It’s hard to predict where the industry is going, but the cloud will certainly play a key role in its evolution. And though it’s been around for more than a decade, as we enter the third quarter this year — thousands of firms will take the first step toward being fully reliant on cloud computing to manage their firms and better productivity, store their data, and serve their clients.
Shedding Light on The Future of Law with Cloud Computing
The innovation of cloud computing has been one of the transformative technologies in the past years. It has revolutionized every industry in each of the sectors, including businesses and service professionals.
As an attorney, you don’t have to be a cloud computing expert. However, you need to possess a basic understanding of what it is and why it matters. This will allow you to avail guaranteed ROI from your investment and assist you in reducing workloads.
Cloud computing is the availability of computer system resources and features without direct active management by the user.
For lawyers, one of the greatest benefits of cloud computing-based software includes:
- Cost-Effective – Cloud computing requires less overhead, this makes it a much more cost-effective option for law firms that want to enjoy a greater efficiency level at a minimum cost. For even smaller law firms it becomes a tool to be even more productive. There’s no need for expensive hardware, software, or on-site servers. Everything is managed online and paid for through a simple, predictable monthly fee or annual fee.
- Speed up your workflow – Nothing is more frustrating and time-consuming than slow page loading speeds, lagging applications, frozen screens, and glitchy interfaces. Cloud computing provides allows law firms to navigate millions of data in a matter of just a few clicks.
- Enhanced accuracy – At the end of the day, your firm needs a digital platform that you can trust. Cloud computing platforms have recovery systems and data backup solutions that make business continuity less expensive, less risky, and time-consuming. The result is far greater peace of mind.
There are several software companies that created legal software for managing automating tasks for lawyers and law firms — there are many — I only list a few.
- CaseFox
- Clio
- Mycase
- Timesolv
Running a law firm is not a hassle-free task, but today technology is assisting businesses to grow and stay competitive in a cost-effective way.
Even today there are still many law firms that work without Legal practice management software. The lawyer and their firm are busy running their very stressful jobs.
A lawyer doesn’t want to stress trying to learn new technology too. Law practice management software is made so it can be used by tech-savvy lawyers — with easy access to the user interface and navigation process.
A Law Practice Can Use Management Software to Stay Well Ordered
A report has quoted that a lawyer has spent 23% of their time in filling and arranging paperwork. Lawyers juggle between court hearing dates and constant fear of missing something in the trial phase and other conflicting information.
Management Software Can Help
It is no longer practical to keep track of everything manually with law practice.
- Document management – Manually maintaining documents was always a long process and tiring with this there was always a risk of information getting misplaced with the document management feature. Maintaining all the documents related to all the cases in a single place, with easy sorting just accessible at typing keywords related to a specific case, create reports, and keep paperwork at a minimum and keep track of every document and never lose any information.
- Calendar management – A lawyer has to keep track of many dates with court hearings, certain deadlines, events just to name a few, with calendar management don’t worry about missing a single date. Conflict check features so that you never have to worry about a date conflicting with each other again. You organize your dates and events with the calendar management feature.
- Staff management – With business expanding and increasing, growth in law practices are no exception with different branches and offices there will be an increase in staff and duties assigned. This feature keeps track of your staff and duties, about who is working on which case, with help of practice management software have an easy flow of information and easily share details and documents with your staff.
- Manage contacts – When you have many clients, it’s hard to keep track and even more difficult to retrieve information related to them. In a practice management software, client information can be synchronized without a need to re-enter details software will look up when a certain contact is associated with another matter.
2. Financial Control
When a lawyer works on a particular case their is always a fatigue and the case brings with its procedures and hearings. When you use law practice management software you can increase your billable time, track your manual time, and drastically reduce your non-billable time. Use your time and financial resources in priority work, gain the financial control in your hand and keep your productivity at a maximum.
3. Increased Efficiency and Productivity
An attorney works hard to successfully arrange all the needs of a particular case, calling several authorities, arranging documents, planning, execution, etc.
It’s hard to keep track of where a lawyer switched from billable time to non-billable time. Law practice management software can make a huge decrease in the number of any firm’s non-billable hours by creating an organization’s efficiency through proper document management, easy access to files, reducing time spent on administrative tasks, and providing remote access.
You can record more billing time and increase productivity by keeping track of billable and non-billable time spent. The software has an effective time tracking system where you can see where you have spent the most time.
4. Menu Driven Interface
Lawyers get stressed with the word “change.” What’s more stressful when it comes to the change in “technology.”
Developers of law practice management software understand that law practitioners don’t have much time to learn the working of the software. This software is designed in a way where it can be easy to use, with an easy user interface.
Never worry about the words, change and technology — but instead use management software to be more efficient, organized, and less stressful.
5. Time Tracking and Automated Time Entry
While you work, it’s hard to keep track of the amount you spent on non-billable time like client phone calls, noting down information, filing of reports, switching applications, etc.
Many law practice management software gives you the ability to capture time as you’re working. Some even capture time spent within their application and other programs lawyers use throughout the day.
With practice management software, every second of billable time can be captured through time tracking timers with easy time tracking to know where you have spent your time when you switched apps, with this one can keep track of non-billable time and increase productivity.
6. Keeping Up With the Trend of Working Remotely
We have seen a drastic increase in the trend of working remotely. More and more people want to work from home, but the problem arises with the amount of paperwork and information one has to access at home.
Not all information and details can be accessed when you are working remotely and handling paperwork manually, but with law practice management software it becomes easy for every person working remotely.
With the software, you can access any piece of information from anywhere by just logging in the cloud on any device with a stable internet connection and update, access and retrieve information.
7. Controlled Data Protection
As more and more businesses are climbing digital walls cybersecurity, data loss and data breach are becoming one of the major concerns of businesses.
These days Law Firms are responsible to protect a wide range of client’s private information including medical, personal, professional, and attorney-client privilege information. A lawyer has to keep all the data protected.
A law practice management software can assist in securing that information by providing security features and backup features, with this feature never lose information and protect your clients from data loss and keep all your information at a place.
Automation for software management systems makes all of your processes easier and improves client relations. Additionally, sharing information about calendar notices through client portals improves your productivity.
Conclusion
While some are struggling with stress, fatigue, and burnout of the staff a practice management software will minimize your’s and your staff fatigue.
Specifically, practice management software optimizes practice management, workflow, financials, and billing.
The gains in the ability to keep track of all of your work when you transition from a paper-based environment to an effective law practice management solution cannot be overemphasized.
Image Credit: vitaly vlasov; pexels; thank you!
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