Legal Technology: Best Software Systems to Take Your Practice Forward
Technology has become the foundational pillar of efficiency and success nowadays across all industries, the legal sector included. Across the world, business leaders are choosing to adopt new tech in order to automate various processes, minimize financial expenses and improve cash flow, keep their clients happy, and simply build up their competitive advantage. Needless to say, the right tech can help you achieve all of that and much more.
It’s difficult to imagine a modern legal practice that doesn’t run on some form of automation or smart software. That said, choosing the right software for your own business can be a difficult task, because after all, you have to make sure that the tech you invest in produces a positive ROI.
Here to help you make the best decisions when it comes to digital transformation are the top software systems you should consider introducing into your legal practice.
Implementing a unified communication system
Efficient and effective communication is the cornerstone of productivity in any business environment nowadays. In the legal sector, enabling seamless internal and external communication can make all the difference, and it can produce positive outcomes for you and your clients faster. The key is to digitize your communication and unify the system so that all employees are connected at all times.
This is the only way to facilitate vertical and horizontal communication in real time, enable collaboration between all teams, and eliminate department silos. You can achieve all of this by implementing a VoIP system into your operation.
Voice over internet protocol gives you a set of communication tools that help you stay in touch, including:
Low-cost phone calls over the internet.
Video and audio conferencing.
Messaging apps.
A mobile app for employees in the field.
Auto attendants.
Call analytics.
Call forwarding, and much more.
With these and other features, you will have no problem keeping in touch with all employees and keeping your clients appraised at all times. It’s important to note that VoIP is a cost-effective way to enhance communication as it uses your internet connection to deliver an affordable service.
Creating legal documents efficiently and effectively
The legal sector relies heavily on written documentation, all of which you have to write up manually, which consumes time, money, and other resources. Manually creating documents is not only a time-consuming task, but it’s prone to human error that can have serious ramifications. That’s why automating parts of this process is so important, because it ensures that your documents follow the necessary structure and are free of any errors.
This requires a dedicated system built specifically for the legal sector that uses smart templates for legal documents, conversion tools, and proofing systems, along with compliance software. Aside from these features, it’s also important to implement content filtering in your legal practice in order to ensure compliance even further and prevent sensitive data from leaking into the public.
Managing employees and creating rosters
Meticulous employee management not only leads to greater operational efficiency, it also helps minimize time and financial waste, and allows you to utilize your human resources to their full potential. To achieve all of that you have to know where everyone is at all times, what processes they’re currently involved with, and whether or not your schedule is delivering the expected results.
This is impossible to do manually, but with the right employee roster system at your side, you can create schedules that maximize talent utilization and allow you to manage your workforce with ease. Prepping your rosters for the upcoming week is paramount to success, so you need to be able to build rosters quickly, assign the best people to the right tasks, and micro-schedule your workforce to achieve all daily goals.
Smart payment and payroll systems
In the modern legal practice, there can be no room for manual financial management anymore. Tracking billable hours, sending out invoices, staying on top of your cash flow and managing your account payables, all of this requires time and can suffer from human error. Needless to say, making mistakes in the financial department is unacceptable.
If you want to reduce your operational costs now and in the long run, then make sure to implement a smart payroll system along with an intuitive payment platform that will automate numerous financial processes. You can use it to log billable hours and optimize payroll, but also send out invoices automatically along with reminders and incentives for early payers.
File sharing, backup, and storage platforms
Lastly, it’s time to digitize your archives and get rid of those cumbersome file cabinets. In the 21st century, there is no reason to store all of your legal documents, resources, and case files in physical storage, because everything is easily accessible online. Or at least it should be, as it brings efficiency and higher security to the table.
With the right file-sharing and storage platform, you can facilitate collaboration and information exchange across your organization. Most importantly, though, make sure to choose a platform that employs industry-leading cybersecurity measures to protect your brand’s reputation and prevent data leaks.
Wrapping up
Technology is transforming the legal sector, and you should embrace digital transformation if you want to ensure a successful future. Consider these solutions for your legal practice in order to improve efficiency, minimize expenses, and achieve better results in 2021.