Today, technology is the driving force behind every major industry. It gives businesses an advantage in the market by streamlining operations and improving customer service.
Nowadays, legal professionals at law firms and in-house legal teams need a consistent administration level to ensure that the organization’s workflow is efficient.
Custom legal software has been a godsend for lawyers working in law firms and internal legal departments. Even among legal professionals, such solutions make collaborating and researching easier.
In this blog, we further discuss custom legal software and discover how to develop one for your law firm. We also discuss what features you need to include in your custom legal software.
So, without any further ado, let’s get started!
Table of Contents
What is Custom Legal Software?
Software created specifically to assist lawyers in managing their client issues and the operations of their law firms is known as custom legal software.
By enabling the lawyers to handle non-billable and administrative tasks more effectively, a legal practice management system can boost your company’s overall productivity and relieve your stress-free about everything interfering with your ability to provide high-quality legal assistance to your client.
As per the reports, the market for a legal practice management system, valued at 1030 million USD in 2018, is projected to increase by 2361 million USD by the end of 2025, with a CAGR of 12.6%. (Source)
Also, you can easily and securely get the information you require when and when you need it, thanks to cloud-based legal contract management software, which is designed to satisfy the mobility demands of today’s legal professionals. As it makes everyone in your company more comfortable, this accessibility increases productivity. To make greater use of firm time and resources, the lawyers can work from several locations rather than being restricted to the office.
Why Must Law Firms Invest in Custom Legal Software?
There are countless benefits of using legal practice management software, including:
1. Higher Productivity
Commonly, the case record in your custom legal software will contain all information about the case. All clients’ contact details, case materials, calendar events, tasks, emails, notes, and billing details are included. Your team won’t need to ask a coworker to send the file across because everything is contained in one software and is easily accessible. They’ll be aware that if they navigate to the relevant topic, they ought to be able to find the data they need.
2. Improves Back-end Accounting Operations
With enterprise contract management software, you can handle all back-end accounting tasks, including journal entries, handling out-of-pocket expenses and cash outflows, handling late fee charges, choosing the appropriate tax rates, and handling any other variable that needs to be tracked for a specific client.
3. Effective Team Coordination & Cooperation
Information sharing between team members is possible within custom legal software. Other employees can be given tasks through some systems, and you can receive notifications when they finish them. You can connect without sending an email, making a phone call, or getting up from your desk.
4. Automation
Regularly, attorneys perform similar tasks. Automation offers a method for handling these activities faster while saving time. For example, retainer agreements, contracts, pleadings, and client communication are just a few documents that lawyers frequently have to generate for their client issues. Legal document automation minimizes errors while reducing the time needed to prepare paperwork. Processes like scheduling, meetings, and client communications may also be automated in law offices.
5. Easy Contract Management
Legal contract management software allows a law firm to conveniently store and access client contact information. It gives the company access to a centralized database of contact details. It offers a ready-to-use database for searches and even makes managing documents for each contact easier.
6. Less Paperwork
A law firm’s daily operations typically include a lot of paperwork. When done conventionally, finding a certain document becomes a time-consuming task. However, if all of the crucial information is kept electronically, the firm may save a huge amount of time. The business can browse the data thanks to this storage. The firm might use the time devoted to work on the unresolved issues.
7. Scalability
The whole idea behind starting a company was to see it grow continuously. Off-the-shelf legal software could struggle under the workload, but customizable legal software is built with all the modifications in mind. As your law firm expands, custom legal software adapts to fit all user counts, from one to thousands, if necessary.
Top Must-have Features to Consider During Legal Software Development!
The top features that you can include in your custom legal software are:
a. Document Management
You can automate tasks like putting together your legal documents or letters as all of your client and matter information is kept in one place. To do this, you can use the client data already kept in your platform. When you need to locate a document or make a reference to something in your client file, you can look through your client data, tag your records, or categorize them to improve your search results.
b. Case Management
Among the most important functionalities for your custom legal software to have is this one. By doing this, you may manage and organize the data according to the subject and case, making it easier for you and your client to view.
c. Timing & Billing
The heart of your legal practice is, without a doubt, keeping track of your billable hours, billing your clients, and collecting payments. You can provide legal services by charging your client an hourly rate, setting up fixed-fee contracts, charging on a contingency basis, or using this feature.
d. Reporting
Legal software development has led to the ability to monitor work progress through real-time reporting. Through a handy dashboard, this tool allows users to easily view efficiency dates and other pertinent information while comparing estimates and actual results. As a result of improved tracking and communication, law firm efficiency ultimately increases significantly.
e. Client Portal
This is crucial if you want to acquire your clients’ trust and provide superior customer service. This entails providing a platform that enables communication between your clients and your team and grants them access to crucial case-related data.
f. Cloud Storage
Lawyers no longer need to be present in the physical office to collaborate on matters and access client documents, thanks to this feature that removes the barriers all around the firm’s data. Lawyers may swiftly and securely get the information they require whenever and wherever they need it with the best cloud-based legal practice management system. All employees at your company will be more productive.
g. Manage Tasks
You can save time by using this feature, which also promotes accountability and lowers the margin of error. Additionally, you can make task templates for repeating jobs, predefined case workflows, etc.
h. Convert File
You can use this functionality to scan paper documents, convert them to PDFs, and then add to or edit them. The authorized individual can then get this document, or it can be stored in a repository for the firm’s records.
As you’ve seen, the top features and benefits of legal software development. Now, let’s talk about,
How to Develop Custom Legal Software?
Follow the below-mentioned steps to build top-notch custom legal software for your business!
1. Document Your Requirements
Planning requirements and conducting a thorough scope analysis will ensure that everything works as desired. Once you’ve identified your needs, carefully outlining the entire process becomes a key factor in determining what happens next at every level of development and implementation. Also, analyze your requirements, as well as what might assist you run your law firm more efficiently.
2. Design UI/UX
During the design stage, the team decides on the design and building of the software solution. This can entail drafting design documents, formulating coding standards, and debating the frameworks, runtimes, tools, or techniques that will assist the team in fulfilling the objectives established during the requirements gathering stage and the software specifications.
3. Build a Team
You can develop your product by assembling a qualified team of pros, which helps you reach the entire goal. The best way to ensure that your custom legal software is of the highest quality is to hire dedicated developers with experience designing and implementing custom software. These developers will help you get an effective and trustworthy solution.
4. Development
This stage of the software development cycle typically lasts the longest because it serves as the foundation for the entire procedure and involves a number of crucial factors. The legal software development team is responsible for making sure that their code abides by your needs, software requirements, standards, and other rules.
5. Test Your Software
The testing process will indeed be carried out by the software development team when your custom software is finished. This step will also entail several sorts of functional and non-functional testing. It is necessary to test the main software’s functionality, text input, and system installation for localization. All other factors, including security and scalability, should also be considered while evaluating it. Bugs and flaws will be rectified, and testing will be repeated. You must make sure that this process is carried out until the offered solution’s quality meets the initial standards.
Why Choose Matellio for Legal Software Development?
In-house legal teams and firms can benefit from Matellio’s expertise in the implementation and delivery of legal practice management systems.
From the first point of contact to deployment, and beyond, our team of subject-matter specialists is right there by your side while you use legal practice management software. We ensure that we produce solid excellent outcomes by customizing our solutions to your needs.
Conclusion
Custom legal software can assist law offices and law firms in achieving greater milestones by increasing their work capacity and resolving minor administrative problems, such as case updates, client administration, etc. Superior productivity, improved client happiness, improved teamwork, data retrieval, and seamless time tracking and billing are really just a few advantages that custom legal software may offer your firm.
We trust that you now have a clearer idea of what a legal practice management system is and how to develop a custom legal software for your law business.
Although having legal software in place has an unrivaled advantage, one must not overlook the fact that it takes some work, time, and knowledge to make the most of it. Contact leading custom software development company, such as Matellio, if you don’t want to divert your time & energy from core business activities.
