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A Tech Adoption Guide for Lawyers

in partnership with Legal Tech Publishing
CRM for Law Firms

In today’s fast-paced environment, your CRM software is central to developing new business. Nothing is more important to your success. Without the best CRM software you probably don’t know how many leads and potential clients you are losing — or the upside available to your firm. In this buyer’s guide, we explore how easy it can be to change that dynamic.

The LegalTech Publishing Buyer's Guides and the products and services listings below are supported by vendor sponsorships.
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Reviewed Products & Services


Law Ruler

Law Ruler’s mission is to simplify the process of growing your practice. Our comprehensive Legal CRM, Client Intake, and Marketing Automation solutions streamline communications, generate more business, and save you valuable time so you can do more of what matters most… serving your clients.

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Lawmatics

Lawmatics is the #1 automation platform for law firms, offering Legal client intakeCRM, marketing automation, billing, and much more, all in one easy-to-use software. With Lawmatics, law firms streamline their operations, impress clients, and win more business. To learn more, visit www.lawmatics.com.

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Moxo

Moxtra powers your OneStop Customer Portal – your digital branch, with continuous collaboration experiences, helping you retain and grow customers, manage your distributed organization, and lower your costs for doing business. Moxtra’s Customer Collaboration Platform can power your branded OneStop Customer Portal as a fluid extension of your existing website, web or mobile app, or as a standalone web and mobile app.

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MyCase

MyCase is a complete law practice management solution that helps firms run efficiently from anywhere, provide an exceptional client experience, and easily track firm performance so that they can reach their business goals.

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Additional Products & Services


  • Legal Files
  • backdocket
  • CASEpeer
  • Tabs3
  • ProTempus
  • Lawmatics
  • Legal Management System
  • eWay-CRM
  • eIMMIGRATION
  • Canopy
  • Shape
  • Actionstep
  • LEAP
  • CasePacer
  • Docketwise
  • CasetrackerLaw
  • App4Legal
  • DirectLaw
  • Caseroads
  • GrowPath
  • BQE CORE Suite
  • Freshsales
  • Quickbase
  • Bill4Time
  • HoudiniESQ
  • MerusCase
  • Prevail Case Management System
  • uLawPractice
  • TurnSignl
  • Xakia
  • Smith.ai Virtual Receptionists
  • NextChapter
  • SimpleLaw
  • Clocktimizer
  • Lawcus
  • Unicourt Legal Data API
  • Legal Karma
  • Milestones

 

 

ATL Non-Eventcast:

Jared welcomes Nikhita Iyar, who covers everything from how to choose an ideal client to starting to use AI without eliminating the human touch.

Highlights

  • What’s Jared and Nikhita’s wild school stories like? – 2:27
  • How effective law firms are leveraging technology to get more efficient? – 5:23
  • How to choose an ideal client. – 8:38
  • Starting using AI without eliminating the human touch. – 16:21
  • Where automation sequence could work and where human intervention should be placed. – 19:15
  • What is the CRM onboarding process – 24:22

Jared talked with Erik Bermudez of FileVibe about CRM software and why some law firms are not using it.

Highlights

  • CRM: Customer Relationship Management Software – 1:40
  • What allows a CRM – 2:05
  • CRM are cloud-based – 2:22
  • A lot of law firms are not using CRMs – 2:55
  • One of the biggest challenges that they have – 4:18
  • Having a CRM in place – 7:19
  • How legal operates – 10:13
  • Managing your leads better – 13:45

Jared welcomes Nick Werker, Cain Elliott, and Matt Spiegel, who discuss the best pathways and used phases for the software and what are their favorite KPIs that law firms should start looking at.

Highlights

  • Who today’s guests are. – 1:19
  • The appropriate time to start listening to Christmas music. – 3:08
  • Why does it take people so long to start building front office software? – 5:29
  • Nick’s thoughts on why it took so long in the legal space. – 9:19
  • What’s the best pathway? – 14:38
  • The other used phases for CRM. – 21:01
  • Value of automations to law firms. – 27:16
  • Favorite KPI that law firms should be looking at. – 33:58

Jared talks with Niki Black of MyCase, Sarah Bottorff of Lawmatics, and Dan Jacobs of Law Ruler about how law firms can use customer relationship management software.

Highlights

  • March Madness: What happened to the NCAA tournament? – 3:05
  • What are the practical effects on operations of law firms focusing more on customer experience? – 5:21
  • Why is it important for law firms to have a dedicated CRM? – 6:46
  • Now that everything on cloud, what tools should or could be integrated with a CRM?- 10:43
  • The common mistakes that law firms are making with their intake processes. – 13:17
  • Path to delight: What does it mean, why is it important, and how can you delight clients? – 17:36
  • How CRM products and CRM features built into other software help law firm increase their conversion. – 19:39
  • How would a law firm use a CRM to automate workflows and how does that help in terms of winning more business? – 21:46
  • Figuring out what your intake strategy is so that you can actually implement it through software. – 23:59
  • The three things law firms can do to supercharge their intake process. – 27:50

Customer Relationship Management Software FAQs

What is the purpose of customer relationship management software?
Customer relationship management (CRM) is a means of managing a company’s interactions and relationships with current and potential clients or customers. CRM software analyzes data related to each customer’s history with the company and leverages the results to try to retain and improve the company’s business relationships with those customers and attract new customers. The main goal of CRM software is to increase revenues and grow sales.

What are the best practice management systems?
The best case management systems — like the ones listed in our buyers guide — create a relational database that aggregates all kinds of information to specific matters and clients. This includes everything from intake to invoicing. Doing so allows for a holistic overview of your practice and breaks down silos between different types of information, allowing for greater efficiency, easier communication, and increased data security.

How does customer relationship management software work?
CRM software uses technology to automate an organization’s practices and strategies aimed at managing customer interactions and then analyzes the data from those interactions throughout the entire course of the customer lifecycle. The data analyzed by CRM systems comes from a number of different communications channels, including telephone, chat, email, direct mail, social media, the organization’s website, and any other marketing materials. The company and its customer-facing employees can use the insights generated by the CRM system to better understand customers’ history with the organization, service preferences, goals and concerns, and more, in order to better serve them and retain their business.

What are the benefits of customer relationship management software?
CRM software allows organizations a better means of organizing and managing existing client data in order to maximize growth. It also provides a more effective and centralized way to manage marketing campaigns, customer leads, potential customer conflicts, and more. The right system results in deals that close faster and clients that are happier with their services. In addition to strengthening current customer relationships, CRM software helps businesses identify potential new customers and discover new avenues for expanding their customer base and pursuing business growth.

What are the main functions to look for in a customer relationship management system?
The best CRM systems — like the ones listed in our buyers guide — should serve as the centralized source for all your customer contact information, data, and communications. They should give you quick access to data on your customers’ needs in order to respond to them most efficiently and effectively. The right CRM tool should also give you measurable insights into key metrics like customer satisfaction, customer loyalty, and customer retention. CRM systems generally come in four types — operational CRM, collaborative CRM, analytical CRM, and marketing CRM. Many of the top CRM tools combine several of these functions, and you should speak with your vendor to understand which functionalities best meet the needs of your organization.

How do you get the most out of your CRM system?
A CRM system will only be effective if your employees actually use it. Therefore, if you’re going to implement CRM, you should also commit to providing your users with comprehensive training on the new system. You should not just encourage, but require widespread usage, and be willing to provide follow-up or individualized training if employees have questions. Finally, get feedback from your users — in order to maximize the benefits your CRM system has to offer, you want to make sure it incorporates the features that your users find most helpful in order to allow them to serve your clients to the best of their abilities.

Legal tech
Customer Relationship Management Software
By Jared Correia

There’s a term for when attorneys use Latin and other arcane languages to describe legal processes to consumers: “legalese.”

But there’s no similar term for when vendors use technical and other arcane languages to describe their legal software operations to lawyers.

True, this dynamic may seem unfair. But now we have The Legal Tech-to-English Dictionary to help us cope.

Here we translate customer relationship management software-related topics to plain English.

Customer Relationship Management Software (CRM)

1. The system that manages the process a business uses to generate continuing interactions with clients, both ad hoc and automated. While such systems are often used for intake management, these tools can also be used to establish nurture campaigns for staying in touch with existing clients, former clients, and referral sources.

2. A software tool allowing users to track lead and client interactions within a single program, with reporting features available.

Lawyer 1: Well, I went through my entire case list, and followed up with all my leads and clients I haven’t contacted for a while. It was a hell of a weekend.

Lawyer 2: Everybody gets my e-newsletter, but I still have to stay on top of callbacks with existing leads. It was a hell of a Saturday. 

Lawyer 3: I automate pretty much all of my followups, and I’m very drunk right now, because I’ve been slamming mojitos for the past two days. It was a hell of a weekend.

Cf. It’s a process.

Client Journey

1. The intake process for a business, including all affiliated interactions, for onboarding new leads through close.

2. The customer experience, from the consumer’s perspective, from lead to close.

Lawyer 1: Our intake system is like a black hole.

Lawyer 2: Because leads are strongly attracted to us?

Lawyer 1: Um, it’s more like a dumpster fire.

Lawyer 2: Because we treat people warmly, and with kindness?

Lawyer 1: Can I just publish an intake form to our website?

Lawyer 2: We have a website?

Cf. Some people refer to it as a quest.

Cf. Like I said.

Pipeline

1. The series of phases through which a lead evolves, before converting as a client.

2. A feature within customer relationship management software that tracks lead progress through specified default and custom phases.

Lawyer 1: Did you finish roughing out our intake process yet, Chaz?

Lawyer 2: Yup, I’m done. But, let me just tease it a little bit before I give you the full series of interactions, because I’m really proud of what I was able to put together here.

Lawyer 1: Go on.

Lawyer 2: Okay. Lead comes in. We FAX them our intake form. They send it back by CARRIER PIGEON. We CLEAN the pigeon shit off of the form so we can read it … 

Lawyer 1: [facepalm]

Cf. The importance of securing your pipeline, so it doesn’t get hacked.  Whoops: different pipeline.

Marketing Automation

1. Generating specific follow-up sequences with leads and clients that do not require human intervention after the creation of such automation flows.

2. The designed follow-up messaging sequences that release to leads and clients on a recurring basis via preexisting workflows.

Lawyer 1: Did anyone follow up with the lead who called us yesterday?

Admin 1: They’re in a follow-up sequence in our CRM, that will generate messages automatically over the next few months, so no one has to.

Lawyer 1: You’re letting the robots contact our clients, while you’re sitting here drinking a latte?!?!  Don’t you know you can’t trust the robots?!?!

Marketing Campaign

1. A specific plan to sell a product or service, or the execution of that plan.

2. A defined marketing strategy tied to a specific product or service, existing within a larger marketing plan.

Lawyer 1: Remember when we bought that billboard campaign?

Lawyer 2: Vaguely.

Lawyer 1: How did that do?

Lawyer 2: Damned if I know.

Narrator: Next time, track those calls, and manage the data via a CRM.

Cf. Not Volkswagen.

Cf. Neither New Coke.

Cf. Remember OK Soda?

Jared Correia is the host of the Non-Eventcast.

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