloed AR and accounting.

The person following up on a late invoice already knows the client history, payment patterns, and internal notes without checking multiple systems or asking multiple people. That’s Kollect’s model: connected, streamlined, and efficient.

Kollect offers flexible support: from basic bookkeeping and monthly IOLTA reconciliations to virtual CFO services.

Whether your firm needs simple trust accounting, balance sheets, and P&L statements, or more elaborate advice like contract reviews and financial strategy reports, Kollect can help create a clear, comprehensive picture of firm finances.

Refocus on Practicing Law

Instead of being an “AR/collections/accounting hobbyist,” you focus on practicing law. Time once spent reviewing receivables, chasing overdue invoices, or deciphering inconsistent financial reports becomes time spent on clients, business development, or courtroom strategy.

You gain financial peace of mind. Greater transparency and accountability produce steady, predictable income without internal friction or divided attention spans.

A Lasting Partner for Long-Term Success

Kollect offers an elegant three-part solution to one of the most persistent problems in legal practice: getting paid, while also providing full-service financial alignment. Even if your firm needs help in only one area (AR management, collections, or accounting), Kollect’s deep understanding of how all three areas interact means they’re uniquely positioned to serve you better than a provider with a narrow focus.

Many attorneys don’t like to think of their firm as a business. Instead, they prefer to think of a “calling” and being an “officer of the court.” These are honorable and true sentiments. They’re also easier to achieve if the business part is well-run. Firms grow stronger by focusing on what they do best and outsourcing the rest to trusted specialists.

If you’re ready to improve cash flow, reduce administrative stress, and gain more time for your clients, visit Kollect’s website to arrange a free consultation about how they can help you run a smarter, more sustainable firm.

Tabs3 Brings Hard-to-Find Legal Management Features to the Cloud 

Small to mid-sized firms often struggle with outdated, inefficient, and ineffective systems that fail to meet their needs. Many firms find their current law practice management software (LPMS) lacking in depth of functionality, particularly in case management and financial reporting. These pains can lead to frustration, lower productivity, and potentially, dissatisfied clients. 

Robust Software in the Cloud 

Enter Tabs3 Cloud, a comprehensive browser-based LPMS that addresses these issues head-on. Tabs3 Cloud offers the freedom and flexibility to manage your legal practice from anywhere, anytime. With its robust feature set, advanced functionality, and seamless integration, Tabs3 Cloud is the perfect solution for firms looking to enhance their digital presence and improve client satisfaction. 

Easy to Use, Wherever You Are 

One of the standout features of Tabs3 Cloud is its ease of use. The intuitive interface and user-friendly design make it simple for attorneys and staff to navigate and effectively use the software. What does ease of use mean? Efficient and productive people spending time serving clients rather than battling software limitations. 

Client satisfaction is at the heart of Tabs3 Cloud’s mission. Nine out of ten clients recommend Tabs3, and the company continually receives more than a 98% satisfaction rating for its support. This high level of client satisfaction testifies to the software’s reliability, functionality, and the exceptional customer service provided by the Tabs3 team. 

The Features You Need and Your Practice Demands 

Tabs3 Cloud is comprised of Tabs3 Billing, Financials, and PracticeMaster in a seamlessly integrated practice management solution. It features a full general ledger product and add-ons including Tabs3 CRM for managing leads and Tabs3Pay for credit card and ACH processing. Tabs3’s comprehensive nature ensures that one suite of tools from one vendor covers every aspect of your practice, from time tracking and billing to meticulous accounting features. 

PracticeMaster 

The integration of PracticeMaster along with Tabs3 Billing and Financials is particularly noteworthy. PracticeMaster enhances the software’s case management capabilities, providing firms with the tools they need to manage case details effectively, critical things like matter facts, client intake, conflict checking, document management, and more. This integration allows for seamless communication and collaboration between departments, ensuring that everyone is on the same page. 

Tabs3 CRM

Law firms are quickly learning the value of thorough referral and lead tracking with customer relationship management (CRM) software. Tabs3 Cloud rounds out its suite of tools with this optional add-on to PracticeMaster to help your firm stay organized with tools and customizable templates. 

Tabs3Pay 

Every study on the topic shows that firms who accept credit card payments are far more likely to get paid (1) at all, (2) promptly, and (3) in full. Tabs3Pay offers small firms a streamlined payment process that accelerates payment receipt and minimizes manual errors. Electronic payments via Tabs3Pay reduce time spent on past-due collections and write-offs, while ensuring PCI compliance and security. 

A Partner You Trust with the Modern Features You Need 

Tabs3 Cloud is designed with small to mid-sized firms in mind. The software’s advanced functionality and reporting capabilities make it an ideal choice for firms looking to upgrade their systems and improve their LPMS. Whether you’re dealing with complex financial reporting or need a more efficient way to track case details, Tabs3 Cloud has you covered. 

Get Started with a Demo Today 

Tabs3 Cloud is the ultimate solution for small to mid-sized firms seeking feature-rich software with advanced functionality and reporting capabilities. By addressing the pain points of inefficient and ineffective systems, Tabs3 Cloud empowers firms with a robust, cloud-based solution. And it shows. Tabs3 Cloud is the same product as on-premises Tabs3 Software. It is recommended by 9 out of 10 clients, and has a 98% satisfaction rating for support. Anywhere access to excellent time tracking, billing, accounting, and practice management features could boost your firm too. Visit Tabs3 Cloud’s website to learn more and schedule a demo today. 

Spotlight Marketing & Branding Offers a Solution For Law Firms at Every Stage of Growth

Lawyers and law firms have trusted Spotlight Marketing & Branding for over a decade. As the firms’ trusted partner, Spotlight provides a range of services, including websites, blogs, social media, newsletters, podcasts, and videos. Spotlight’s expertise in content marketing helps law firms stay connected with clients, attracting referrals and increasing the number of high-quality prospective clients.

Recently, Spotlight added lead generation services – including Facebook Ads, LinkedIn ads, drip campaigns, and more. With this expansion, Spotlight provides a complete marketing solution for law firms at any stage of growth.

Comprehensive Lead Generation Services

Successful lead generation combines four key ingredients. First, know who you are trying to reach (i.e., who is your ideal client). Second, know where to reach these people (e.g., for digital, which platforms do our ideal clients use). Third, what message do you want to send (i.e., what would our target audience respond to). Fourth, when and how often do you reach out (e.g., with a single message or multiple messages, and with what timing).

Spotlight’s lead generation service targets would-be clients with paid social media advertising, focused on the law firm’s ideal client. They provide lead generation services on all major platforms, including Facebook Ads, Google Ads, and LinkedIn Ads. Spotlight also creates custom-built landing pages and drip campaigns.

These services are designed to generate warm, qualified leads on a predictable and reliable basis. Spotlight understands and emphasizes the importance of recurring touchpoints, relevant content, content multiplication, and evergreen consistency to ensure long-term success in lead generation.

Better Clients – Not Just More Clients

Their goal is to attract the type of clients that law firms actually want to work with. This means attracting clients with the right needs and expectations. And it means attracting clients who will pay their bills on time, treat the team with respect, and won’t haggle over rates. Where most marketing agencies are focused just on attracting a higher quantity of clients, Spotlight Marketing & Branding is focused on attracting quality clients. 

Custom-Built Landing Pages

Custom-built landing pages play a key role in Spotlight’s lead generation services. These pages are designed to drive conversions (i.e., turning a visitor into a client or potential client) by providing a seamless and engaging user experience. With optimized design and compelling content, these landing pages capture prospects’ attention and encourage them to act.

Drip Campaigns for Lead Nurturing

Spotlight understands that not all leads are ready to convert immediately. To address this, they offer drip campaigns that nurture leads over time. These automated campaigns deliver relevant and valuable information to potential clients, keeping your law firm top of mind and building trust. By nurturing leads, you increase the likelihood of conversion when they are ready to decide.

Proven Results and ROI

Spotlight has built a track record of delivering measurable results for clients. Spotlight designed its lead generation services to provide a strong return on investment (ROI) by generating high-quality leads that are more likely to become clients. By investing in their services, you can expect an increase in referrals and higher-quality clients.

A Solution for Law Firms at Every Stage of Growth

Spotlight Marketing & Branding serves as a complete digital marketing solution for law firms at any stage of growth. Combining content marketing with paid ad strategies, they help firms strengthen their brand, increase referrals, and attract new clients. Spotlight remains committed to cutting-edge legal marketing strategies that drive measurable results.

With their expertise in legal marketing, comprehensive strategies, custom-built landing pages, drip campaigns, proven results, and partnership with industry experts, they provide a valuable service that can help your law firm grow and succeed in today’s competitive market. Schedule a discovery call to learn more about how Spotlight can help your law firm enhance its digital presence and improve customer engagement.

Beyond black boxes: data security with AI-powered redaction

Ever found yourself spending hours drawing black boxes over sensitive information in legal documents, only to discover later that the data wasn’t actually removed? Or perhaps you’ve experienced that sinking feeling when realizing a redacted court filing still contained sensitive client information in the file metadata? You’re not alone.

With the explosion of digital court filings and public access to legal documents, the stakes for proper redaction have never been higher. Jurisdictional redaction requirements continue to tighten, yet the tools most law firms rely on remain frustratingly inadequate. Every practice area faces these challenges daily—whether handling pleadings, medical records, client data, or financial information.

Sure, some practice management software might include basic redaction functionality. But let’s be honest: manually processing each document is a time-consuming band-aid for a problem that demands a more sophisticated solution. The risks of improper redaction aren’t just theoretical—they’re resulting in sanctions, malpractice claims, and damaged client relationships across the legal industry.

This is where Redactable enters the picture. As a leading web-based automated redaction platform, Redactable is transforming how law firms handle sensitive information in their documents.

What is Redactable?

Redactable is an AI-powered document redaction platform that makes permanently removing sensitive information from documents truly effortless. While traditional redaction methods rely on expensive desktop software and error-prone manual processes, Redactable takes a fundamentally different approach. The platform leverages advanced AI technology to automatically identify and permanently remove confidential data—not just hide it behind black boxes that can be recovered later.

Law firms using Redactable are experiencing up to 98% time savings while gaining the confidence that redacted information is genuinely gone for good. No metadata leaks. No recoverable information. Just properly secured documents ready for filing or sharing.

Key features

  • AI-powered automated workflows: Redactable streamlines document security through intelligent automation. The system can fully scan your document, instantly identifying sensitive information from client details to financial data for quick review and approval. Alternatively, you can select specific categories like SSNs or addresses and let the AI locate all matching instances throughout. These automated approaches eliminate tedious manual searching while making thorough redaction accessible to everyone on your team. The system activates automatically when documents are opened, transforming a once-laborious process into a straightforward task.
  • Permanent redaction & metadata removal: Unlike traditional redaction methods that simply place black boxes over text but leave the underlying data intact, Redactable ensures complete and permanent removal of sensitive information. The software also automatically strips all hidden sensitive data, and metadata from documents—eliminating a common security vulnerability where confidential information is covered by objects, or remains embedded in properties, comments, and revision history that standard redaction tools often miss.
  • Collaboration tools: Redactable transforms document redaction from isolated work to streamlined teamwork through its cloud-based platform. No more email chains with multiple file versions—team members access the same document simultaneously from any browser, with defined reviewer and editor roles. The platform includes in-document comments, version history tracking, and the ability to document redaction reasons. This coordinated approach eliminates file handoffs and significantly speeds up complex redaction projects that previously required multiple review rounds.

The Redaction Wizard: a closer look

At the heart of Redactable lies the intuitive Redaction Wizard—a feature that transforms the traditionally complex redaction process into a straightforward, guided experience. The Wizard automatically appears whenever you open a document, offering four powerful modes to match your specific needs:

Auto: The most popular option uses advanced natural language processing to instantly analyze your document and identify potentially sensitive information. The Wizard intelligently highlights client names, financial details, medical information, and other confidential data for your review. You simply select which items to redact from the suggested list—perfect for quickly processing unfamiliar documents.

Categories: This frequently-used approach lets you select specific types of sensitive information to find throughout your document. With a few clicks, you can locate and redact all instances of emails, phone numbers, SSNs, addresses, credit card numbers, and more—ideal for documents where you know exactly what types of information need protection.

Manual: For situations requiring precision, manual mode lets you highlight specific text for redaction. This gives you complete control over exactly what gets redacted, especially useful for unique or context-specific information that automated systems might not recognize.

Search: When you need to find and redact specific terms throughout a document, the search function lets you enter exact words or phrases and redact all matching instances in one operation.

After selecting your preferred method, the Wizard guides you through reviewing the identified information, confirming your choices, and permanently removing the selected content.

Why choose Redactable?

Redactable offers several advantages over traditional redaction methods and software:

  • Time savings: Redactable’s automated workflows can slash redaction time by up to 98% compared to manual methods. Your firm can thus handle larger volumes of documents quickly and efficiently.
  • Accuracy: Redactable’s AI-powered detection identifies sensitive information with superhuman accuracy, reducing the risk of accidental exposure.
  • Security: Redactable ensures that information is permanently removed and cannot be recovered, providing peace of mind for users handling sensitive data.
  • Ease of use: Redactable’s intuitive interface and Redaction Wizard make this vital function accessible to users of all skill levels, ensuring that everyone can perform redactions accurately and efficiently.

Try it today

Redactable offers the professional-grade security that modern document handling demands, with capabilities beyond traditional PDF tools. Rather than just masking sensitive content, it fully removes confidential information—including the hidden metadata and non-visible elements that often get overlooked.

For organizations navigating today’s privacy requirements, proper redaction has become a necessity, not a luxury. See how a purpose-built solution streamlines this critical workflow while providing greater protection. Try it for free today and discover a more efficient approach to document security.

Everything in One Place with CosmoLex’s New Document Generation and Management

Firms must invest in a law practice management system (LPMS) with robust document creation and management tools to move from their current chaos to a future of fluid workflows. 

CosmoLex Knows Documents are a Lawyer’s Lifeblood 

Nearly everything we do as lawyers and legal professionals gets memorialized in a document. An estate plan results in powers of attorney, wills, healthcare directives, and perhaps trusts. Family law could produce many documents related to separation or custody. Mediators memorialize their resolutions in settlement agreements. Business attorneys draft everything from routine corporate filings to merger agreements to new entity formation paperwork. And those are just a few examples! 

CosmoLex provides powerful features, built into its industry-leading LPMS, to help lawyers store, create, and modify documents, from wherever they work. Find client documents quickly with intuitive folder structures. With mobile cloud-based access, retrieve and work on files from anywhere, using iPhone or Android devices, providing 24/7 accessibility. 

Streamlined Storage that Works Your Way 

CosmoLex offers firms two documents storage approaches. 

Built-in Storage 

CosmoLex gives each firm unlimited storage as part of its subscription. You access this native storage easily from a matter’s dashboard, by clicking on the Documents tab, or via the lefthand navigation panel by clicking on Documents. Users can add documents to CosmoLex or download them to their computers via the web browser, including drag-and-drop functionality. While storage is unlimited, individual files are limited to 100MB per file. 

Integration Partner Storage 

CosmoLex supports connections to several document storage solutions from third party companies, including Box, Dropbox, Google, LexShare, Microsoft, and NetDocuments. Benefits of this approach include: 

  • desktop file access (usually) instead of browser-based uploading and downloading; and 
  • a higher file size limit (typically well above 100MB), making it a better solution for videos or other large files. 

Limitations of this approach include: 

  • the cost of external storage; and 
  • the need to manage document sharing and permissions separately from CosmoLex. 

Regardless of which option your firm prefers, CosmoLex gives you a first-rate document management experience in-app. 

Speedily Create Documents from Your Templates 

CosmoLex works to speed up document creation by streamlining your document assembly workflows. Create original templates, such as letterhead, cover letters, as well as full documents, both simple and complex. Design each document once in Microsoft Word. Then download the matter’s merged fields from your database, add the relevant feels to your document template and upload it to CosmoLex. Creating a matter- or contact-specific document becomes a simple point-and-click affair with CosmoLex templates. 

Securely Share and Send Documents for eSignature 

Robust security measures, including matter-level permissions and privilege settings, ensure that only authorized team members access sensitive case files. 

Quickly and simply share documents via the CosmoLex client portal, irrespective of your storage choice, by clicking on the three dots to the right of a document’s name. 

Relax, knowing that privacy and security are core to CosmoLex. Clients can only access documents that belong to them, and they don’t have editing permissions. If necessary, you can revoke access to a single item, a group of items, or even the entire portal. 

In addition to smoothing document exchange, CosmoLex eases document execution. Effortlessly share documents and collect electronic signatures using LexShare and LexSign, fully integrated with Outlook for smooth client interactions. 

Get Started Speedily Serving Clients Today 

Take advantage of the speed, convenience, and efficiency that CosmoLex brings to your document creation, review, and storage. From storage options to quick-use templates, document sharing, and more, CosmoLex helps your firm manage documents effortlessly, to say nothing of its many other excellent LPMS features. Visit the CosmoLex website to learn more and schedule a demo today. 

Tabs3 Cloud Integrates PracticeMaster with Billing and Accounting

As an established, successful, and well-regarded desktop-server product, Tabs3 understands that legal professionals are more mobile than ever and need convenient “everywhere access” to their matter information. For this growing audience, they created Tabs3 Cloud, a complete cloud billing, accounting, and practice management solution. And, understandably, the heart of their message speaks to the betterment of existing strengths: “100% Tabs3 Software in the cloud.”

A Complete Solution in the Cloud

With Tabs3 Cloud, you can access your firm’s Tabs3 data from any internet connection, on any device, at any time. You enjoy Tabs3’s full functionality without worrying about VPN connections, servers, do-it-yourself backups, or finding a vendor to host and maintain it for you. Tabs3 Cloud takes care of it all. Enjoy the freedom to securely work from home, the office, or elsewhere, with all the tools you’d expect from Tabs3 Billing, Financials, and PracticeMaster.

Tabs3 Billing

This tool sets the standard for legal time and billing software. It’s packed with robust features, including comprehensive reporting and email statements.

Tabs3 Financials

This module handles your firm’s accounting needs, such as trust accounting, accounts payable, and even general ledger. And, of course, it integrates with Tabs3 Billing to eliminate duplicative entry and similar manual work.

PracticeMaster

There’s obviously more to a case or matter than time entries and accounting. That’s where the optional PracticeMaster module comes in. PracticeMaster serves as the firm’s one-stop-shop for matter facts, like client intake, conflict checking, document management, and more.

Tabs3 CRM

Law firms are quickly learning the value of thorough referral and lead tracking with customer relationship management (CRM) software. Tabs3 Cloud rounds out its suite of tools with this optional add-on to PracticeMaster to help your firm stay organized with tools and customizable templates.

A Secure Cloud with your Familiar Applications

Tabs3 Cloud works with any modern web browser, including Chrome, Edge, Firefox, Opera, and Safari. To access the program, users navigate to secure.tabs3.cloud and login. That’s it!

Tabs3 Cloud hosts your data in its own private cloud environment. You don’t have to experiment with unfamiliar applications, migrate years or decades of data to a new tool, or even retrain staff on how to perform their duties. Rather than that upheaval, the folks at Tabs3 Cloud take care of the transfer and setup. You and your staff get the applications you’re accustomed to with the modern benefits of cloud accessibility and maintenance by professionals who know Tabs3 better than anyone. Experienced engineers handle data backups, software updates, and any other required service.

Screenshot of Tabs3 Cloud, showing the dashboard of a matter

Unparalleled Support for Your Tabs3 Software

Should any questions arise, rest easy with access to knowledgeable, U.S.-based support personnel. Tabs3 Cloud’s help desk boasts a 98% satisfaction rating. And what about training for new hires or refreshers for current staff? Your Tabs3 Cloud support includes technical assistance, training resources, and a dedicated team to address your needs.

Get Started with a Demo Today

Tabs3 is a time-tested, powerful law practice management software, now securely cloud-enabled for modern mobility. Tabs3 Cloud provides a comprehensive, cloud-based solution, enabling anywhere, anytime access to comprehensive time tracking, billing, accounting, and practice management features. Visit Tabs3 Cloud’s website to learn more and schedule a demo today.

Avoid Lockup with Professional Invoices Through TimeSolv

Getting paid as attorneys means that we keep track of the work we do, that we send appropriate invoices in a timely manner, and that we promptly follow up on overdue invoices. It’s as simple as that.

Fortunately, today’s web-based software makes those tasks faster and simpler than ever. Using TimeSolv, you can quickly record billable events, add them to a professional-looking invoice, arrange billing and payment details, and send the client a bill with easy ePayment options.

Quickly Record Billable Events

While hourly-billing attorneys see the direct relationship of “time = money,” flat fee and contingency firms also benefit from at least occasional time tracking to know whether flat fees are correctly priced and how effectively firm processes work.

TimeSolv has the time tracking features all firms need:

  • Track Time Anywhere: In this era of an increasingly mobile workforce, having the right tools at your fingertips makes doing the right thing in the moment a no-brainer. Getting paid for your work starts with capturing all the work you do. With TimeSolv, you can record time from any device, at any time of day, from wherever you are, even without an internet connection.
  • Speedy, Consistent Entries: Much of the work we do daily follows similar patterns: meetings, court appearances, phone calls, researching, reviewing, and writing. TimeSolv offers Custom Abbreviations to speed up “repetitive” entries and ensure that all users describe events consistently. For example, rather have phone conversations described variously as “called X,” “phoned Y,” or “talked to Z,” set a custom abbreviation of “tfcw” that expands to “telephone call with.” You save a few seconds, and firm users create uniform time entries.
  • Account for Task Switching: For most attorneys, it’s a rare day when they can work uninterrupted. More often, you’re switching between emails, phone calls, meetings, etc. TimeSolv lets you track several tasks simultaneously by running multiple timers. When you start a new timer, any then-running timer pauses itself. Restart the paused timer later or turn it into a time entry.

Create Professional Invoices

Saying that an invoice looks professional means that it contains a few key traits:

  • it’s visually appealing;
  • it’s easy to understand; and
  • its payment instructions are clear.

TimeSolv makes creating professional invoices meeting these criteria a simple, point and click task.

Let’s look at the TimeSolv’s features that help you make better bills quickly:

  • Billing Templates: As with custom abbreviations, consistency matters. But what one wants consistently on a bill may vary by practice area or client. TimeSolv’s flexible billing templates meet that need. Create individual bill and estimate templates catering to each client’s requirements.
  • Split Billing: If you have matters with multiple clients, for example a mediation where each party pays half of the invoice, split billing support is essential. With TimeSolv, you can not only divide an invoice between parties, but also customize how that invoice is divided. For the mediation example, the division need not be 50/50 or an even split between all payors. You control the split percentages.
  • Easy Billing and Payment Options: Several TimeSolv tools ensure that you promptly distribute invoices and that clients can receive and pay bills in a way that works for them.
    • Batch Invoices: TimeSolv helps you create and send invoices to similar types of clients with one click, such as where you offer services with the same line items, shaving hours off monthly billing tasks. Use tools like recurring invoices and TimeSolvPay for billing saved credit card and/or bank account information for ongoing retainer fees.
    • Scheduled Invoices: Create date/time reminders of when invoices need to be delivered. Billing and invoicing on a schedule, or via recurring invoices, means bills go out timely, improving the likelihood of timely payments.
    • Electronic Billing: Skip overhead fees and wasted time from paper billing and use TimeSolv to bill electronically. Help your business master critical codes, including ABA task codes, UTBMS, LEDES 1998b, LEDES 1998BI, Chubbs, and Litigation Advisor.
    • Accept Electronic Payments: Clients can pay online through the client portal via credit cards and ACH. Schedule recurring invoices to bill clients on retainer automatically to their credit cards or bank account, lowering your accounts receivable.
    • Easier Mailing When Necessary: Some clients may hesitate to switch to electronic invoicing and billing. Meet their needs with TimeSolv, which gives you the ability to have TimeSolv physically mail invoices for you, making it easier to streamline your billing process.

Get Started Sending Great Invoicing

TimeSolv has the tools you need to easily and timely create, send, and collect on your firm’s invoices. Visit TimeSolv’s website to learn how it helps you bill faster with confidence.

Master Your Billing with Rocket Matter and QuickBooks 

We know that law school doesn’t teach attorneys how to run a business. Even so, law firms face greater financial complexity than other professions because we hold money as custodians on behalf of other people in special accounts specifically created for that purpose. Managing trust accounts (also known as IOLTA accounts), their recordkeeping, and reporting, or failing to do so, are among the most common ways lawyers face disciplinary action. 

Fortunately, we’ve come a long way from the days of ledger books and even spreadsheets. In the same way that Microsoft Word is the sine qua non of business writing, and Adobe Photoshop fulfills the same role for digital artists, QuickBooks plays that part for business accounting, especially small business accounting. And just as Word and Photoshop offer growing web-based versions, so too does QuickBooks with QuickBooks Online. 

Rocket Matter, an innovative, feature-rich law practice management system (LPMS), and one of the earliest online LPMS tools, offers a robust integration with QuickBooks Online. The combination of these best-of-breed products ensures easy, stress-free, and precise trust account management. 

Easy to Activate 

It takes only a few clicks to connect Rocket Matter with QuickBooks: 

  1. Click on the Accounting module on the left navigation panel in Rocket Matter; 
  1. Select QuickBooks, then toggle the integration on; 
  1. Sign in to QuickBooks when prompted; and 
  1. Select your company from within QuickBooks. 

That’s it. With those four simple steps, you’ve connected the two programs. 

On the QuickBooks Online side, there are some additional configuration steps. Of course, Rocket Matter is here to help. Their experts have prepared a help article and PDF guide to ensure you get the best interoperability available, maximizing the strengths of each program. 

Easy to Use 

Once connected and configured, Rocket Matter and QuickBooks work together to support your practice, making routine tasks simpler while providing a complete view of your financial picture. 

Think of the financial activities you perform in Rocket Matter. A list likely includes: 

  • Creating invoices and recording their payment; 
  • Altering invoices, including discounts and write-offs; 
  • Tracking matter “hard costs,” like filing fees; and 
  • Monitoring client trust accounts. 

Rocket Matter’s QuickBooks integration helps with all of these.  

Conveniences of the integration include: 

  • The ability to sync entire deposit slips between Rocket Matter and QuickBooks, rather than having to touch individual transactions, improving accuracy and speed for batch deposits; 
  • Simplifying reconciliation to eliminate the need for manual adjustments; 
  • The capability to customize your firm’s invoice payment syncing between Rocket Matter and QuickBooks; and 
  • Greater visibility into transaction details with comprehensive syncing logs. 

Easy to Appreciate 

A strong accounting system makes the day-to-day tasks of tracking bills, expenses, and payments as simple and straightforward as possible. It puts the right tools and information where you want it in the form you need it. Rocket Matter’s integration with QuickBooks passes these tests with flying colors. 

The combined power of Rocket Matter’s industry-leading LPMS and QuickBooks’ financial tools are supported and complemented by Rocket Matter’s relentless focus on helping attorneys. Rocket Matter works with you on the customization of general ledger accounts and services, so you can focus on practicing law while their experienced personnel handle the financial setup. And, of course, it’s all backed by the Rocket Matter team, with customer support available 24/7. 

The Rocket Matter-QuickBooks integration is a game-changer for streamlining financial management and ensuring accuracy. Learn more about it by visiting Rocket Matter’s website. 

Effortless, Specialized Trust Accounting with CosmoLex

Most attorneys worry about properly handling client money. Not only is mishandling of trust account funds among the leading sources of bar disciplinary action, but the concern is most acute among solo and small firm attorneys. Often, smaller firms lack the accounting staffing, structure, and software of larger competitors, and  are often less able to withstand a financial accident.

The best way for a small firm to overcome these hurdles is to embrace a user-friendly, integrated solution where matter information and accounting data coexist in a single software product.

CosmoLex Helps You Follow the Rules

Attorneys often joke that they attended law school instead of business school because they hate math. Unfortunately, every business involves math, and the joke may have the last laugh. Law firms confront two types of accounting: general business accounting and client trust accounting (also called IOLTA). And the rules and regulations for the two are completely different. Many accountants and bookkeepers themselves don’t know the IOLTA-specific concepts and compliance requirements.

Good trust accounting software prevents you from making errors. In the same way that law practice management software (LPMS) understands the concept of a “matter” (i.e., contacts plus appointments plus documents, time entries, expenses, notes, etc.) in a way that Outlook and Gmail do not, legal-specific accounting tools understand IOLTA requirements in a way that general business accounting packages do not.

Those respective understandings reinforce one another in CosmoLex, which combines matter management and accounting in one product. A single source of truth makes it easier to avoid trust accounting pitfalls like comingled funds, IOLTA overdrafts, duplicate check numbers, and other common errors.

CosmoLex Helps Make Trust Accounting Painlessly Paperless

Manual accounting is both time consuming and error prone. No matter whether you’re using a siloed piece of software, a series of Excel spreadsheets, or even paper ledger books, CosmoLex represents a tremendous step forward for accuracy, efficiency, and security.

A matter could have many moving parts involving a trust account. A single activity could impact client billing, trust, and operating accounts. For example, the firm invoices the client (client billing), then disburses trust funds to pay the invoice (trust account), and transfers those earned funds for its use (operating account). Recording this series of events correctly in multiple disconnected paper or electronic systems not only consumes time better spent elsewhere, but it also risks bookkeeping inaccuracies that become harder to find and correct the longer they linger.

With CosmoLex, you can:

  • Effortlessly manage single client ledgers or multiple trust accounts with separate ledgers for trust and operating accounts;
  • Apply trust funds to individual or bulk invoices with ease, including automatic transfers from trust to general accounts, and generate disbursement checks directly from the system; and
  • Efficiently manage and disburse third-party lien claims, import electronic bank statements, and auto-reconcile your books to save time and reduce errors.

CosmoLex’s integrated solution ties together matter activity and time tracking, invoicing, and accounts receivable. All pertinent data is always at your fingertips. This linkage reduces the risk of mistakes and omissions. It also saves time that might otherwise be spent tracking down and fixing discrepancies between an LPMS and a synced accounting program, to say nothing of spreadsheet files or ledger books.

CosmoLex Helps Reconcile You to Good Trust Accounting

Your jurisdiction’s governing body likely has rules regarding trust account reporting requirements. The more manual, disjointed, and infrequent your trust account bookkeeping and oversight, the more time consuming and painful any required reporting will be.

In many jurisdictions, your bookkeeping ledgers and bank statements must match to the penny on a daily basis. As attorneys, we have a fiduciary responsibility to handle client funds responsibly, and that includes the ability to comply timely with IOLTA tracking and reporting regulations.

CosmoLex performs three-way reconciliation reporting with just one click and provides a full set of trust record-keeping and financial reports to ensure compliance and transparency.

By using CosmoLex, a purpose-built, integrated solution, you stay continually informed on the status of your IOLTA account, eliminating the uncertainty, stress, and lost time that could otherwise result from weeks or months of lax trust account reconciliations.

Get Started with CosmoLex and Make Good Bookkeeping Easier

CosmoLex’s LPMS solution with integrated accounting offers three core, interconnected features to keep you compliant:

  • Built-in safeguards to prevent errors and missteps within the firm;
  • Automated bank account reconciliation to ensure that the firm and the bank match; and
  • Comprehensive reporting to know the health of the business and meet compliance needs.

Trust accounting with CosmoLex is seamlessly integrated into the legal software, operating alongside law practice management, billing, and general accounting functions.

CosmoLex ensures that your law firm’s trust bookkeeping is managed automatically, in real-time, and in the background. With CosmoLex, trust accounting becomes a streamlined, reliable process, allowing your firm to focus more on legal practice and less on financial administration. Learn about CosmoLex’s trust accounting tools, and its other powerful LPMS features, by visiting their website.

Get Started with ZillaMetrics Chat: Website Chat for Law Firm Intake

Prompt communication is a hallmark of a good law practice. Often clients aren’t able to judge the quality of your lawyering or possess a great sense of precisely where their outcome ranks on a scale from okay to exceptional. But they know if you’re available when they need you and how long you took to respond. This fact is truest when they’re first looking for an attorney’s help.

Web technologies, remote virtual assistance, and even AI have altered how clients find and interact with law firms, and when they expect to be able to do so. From the law firm’s perspective, this variability adds cost and stress, trying to attract prospective clients when they’re searching for an attorney, providing useful information at the right time.

Reaching Prospects When and Where They’re Ready

ZillaMetrics aims to eliminate the common pitfalls of law firm marketing, producing high-quality leads within a reasonable budget. They give customers a clear picture of what ZillaMetrics is doing on their behalf. All without requiring a contract.

While ZillaMetrics can assist with many parts of legal marketing, including SEO, Google Ads, and website design, their Intake Chat tool is a gamechanger. It offers firms a simple and affordable way to engage potential clients when that prospect reaches out. And, as a chatbot, it’s fully customizable and available 24/7 at a reasonable price.

ZillaMetrics’ Intake Chat Boosts Engagement without Breaking the Bank

ZillaMetrics gives firms of all sizes the ability to engage prospective clients with an affordable, customizable chat experience with risk-free trial and no hidden fees.

Unlimited Chats for One Low Price

Traditional chatbot tools can become costly quickly. Vendors often charge $20-$35 per chat, irrespective of lead quality. ZillaMetrics discards this outmoded model. They charge a flat $29/month no matter how many chat interactions your website generates. ZillaMetrics also allows you to create and maintain an unlimited number of chatbots, meaning you could customize chatbots, presenting one on a webpage about personal injury and different one on a page about medical malpractice. All for one charge of $29/month.

Based on the traditional chat pricing model, if you received only two leads per month, you’d still be money ahead with ZillaMetrics compared to the competition.

Chat Experiences Worth Talking About

Law firms create ZillaMetrics’ chatbots within a simple drag-and-drop interface; no programming or coding experience required. ZillaMetrics promises that you’ll be able to “get started in minutes” and, once built, chatbots “launch in seconds.”

Create different chatbots for different webpages, targeting different lead types. Beyond designing the flow of questions, firms can customize individual chatbots’ video chat bubbles and video introductions, among other options.

Intake Chat features include:

  • Automated booking with Google Calendar and Microsoft 365;
  • Payment support through Stripe;
  • Custom branding to match the law firms website;
  • Embedded images and videos;
  • Support for file and picture upload (e.g., accident photos or traffic tickets);
  • Customizable promptings to transition from the chatbot to a phone call or text message conversation; and
  • Integration for reviews and feedback with Google and Facebook.

Additionally, ZillaMetrics’ chatbots support mobile websites via a Mobile Toolkit to help firms boost lead conversions among smartphone-centric visitors.

Risk-Free Trial

In addition to a simple flat rate, ZillaMetrics dispenses with other stereotypical digital marketing costs. They charge no setup fee, require no contract, and offer a 100% money-back guarantee.

ZillaMetrics and CallRail Offer Unparalleled Intake Insights

ZillaMetrics helps firms know the source of those potential clients, which informs future marketing engagement. To do so, ZillaMetrics partnered with CallRail, creating the first direct integration between CallRail and a chat product.

According to ZillaMetrics CEO Matt Burke, “Not a single chat provider on the market has the ability to track the marketing source of each chat lead—it’s a big blackhole.” Finding the existing market wanting, ZillaMetrics built their own solution: “We needed a website chat that automatically tracked the source of every lead, giving our clients the ability to understand where their best leads were coming from—nothing was out there, so we built it ourselves.”

Connecting ZillaMetrics’ Intake Chat with CallRail gives you visibility into the source of every chat lead, whether it comes from Google Ads, Google Business, SEO, or any other marketing source.

Besides CallRail, ZillaMetrics integrates with other industry-leading legal software products, including Clio, Lawmatics, and MyCase, as well as the workflow tool Zapier.

Get Started with Timely, Trackable, and Engaging Client Outreach

With their flat-fee, risk-free, feature-rich offering, ZillaMetrics leads the way in helping law firms deploy an affordable and customizable chatbot solution. Visit ZillaMetrics website to learn about adding Intake Chat to your website.

Save Time, Boost Efficiency with Virtual Case Managers Powered by Get Staffed Up

In the decade or so since virtual legal help came to the forefront, we’ve witnessed tremendous improvements in what we can expect from remote assistance. Virtual Case Managers Powered by Get Staffed Up raises the bar even higher.

A Virtual Case Manager (VCM) alleviates many administrative burdens that all too often saddle a personal injury (PI) attorney.

The Many Benefits of a VCM Powered by Get Staffed Up

An Employee that’s Effective

At Lawyerist, we encourage our Labsters (members of our Lawyerist Lab coaching community) to make efficient and productive use of their time. Personal Injury attorneys should dedicate as many working hours to case work and business development as possible. Even within those areas, many tasks don’t need attorney-level training. Scheduling components and follow up on medical record requests are examples of PI case work that a qualified, administrative professional can easily handle.

That’s where Virtual Case Managers Powered by Get Staffed Up is can happily assist. Delegating time-consuming administrative tasks to a VCM frees up PI attorneys who can then concentrate their energies on client interactions and case strategy work. A VCM helps you focus on meaningful work that advances your clients’ goals, delivering better outcomes, and in turn, increased referrals. Not to mention the cost savings a remote VCM from Latin America or South Africa affords your firms.

An Employee that’s Affordable

If you already contract virtual assistants then you know the many benefits. But what about those who still believe in supporting high cost, need-to-be-at-a-desk right down the hall, staff? Virtual Case Managers Powered by Get Staffed Up will help change that old school mindset. Relief from costly recruiting and time-sucking HR nightmares is now a click away.

An Employee Ready on Day One

VCMs undergo rigorous training developed by a prominent personal injury attorney. Rest easy knowing medical records and confidential client information will be held in the strictest of confidence as VCMs adhere to stringent data protection protocols. They can hit the ground running on their first day, handling tasks like case management work, communicating with clients, and preparing documents with expertise and professionalism.

How a Virtual Case Manager Works

The VCM provides comprehensive administrative support tailored to the PI practice area and your firm specifically. VCMs are college educated and dedicate 40 hours a week to your firm’s research, collection, and organization tasks. Examples of suitable assignments include:

  • Setting up appointments with clients and conduct the meeting
  • Collecting documents, medical records, and other evidence, building the client’s case
  • Making a first review of legal documents, such as pleadings, motions, and discovery responses
  • Organizing and updating case management systems and documents
  • Generating all manner of case reports

Learn More About Adding a VCM to Your Toolkit

By leveraging Virtual Case Managers Powered by Get Staffed Up, your personal injury firm alleviates the burden of time-consuming administrative work, streamlines your practice, and focuses on what you do best—advocating for your clients. Learn more at https://getstaffedup.com/lawyerist-product-spotlight-vcm/, or give them a call at 1-866-565-5744.

Less Effort, More Clients with Law Ruler

Clients have more ways to find and communicate with attorneys than ever before. For attorneys, this represents an opportunity and a challenge. As an opportunity, it’s easier to directly target potential clients when they need your help. Compare the potential “right time, right place” effectiveness of a Google Local Services Ad versus an old-school yellow pages or billboard advertisement. As for challenges, attorneys face increased inquiries (which is wonderful!) that they need to manage and work to turn potential clients into paying clients.

The most effective way to track and manage referrals is with tools purpose-built for the task. This type of program is called client relationship management software (“CRM”). A CRM helps you plan, control, review, and report on the entire client intake process, from initial marketing to signed engagement agreement.

A CRM Built for Law Firms

Think about the steps you take from receiving a lead to signing a client. You’ll see several types of interaction. Some may require a personal touch, while others could be systematized and automated, freeing time for other work. Law Ruler is a CRM designed for these types of workflows and how law firms engage prospects.

Capturing and Engaging Leads

While word of mouth remains a powerful recruitment vehicle, digital tools help keep you in mind when a would-be client is ready to engage.

Suppose you are an estate planning attorney and you conduct an educational presentation for seniors in your area, you might collect attendee names and email addresses. What now?

Traditionally, you may set that list aside or keep a record to see if the event generates business. More sophisticated firms may send a follow-up email or letter with a brochure. Law Ruler lets you do much more.

Law Ruler lets you take that list of names and email addresses and start them on a series of informational emails you design—a “drip campaign” in marketing terms. You could design a series of automated emails that Law Ruler sends out, one a week, on the “core” estate documents—will, trust, power of attorney, and healthcare directive. These four emails build on or reemphasize your points. A fifth email is a summary reminder of your services and link to schedule a consultation.

You provide valuable, expert information to the prospect, stay front-of-mind with the attendee, and make it easy to take the next step.

Law Ruler’s drip campaign tools support multiple approaches, including texting with pictures and videos and pre-recorded voice calls. Law Ruler’s platform integrates texting, so messages originate from a central firm number and are stored and visible to other Law Ruler users in the firm.

Tracking and Reporting on Outreach

Marketing emails and text campaigns only work if they’re read by the recipient and that recipient becomes a client. Naturally, Law Ruler provides robust analytics in a dashboard view to see relevant information. Instantly know key metrics like:

  • click-through rates (e.g., what percent of email or text recipients click on a link in a message);
  • conversation rates (e.g., what percent of prospects become clients); and
  • average time to conversion (e.g., how long does it take a prospect to become a client).

Law Ruler lets you schedule these as recurring reports, as well as design custom reports in a “code free” interface.

Managing Lead Qualification

Once your outreach spurs a potential client to act, Law Ruler helps you evaluate and qualify the lead to see if the prospect’s needs match your expertise. With Law Ruler, your intake coordinator could:

  • use Law Ruler’s form builder, featuring on-the-fly, adaptive questionnaires to collect matter facts;
  • feed form-collected data into custom fields in Law Ruler, simplifying staff work to review and filter prospects, while avoiding the error-prone process of retyping previously entered details; and
  • ease key steps of the onboarding process via automated documents, such as engagement agreements, generated with form-collected data, and send for digital signature via email or text message.

Powerful CRM, Made Even Greater with AI

Law Ruler includes the talents of ChatGPT to speed up everyday marketing and client communication. ChatGPT and Law Ruler’s AI Email Assistant streamline routine marketing communication tasks, alleviating burdens while producing better, repeatable results in less time.

Law Ruler users can take advantage of ChatGPT integration to:

  • generate potential social media posts that match custom SEO guidelines;
  • produce first drafts of client communications, like welcome letters, questionnaire instructions, and meeting, deadline, and appointment reminder; and
  • even create initial drafts of actual legal documents for attorneys and staff to review, edit, and revise.

Additionally, Law Ruler users benefit from using ChatGPT within a product purpose-built for law firm customers. Law Ruler designed its ChatGPT integration with security top of mind. When using ChatGPT inside Law Ruler, ChatGPT has no access to client data and is prevented from saving and “learning from” any information you enter as a prompt. This structure lets firms use AI and still maintain compliance, preserve privilege, and fulfill ethical obligations to clients.

Systematize Great Marketing and Powerful Lead Management with Ease

Visit Law Ruler’s website to learn more about how their legal-specific CRM helps law firms save time by eliminating manual processes and streamlining their client intake process. If you’d like a hands-on walk-through of Law Ruler, including its phenomenal AI features, click here to schedule a demo.

Avoiding Trust Account Errors with CosmoLex

Mishandling client money is among the top client complaints about attorneys. When we think of mishandling, we often think first of misappropriation—taking client funds to spend on oneself. But such actions, however sensational, represent a distinct minority of trust account problems. More commonly, problems with law firm trust accounts, also known as IOLTA (“interest on lawyer trust accounts”), arise from errors of expediency and neglect rather than nefarious intent. Still, such errors may prove a serious threat to your firm, your reputation, and even your law license.

Fortunately, legal technology has advanced well beyond ledger books. Today, approachable, feature-rich, web-centric programs make managing law firm trust accounting simpler. CosmoLex, a leader in online law practice management software, includes robust tools that help attorneys address potential trust accounting pitfalls. Furthermore, since these capabilities are built into CosmoLex, you have access to all matter facts and finances in a single, integrated experience.

Guard Against Trust Account Mishaps

Prevent Commingled Funds

Ethical rules require law firms to separate trust account money from operating account money. Money you receive but have not earned, for example, a retainer from Client 1 or a settlement check for Client 2, must go into the trust account. You can move that money from the trust account to your operating account as you earn it, such as working hours on the matter (Client 1) or paying yourself the 30% contingency fee (Client 2). You must also document such movement appropriately.

Each client’s money in trust must be separately accounted for. Using the example above, Client 1’s retainer and Client 2’s settlement amount are not a single pool of money, although they could reside in the same bank account. If your work for Client 1 exhausts the retainer, you cannot continue to withdraw money from the trust account even if there is money in the account from the settlement check. The settlement check money belongs to Client 2. If you continued paying yourself, you’d overdraft Client 1 and misappropriate money owned by Client 2.

Proper trust accounting necessitates coordinating client, matter, and money data. CosmoLex holds all three and automates individual client ledger management to prevent commingling and overdrafting.

Ensure Proper Payments and Timely Disbursements

Building on our example above, when Client 1 signs an engagement agreement and pays your retainer, that payment must be paid into and reside in your trust account until you earn it. Assuming they’re like most Americans, Client 1 may want to pay with plastic.

Your credit card infrastructure must understand the unique complications of trust accounts. CosmoLex’s credit card processing handles tricky situations like chargebacks and disputes, and allocates money, fees, and service charges appropriately for an IOLTA setting.

Similarly, you must timely disburse funds. For some situations, the desire for timeliness is obvious—Client 2 would like his settlement money. In other cases, the need for timeliness is less stark, but no less true. With Client 1, you should move money from the trust account to the operating account as you earn it.

In both cases, you must document the transactions. CosmoLex makes it easy to record disbursements as they are made. Documentation’s value for Client 2 is obvious. But it’s also important for Client 1 because:

  • you have an obligation to separate the firm’s money from client money;
  • regular, timely transfer of earned money to the operating account smooths firm cash flow; and
  • transferring earned money from Client 1’s trust to the operating account promptly informs you when you have exhausted the retainer. It’s then time to send a replenishment request or begin billing Client 1.

Examples of other CosmoLex features that streamline trust account management include:

  • Automatic trust-to-operating account transfers;
  • Tracking and disbursement of third-party lien claims; and
  • Importing of electronic bank statements.

Many of the activities described above affect both the trust account and operating, or general business, account. One of CosmoLex’s great advantages is the ability to present a holistic picture of your billing system (e.g., invoices sent to clients), your trust account (e.g., money you hold on behalf of a client), and your operating account (e.g., your general business ledger). Your view of the business benefits from a compressive portrait possible only with an integrated solution.

Integrated Data Produces Powerful Reports

CosmoLex’s reporting tools make both the tracking of and reporting on trust account activity easy and intuitive. Additionally, CosmoLex provides simplified reporting for recordkeeping and auditing. With CosmoLex, you can run bank reconciliations, including the critically important three-way reconciliation, in just a few clicks, and archive financial data reports for safe-keeping and later review.

Complete trust financial reports include:

  • Account balance reports
  • Ledger activity summary reports; and
  • Ledger transaction reports.

CosmoLex’s effortless trust reconciliations and audit-ready tools ease mandatory trust accounting obligations. Having these trust reports on hand ensures attorneys are prepared in case of an audit.

Avoid Errors and Alleviate Trust Account Burdens with CosmoLex

With comprehensive trust accounting baked into its law practice management software, CosmoLex provides a complete picture of your firm’s matters and activities, helping to:

  • Preventing common trust account errors;
  • Simplify precise online payments;
  • Facilitate prompt distributions;
  • Properly record transactions; and
  • Effortlessly produce the reports you and your accountant require.

To learn more about using CosmoLex’s legal-specific accounting tools to stay ethically compliant with client money, visit their website.

Efficiency, Security Made Easy with ShareFile for Legal

ShareFile is well known for secure document sharing and external collaboration capabilities. It provides an easy and secure way to send and receive client or third-party files. Built on that strong foundation, the newest ShareFile for legal innovations give law firms the power to create unparalleled document and client-centric efficiencies.

ShareFile for legal builds on the core features you’re familiar with, adding capabilities that expedite client onboarding, ease document workflows, and better protect business and client information without the need of complex, IT-managed security protocols.

Many legal professionals (75%) spend more than 20 hours a week on non-client-facing work. Reclaim some of those hours with the powerful features of ShareFile for legal.

Share Files Securely

When we think of exchanging documents over email, we often think of file size, but not always file security. ShareFile for legal handles both easily. There is no file size limit like email has for attachments. The Outlook or Gmail plugin makes attaching documents and entire folders to an email easier and more secure. The attached documents are uploaded to and are secure in ShareFile, and you can send links to only download the file. You can monitor the downloads, password protect them, and limit the number of times and how long the download links work. Receiving files works similarly. Provide the client with a secure link and they can upload documents via a web portal. ShareFile notifies you of newly received documents.

  • Projects: When you and the client collaborate on files, ShareFile for legal offers a centralized client management space for each case or matter that helps simplify, organize, and secure common document workflows. This helps give more visibility and control on who has access to what and when they last accessed files, all in one spot.
  • Document Requests Lists: For a list of documents you collect frequently (e.g., the same five documents for each deed you prepare), ShareFile for legal includes digital document collection to create and send requests to clients, explicitly listing each document and the date you want to receive it by. A blanket “upload everything here” link often works, but for specific or discrete items, document requests tell the client what you need. You can review what the client uploaded, comment, and even reject a given document, state why, and request the correct files (e.g., if the client uploaded two years of tax returns but not the most recent two years).

Keep Track of Tasks

Even when you tell clients exactly which documents you need from them to proceed, you or someone at the firm often has to follow up repeatedly. You may be able to bill for the time, but it’s neither effective nor rewarding. ShareFile for legal provides two helpful tools.

  • Task Tracking: You can configure ShareFile for legal to track matter-related tasks. Statuses include “yet to start,” “in progress,” “overdue,” and “completed.” You can create tasks for individual documents (as in estate plan drafting), or entire classes of documents (as in discovery or due diligence work).
  • Keep the Client Informed: As part of task tracking, you can easily share task access with clients. When granted access, which is discretionary, clients can receive prompt status updates that detail all work for their matters.
A screenshot of the ShareFile web portal showing a breach of contract matter with tasks in different stages of completion

Security First

Although document scanning and safety have improved in recent years, they can still be a vector for malware and infection. This fact is even more pronounced among lawyers, where 2023 statistics reveal that 69% of attorneys rely on email, often unencrypted, for client communication and document exchange. ShareFile for legal proactively scans document contents and provides suggested actions or automated actions for mitigating threats.

ShareFile’s security capabilities include alerting you to unusual sign-in and authentication attempts and monitoring file uploads for malware.

Works within Your Tech Stack

ShareFile knows that firms rely on multiple programs to perform different functions. That’s why ShareFile for legal integrates with key tools like Microsoft 365, Google Workspace, Salesforce, and more to reduce tech complexity and help your firm boost efficiency.

Digital documents workflows can help improve your firm’s speed, accuracy, and security. ShareFile for legal makes transmitting and collaborating on documents easy and secure. Whether your clients upload dozens of discovery documents, a discrete list of enumerated files, or a collaboration space for ongoing engagement between the client and the firm, ShareFile has you covered. Learn more about ShareFile for legal by visiting their website.

Measure Your Time, Don’t Just Track it with TimeSolv

A product that makes time tracking simple benefits attorneys irrespective of practice area or fee structure. For attorneys who bill by the hour, easily entering, editing, and reviewing times holds obvious advantages.

But what about flat fee and contingency firms? While those practices need not always record time (unlike hourly attorneys, time is not directly the product you’re moving), it’s still worth doing. Why? Recording time reveals profitability. Hourly billers get a sense of profitability with every pre-bill, discount, or write-down they give a client.

Flat fee and contingency firms lack that regular “check-in.” By recording time and knowing, for example, that a $10,000 flat fee estate plan takes $5,000 to prepare (i.e., comparing the fee charged against staff salaries and other expenses), the firm gains a profit margin “snapshot.”

TimeSolv, a web-based law practice management system (LPMS) with deep roots in the business of law understands the importance of time tracking. TimeSolv understands that making time entry simple and quick ranks of first importance.

TimeSolv Delivers Comprehensive Time Tracking Tools

Track Multiple Events

With TimeSolv, users can have multiple timers available simultaneously. Starting one timer automatically pauses the currently-running timer. For example, if an attorney is drafting a document, and a client calls on an unrelated matter, clicking to start a new timer for the phone call automatically pauses the document-drafting timer. When the call ends, the attorney can stop the phone call timer and enter it. Or perhaps the attorney expects to look something up and make a return call to the client later that day, they can pause the phone call timer and resume the document drafting timer.

Track Time Anywhere

This feature is key. A great solution works on the web, laptops, tablets, and especially smartphones. TimeSolv meets this need. It even works offline; no internet connection necessary! And, of course, TimeSolv includes powerful sync capabilities. If you make a time entry in the desktop app, it syncs with the TimeSolv servers so that entry saves to the cloud and is visible to others. If you’re away from the internet when you make a time entry, TimeSolv automatically syncs the next time you launch the desktop app when connected to the internet.

Draw Meaningful Conclusions

There’s no value in entering a bunch of information if you can’t use that data to make decisions. TimeSolv excels here too. Users and firm administrators see metrics on time entry and time entry behavior (e.g., contemporaneousness) for each timekeeper.

Speed Up Time Entries with Abbreviations

When creating time entries, speed and consistency rank among the top requests. TimeSolv addresses both concerns by supporting custom abbreviations for text fields, including time entries. Rather than sending a client a bill where some phone calls read “call with client,” a few read “phone call with client,” and still others “called to [or from] client,” create a simple TFWC abbreviation. When a user types “TFWC,” TimeSolv expand that shortcut to “telephone call with client.” The same activity reads consistently on bills, across all users and clients. Plus, it saves a bit of time too.

Manage Matter Budgets

While many LPMS vendors offer matter budgets, these are often overall dollar amounts for the matter. TimeSolv provides a more effective, timely, and granular version of budgeting. With TimeSolv, you can set limits on the hours billed on tasks. Such finely tuned control and tracking of expended effort means that no bill or overage surprises you or the client. If someone views a matter with overbudget tasks, TimeSolv displays a prominent banner alerting the viewer that “Plan Task Assignment fees and hours budget exceeded.” By using matter plans to set task budgets, both you and the client can keep a close eye on the meter.

Start Tracking Time for Productivity and Profitability

If you bill hourly and hate tracking time, you’re probably working for free, at least part of the time. If your work is flat fee or contingency, knowing your “cost of goods sold” requires knowing how much you expend in providing a service. TimeSolv gives you the tools to painlessly record and review time entries. Learn more about this feature and everything TimeSolv offers by visiting their website.

Seize Your Day with Rocket Matter’s Office Management Tools

One of the strongest cases for law practice management software (LPMS) is that it understands how legal professionals work. Practice management software excels where Outlook or the Google Suite fails because an LPMS works within the concept of a “matter,” something unique to the legal market. An LPMS combines a host of otherwise disparate data—emails, notes, documents, phone messages, calendar appointments, and more—under the umbrella of one collective (e.g., Smith v. Jones or the Thomas estate plan).

If an LPMS stopped there, it would nonetheless be a boon to legal professionals. But great, innovative practice management software like Rocket Matter reaches beyond the mere recreation of a casefile folder. Rocket Matter includes comprehensive LPMS features and supercharges those features with robust project management and reporting, available to Rocket Matter Pro and Premier customers.

Manage Matters Visually with Kanban Boards

For example, in a family law practice, one might have the following stages (i.e., columns) arrayed left to right across the screen:

  • Prepare Initial Filings
  • Temporary Relief
  • Discovery
  • Mediation
  • Pre-Trial Discovery
  • Trial
  • Closing
A family law focused Kanban board on Rocket Matter

As you work each family law matter, you move the card from left to right across the Kanban board columns as the matter progresses toward a conclusion. Experienced family law practitioners may notice a couple of things immediately: (1) these seven stages are excessive for some cases (e.g., an amicable “no kids, no property” dissolution) and insufficient for others, and (2) matters may “bounce” back and forth between stages—it’s not a linear path forward. Rocket Matter’s Kanban boards address both concerns.

You can customize the respective stages for each matter type. A family law attorney likely has several matter types, such as divorce, dissolution, custody, post-decree, and more. Each matter type possesses its own unique set of statuses, all customizable by the firm to meet how they work. Additionally, the Kanban view accommodates a matter card moving from any one status, which Rocket Matter calls “swimlanes,” to any other status. You could move a matter’s card directly from discovery to trial or flip back and forth between discovery and mediation a dozen times, if necessary. Rocket Matter built its Kanban boards with the flexibility to manage matters how you work.

In addition to managing your matter workflow visually, Rocket Matter’s Kanban view also lets you:

  • filter the displayed matters by primary the attorney;
  • view the total days a Matter has been in its current status;
  • filter the board to see matters by client;
  • filter the board by matter health (has “sat” in a status too long, based on timeframes you set); and
  • jump directly to a matter’s dashboard by clicking its card.

These boards, part of Rocket Matter’s robust legal project management platform, offer a visual snapshot of case statuses, promoting efficiency and collaboration with their easy-to-use, customizable layout.

Project Management and Powerful Reporting

Kanban boards are but one part of Rocket Matter’s strong toolbox of legal project management capabilities. Other project management-specific features available to Pro and Premier customers rely on the matter status to:

  • make calendar calculations unique to each status;
  • add custom tasks that appear when a matter reaches a status; and
  • display specific custom data based on the matter status.

These and other powerful automation capabilities rest on understanding and using matter templates.

Rocket Matter pairs advanced reporting and business intelligence along with these status-based workflows. As a Premier customer, dive even deeper into your matter and project management data with Rocket Matter’s Business Intelligence Module (BIM). With the BIM, your firm can review all types of data across matters, activities, contacts, and billing information. Using simple “drag and drop” steps, you can easily create reports that offer remarkable insights into your firm, its processes, case handling, and financials. Read this earlier article on Lawyerist to understand more about the BIM and how it can help you see more clearly.

Get Started with Kanban, Project Management, and Advanced Reporting

Rocket Matter offers an unrivaled combination of robust LPMS functions, project management tools, featuring user-friendly Kanban boards, and highly capable business intelligence reporting to draw meaningful, actionable conclusions to boost your business. If you want to build a better practice by elevating your firm’s productivity and strategic insight, visit Rocket Matter’s website to learn more about their comprehensive solution.