A law firm management system is capable of gathering and organizing information from a legal business as a whole. The most complete ones contemplate procedural steps, client history, financial and task control, among other functionalities.
When thinking about the organization of projects for law firms, I consider it important to count on software to put good planning into practice. This is because, besides increasing results, it is a way to avoid surprises and anticipate unfavorable situations.
Legal software is an excellent tool to manage projects and improve the use of your time at work. This is because, focusing all the demands of day-to-day, allows the administration of the law firm to be more secure and efficient.
Organizing the law firm management system
- Tasks
Office demands that are not linked to strict deadlines, but are equally important to the progress of the work. As an example, I note as tasks the request of documents to customers.
- Deadlines
Here come all the deadlines, judicial or not, that we need to meet. They are usually noted according to the publications – which are also received by Astrea! – and linked to the process to which they refer, making the work of the lawyer who will meet the deadline simpler.
- Events
As events, we schedule commitments in general. A meeting, participation in a lecture, etc. It is important because, highlighting the start and end times, it is possible to manage the availability of each lawyer and organize the agenda without any setbacks.
- Hearings
In a broad sense, we consider as audience any commitment, with date and time scheduled, that depends on the displacement of the parties. Thus, for cases of expertise, instruction hearing, conciliation hearing, we always put as hearing and in the description, we specify what it is about.
Optimizing the law firm management system
All these categories can be filtered individually by type, by responsible, by date interval, by client, among others. Thus, in a few clicks we can identify how many audiences were (or will be) made in the month, how many deadlines and so on. It is also possible to identify who makes more audiences, which is the client that generates the greatest demand for work.
In addition, law firm management system all the history is maintained. If the appointments were made, if they were not, if they are late, if they were cancelled. Following the status of the demands in a centralized way can help you to reduce errors and maintain a good level of quality regarding deliveries.
Also, with this information available, it becomes easier to put the office planning into practice and also make more assertive decisions, better allocating resources, generating new opportunities, etc.
For project management, however, there is no totally fixed and determined model: it is important that you put into practice the organization of the work in an integrated way and consider that having all procedures centralized in one place. This way, it helps to have a broad vision of the whole project.
Advantages of the law firm management system in projects
In practice, it is common for lawyers to stop using a law firm management system because of the difficulty of use or the need to use more than one control. Among the advantages legal software, as we have already mentioned, is the concentration of all the office’s information in one place, from contacts, appointments, to financial planning.
But it doesn’t stop there. The form of centralized management that Astrea provides allows documenting the performance of the office in each case and also to have a broad view of the team, avoiding micro-management and the need for a totally manual supervision by leaders.
As it is in practice
As each employee receives their demand, they already know that they are responsible for it. Thus, there is no need for other communications and also no danger of information being lost.
With everything in order regarding the demands foreseen in each case or process, in the law firm management system it is also possible to act in a preventive or proactive way.
This is information that approximates the relationship with the client and with partners. Besides, they allow that the strategy of the process be more incisive, after all it is possible to visualize the movements before the publications and also to visualize the processes without movement.
Having the experience of a law firm management system that facilitates the control of information and processes in a unified manner, without the need to search for data in sparse files, certainly improves the productivity of the lawyer and also the results.