How to Choose the Right Legal Case Software
Choosing the best attorney intake software for your firm can be daunting; however, if you get it right, better software can have a greater impact on long-term firm profitability than any single employee or case.
But how do you figure out which software solution is right for you? After all, every firm is different. Below, you’ll find suggestions along with questions and answers for buying the right legal intake solution for your firm.
What Is Attorney Intake Software?
Attorney intake software, or legal intake software, allows you to find, engage, and sign new clients in order to drive your law firm’s success. Legal intake management software also provides long term insight into new kinds of valuable cases that will drive your firm’s future. In short, client intake software for lawyers can help you dramatically increase your conversion rate and sign the types of clients and cases you want, enabling an increase in revenue.
What Are the Benefits of Legal Intake Software?
There are two main benefits to legal intake software: it helps you identify more cases, and it helps you prioritize those cases, ensuring your firm is running at optimal efficiency.
Getting More Cases
While a strong marketing strategy is essential to drawing new clients to your firm, without world-class legal client intake software, you will miss out on some of your best cases. Why? Because of human errors, missed communication cues, and other small delays that add up to a mediocre intake process.
Prioritizing Your Cases
Legal intake software allows you to easily identify and prioritize the clients you want in real time. Prioritizing your most valuable cases in a way that’s meaningful to your firm right at intake helps ensure higher value throughout the entire case workflow. Knowing which cases are likely to be good ones allows you to focus on those instead of wasting energy chasing cases you don’t want.
Legal Intake Management Software Features Every Firm Needs
You probably already know the benefits of legal intake software. But how do you choose from all of the options on the market? Here are some key features your intake software should have if you want to get significant benefit from it.
Case Monitoring
Your intake team needs to clearly see what needs to be done on each potential case, when it needs to be done by, and who is accountable for completion. As a manager, you need to be able to recognize if follow-up action is overlooked or delayed, and how to get on top of it and make sure it gets done right and on time. Your software should bring this information to your attention, front and center.
Powerful Case Mining
Great intake software should give you a way to go back and search your databases to find cases that develop over time. For instance, when medical products like knee implants get recalled, mass torts can appear that could earn significant payouts for your clients. This can certainly happen after you’ve already spoken with them or taken their case.
If you find that a mass tort exists for, say, a type of knee implant, you can instantly search your records to find clients with knee injuries, knee surgeries, and/or knee replacements, and market to them. This allows you to efficiently find new cases that your clients didn’t even know they had – without spending another dollar on ads.
Smart Alerts for Prospective Cases
Similarly, you need smart legal software that can recognize keywords in case records and alert you to follow up. Sometimes callers call about one legal problem, but they also have another claim they would never find without your help. The challenge with these hidden cases is they aren’t always easy to recognize, even by veteran staff. Your software can be the differentiator.