News & Updates

Lawmatics Time Tracking and Billing consolidates essential case management features into the platform that you already know and love. With the introduction of LMPay, you can now seamlessly collect your consultation fees through Lawmatics as well. Whether you are looking to implement the full suite of Billing and Time Tracking into your process, or use LMPay for collecting consultation fees, Lawmatics has all the tools you need to make that happen.Each of the aforementioned billing features make it easy to get paid quickly and easily while facilitating an exceptional client experience.

Introducing LMPay

If you collect or intend to collect consultation fees from prospective clients, LMPay is your go-to payment solution. LMPay is quick to set up, easy to use, and accessible without any additional fees on your Lawmatics subscription. LMPay also boasts no fees (or hidden fees) for ACH and competitive industry rates for credit card payments.

Registration

To use LMPay, you will first need to register your firm and complete a brief application process. Begin by opening Lawmatics and navigating to the Settings menu. Once there, select LMPay and you will then see a screen similar to the one shown below.

Upon initiating the registration process, the system will walk you through a sequence of steps to submit your application. The review process generally takes one to two days. Once approved, you’ll have complete access to LMPay.

Features

Payment Gateway

One of the key features of LMPay is the Payment Gateway, a tool to collect consultation fees. The Payment Gateway can be added to any Custom Form or Booking Form, of a seamless step in the consultation booking process.Drag and drop the Payment Gateway field from the Advanced section in the Form Editor, and then click on it to set your payment terms.

You can easily specify the amount, activity type, etc for this payment (pictured above). When the potential client fills out this form, they are able to select a time for their consultation and enter their payment details to pay your consult fee.

Any payments made via LMPay are tracked in Lawmatics and visible on the matter’s profile. Click on the Billing tab to view invoices as well as payment history for that particular matter.

NEW Billing Tab

You will also have access to a separate Billing tab on the main menu of your Lawmatics window, located at the very top of any page. Here you will find an overview of all invoices and payments for the firm, as opposed to zeroing in on a specific matter.

Easily view, sort, and filter your invoices or create a new invoice manually if needed.

Time & Billing

Whereas LMPay is geared towards collecting consultation fees, the Time & Billing add-on offers an entire suite of time and billing features. Even if you currently use a case management system for this functionality, you’ll find that Lawmatics has everything you need under one roof.

Getting Started

To begin using Time & Billing, you will need to do the following:

1. 1. Email support@lawmatics.com to notify our team that you would like to activate Time & Billing. Time & billing does come at an additional cost per user to your Lawmatics subscription.
   2. Let us know which of your Lawmatics users you would like to access. You are only charged the add-on rate for the users that need to access the feature.
   3. Once Time & Billing is activated, configure your settings. This includes setting up your expense types, default hourly rates, payment receipt email template, and more.

Time Tracking

Lawmatics makes it easier than ever to track your time spent on various billable and non-billable activities. Once you have activated the Time & Billing add-on, a Time Tracker will appear in the top menu of your Lawmatics account. Click the Time Tracker to select the matter you intend to track time for as well as the activity type for this session. Then click the Play button (shown below) to begin tracking your time.

All sessions will automatically log on the corresponding matter and can be invoiced when ready.

Expenses

There are two ways to log your expenses in Lawmatics. You can either go to the Expenses page under the main Billing tab or navigate directly to the matter to which the expense pertains. Upon creating an expense, you will be prompted to select the staff person from your list of users, the activity type, as well as the quantity (when applicable).

Invoices

As you begin tracking your time and expenses, the time will come to invoice a matter and receive your payment. Here’s how:

1. Create the Invoice either from the main Invoices page or from the matter’s profile directly. If creating an invoice from the main page, you will first need to select which matter you are invoicing.

1. Select which time entries and expenses to include, as well as all of your payment terms and options shown on the left sidebar above.
2. Create the invoice as a draft and then send it from the invoices page or the matter’s profile once you are ready.

We suggest selecting the option to Enable Online Payment so that your clients can easily make their payment online via card if they would like.When you send the invoice, the client will receive an email with their invoice attached, similar to the sample invoice shown below.

If a client opts to pay via online payment, then the invoice will automatically move from “Sent” to “Paid accordingly”. If payment is accepted offline, you can simply return to the invoices page or the matter profile to mark the invoice as paid when necessary.Lawmatics also give you the option to create a custom payment plan for an invoice as needed by selecting the option to allow installments.

Trust Accounting

Lawmatics also handles your trust account for each matter. You will find a summary of your firm’s trust accounting under the main Billing tab at the top of your account or within a matter’s profile, after which you will select the Trust Account section on their specific Billing tab.

Here you can manage trust balance transfers, refunds, trust deposits, and set a minimum trust balance alert when needed. You will also find a summary log of all trust requests for this matter.

Reporting

When using Lawmatics Time & Billing, you have access to several reports for keeping tabs on your payments and history.

Hours Billed Report

The Hours Billed report keeps track of all hours logged for each user in your system.

Accounts Receivable Report

The Accounts Receivable report displays outstanding balances to give you a sense of expected cash inflow.

Payment Activity Report

From consultation fees to retainer payments, view a log of all payment activity on your account.

Remember, these features are only available for users with the time & billing add-on. You won’t find the full gambit of billing capabilities with LMPay. Feel free to email support@lawmatics.com with any questions or to add time & billing to your account.

Quickbooks Integration

Lawmatics integrates your invoices directly with Quickbooks. Use this integration to automatically create a customer and invoice in Quickbooks when an invoice is sent to a matter via Lawmatics. Here’s how to begin using the Quickbooks integration with Lawmatics:

1. Go to your firm's Settings and select Integrations from the left sidebar.
2. Click on Quickbooks.
3. Connect your account using the guided prompts.
4. Once your account is connected, you will then need to map your accounts, default types, time entries, and expenses to ensure that pertinent matter data syncs from Lawmatics to Quickbooks. Make your selections accordingly.
5. Click Save Mapping. Note that you can come back and adjust these any time.

To sync an invoice, simply send it to a matter through Lawmatics as you normally would, then click the Sync to Quickbooks option as shown below.

This integration is a one-way sync, pushing data from Lawmatics to Quickbooks. The customer and invoice will be created in Quickbooks, along with any other details you have mapped when you opt to sync the invoice. Additionally, when the customer is created in Quickbooks upon sync you will see "Lawmatics" along with the matter ID added to the last name

Automation

Create Invoices

Keeping in tune with the overall goal of Lawmatics, many of the features we have gone through so far can be used within your automations. First of all, you will find the Create Invoice action item which can be used for creating and sending a Lawmatics invoice automatically.

When using this action you will select your payment terms and other options as part of the automation template, just like you would do if you were sending an invoice as a one-off.

Trigger Actions Upon Payment

Additionally, you can trigger an automation when an invoice is paid. So for example, you may send out your retainer agreement for e-signature along with your retainer invoice for payment. You could then have an automation that triggers when both the document is signed and the invoice is paid for kicking off the next step in your process.

Invoice Payment Reminders

Another great way to add automation to your invoicing process is to set up invoice payment reminders. This option allows you to have an automatic email sent out, at the timing of your choosing, for any invoices that are not yet paid before their due date. Have the reminder sent the week before, the day before, or whatever other timeframe you would like.

As shown above, you can also create your own custom email template for these reminders. No need to build an automation for this, simply set up the template on your Invoices page in settings and it will automatically go out at the timing of your choosing.

Conclusion

In summary, whether you are looking for the complete package of time & billing features or a simpler solution focusing on consultation payments, Lawmatics has what you need to access this functionality directly in your CRM.Most importantly, Lawmatics helps you collect your payments easily and quickly, creating a smooth experience for both you and your clients. These features work into your automations seamlessly, so you can set a workflow and forget it, knowing that it will run like a well-oiled machine.Unlike other platforms that only have one function, such as Calendly or Acuity for paid bookings or Lawpay to take payments, when you schedule paid consultations through Lawmatics you are keeping the entire process, from start to finish, in one platform.

New year, new features! 2023 is here and so is a massive upgrade to Lawmatics Tasks! We are delighted to share our exciting new Task functionality with you.

Custom Task Statuses

You can now create custom Task statuses in Lawmatics to further organize your Tasks in alignment with your unique operational processes. This update comes on the heels of our newest default Task Statuses such as Not Started and Waiting on Client. To create a custom Task Status, navigate to the Tasks page from the Settings menu.Learn more about custom task statuses here.

Sub Tasks

Any Task for which the work needs to be divided into smaller parts can now be broken up into Sub Tasks. Within any Task, simply click + Add Subtask and enter a brief task description. This enables your staff to easily check off each step as they work their way through a Task. Firms also have the option to toggle a setting so that automatically marks a Task as complete once all Sub Tasks are completed.Click here to read all about creating tasks.

Get a refresher on using the client portal here.

Comment Thread on Tasks

To ask questions, request extra information, or offer insight on an open Task, you can now add comments. Each comment logged within a Task is timestamped for future reference. Comments also denote which user left the comment, which comes in handy for Tasks that involve multiple collaborators. In addition, new notification options are available for Task comments so that no critical updates slip through the cracks.

@ Mentions in Task Comments

Want to leave a comment that pertains to a specific colleague? Simply type the @ symbol to select any users you’d like to tag in the comment. This is a great tool for making sure the correct person doesn’t miss any updates on action items that involve them specifically.Learn more about task comments and mentions here.

Notifications for @ Mentions in Tasks

In tandem with @ mentions in Tasks, we’ve also added a new notification option for Task comment mentions. Toggle on notifications to be notified when a fellow staff member tags you in a comment.Click here to learn about all of the notification options in Lawmatics.

Bonus Additional Features!

Custom Field Sync to Smokeball

We are thrilled to share an update to one of our most popular integrations. You can now sync Custom Fields to Smokeball via the Lawmatics integration. Whereas previously only a selection of default standard fields could be mapped from one platform to the other, you can now select any of your custom fields to map to a Smokeball field.Learn all about the Smokeball integration here.

Batch Invoicing

Collecting payments just got even easier with the addition of Batch Invoicing. For clients who have more than one ongoing matter with your firm, you can now send invoices for all of their matters in one batch. This allows them to receive all of their invoices for multiple matters in one email, making it easy for them (and you) to manage all invoices. We’ve also given you the option to create a custom email template specifically for batched invoices, providing extra clarity to the billing process for your clients.Read up on Lawmatics time tracking & billing here.

Even more new features we’re excited about!

• Subscribe to reports and receive an automatic email containing a summary of the report as well as an exported CSV file of said report
• Create matter file folders via automation
• Audiences will now automatically filter out contacts who don't have an email or have unsubscribed

If better organized internal communication is a new year’s resolution for your firm, this latest feature release will help you do just that. We’d love to hear your thoughts on how tasks have helped your firm, share with us at support@lawmatics.com!

We’ve had a momentous year here at Lawmatics when it comes to feature releases. From our new Time & Billing module to our MyCase Integration, you may have already implemented many of these into your practice.There may also be some enhancements and additions that you missed or have since forgotten about. This deep dive into the year’s features will give you a refresher on how you can utilize these to their fullest potential!Register for upcoming Lawmatics Monthly Deep Dives.

Matters & CRM

Client Portal Messaging

In lieu of flooding your inbox with client emails containing sensitive case information, 2-way messaging via the Client Portal conveniently centralizes all your client communications in one easily accessible place. All incoming and outgoing messages are stored in your account as part of a message thread, automatically generating a historical record of any interaction for future reference.Creating and replying to a message thread in Lawmatics is easy for both you and your clients. A new “Messages” menu item gives you a top-down view of all message threads wherein you can see all incoming and outgoing communications as well as the manner associated.On the client end, their unique Client Portal now features a “Messages” section to easily correspond with firm members assigned to their case. And to ensure no messages slip through the cracks, you can activate email or text notifications to be alerted of any incoming client messages.

Conflict Checking

It is now easy to use Lawmatics to perform your firm’s conflict checks. Simply select the matter you wish to check a conflict for, enter your search terms, and Lawmatics will handle the rest. The system will search against all data entered into your law firm CRM, including fields and notes, and instantly alerts you if it finds a match.From there, you’re able to review any possible matches, and choose to approve, flag, or fail the conflict check.In addition to manual Conflict Checking, we’ve also added the ability to automate this process entirely and trigger further automation based on the outcome. Now you can be out enjoying time away from the office while Lawmatics handles this tedious task for you.

Adding to the conflict check capabilities in Lawmatics, users can now opt to receive notifications for approved, denied, and/or undecided conflict checks.

Change Main Contact/ Compact Matter

If your firm often works with matters that have more than one contact, such as a married couple, you may prefer one contact or the other to be listed as the primary name on the matter in your CRM. To that end, you can now easily swap the main contact on a matter from within Lawmatics. Simply click the arrow icon adjacent to a contact's name in their profile, and then select an alternate contact from within your CRM. The same functionality is applicable to company matters. This new feature helps you keep your CRM organized and accurate so that you can always find your matters with ease.

File Folders & Bulk Actions

Lawmatics is a great tool for securely storing important files and documents from your firm’s many matters. With this huge improvement to our file storage system you can now create custom folders within a matter’s files tab and move files between folders as needed.In addition to creating folders for your matter files, you can now bulk select files with the option to download or delete multiple files at once, saving you the time of managing files one by one. It’s easy. Simply select the box adjacent to the file name and click on the action of your choice.

Matter Auto-Numbering

To easily track down and reference cases in your docket, you can now auto-generate a case number and custom title into a matter’s title field as unique identifiers. Further refine your case numbering sequence by adding custom text or database fields such as practice area, lead attorney, client’s last name, etc.

Once saved, the resulting case title format will automatically be applied to each of your matters moving forward. Begin auto-numbering your cases by navigating to the Matters page within settings, scrolling down on the page and toggling on “Enable Auto Numbering”.

Emails

Scheduled Email Sends

By popular demand, you now have the ability to control when your email messages are sent and arrive in your recipient’s inbox. In addition to sending automated and immediate one-off emails to matters, any email created either from a template or from scratch can now be scheduled to go out at a future date and time.

User Permission Options for Viewing Emails

Confidentiality and discretion are paramount when dealing with sensitive client information. While logging your external emails in Lawmatics can be helpful, you may not want the entirety of your staff to have view access to these emails on a matter’s timeline. With our new External Email Role Permission you can now easily limit any user’s access to view email communications, without limiting their access to the matter all together. To use this new permission, go to the User Management page in your Admin Settings, Click Manage Roles, edit the role you wish to apply this restriction to, and then uncheck the All Emails option, as shown below.

Send From Outbox

A highly anticipated feature among Lawmatics users, any emails sent via Lawmatics can now be set to appear in the outbox of your preferred email client. This update will help improve your firm’s email organization by storing all email correspondences in one central place — alongside your other communications.

Once activated, any email sent to or received from an email address that is tied to a matter in Lawmatics is automatically logged in the timeline for that matter. And for quick reference, you can easily go to your outbox to see all emails sent from your address, including those sent via Lawmatics.

Documents

Resend Expired Signature Requests

Delays happen; it’s the nature of the business. What you don’t want is for those delays to translate into lost time for you or your staff. For that reason, we’ve rolled out a new shortcut in Lawmatics that allows you to resend any expired documents requiring e-signature.Any document with a status of “Expired” is eligible for a resend, with the added option to extend the e-signature link deadline. No need to send a new e-signature required document from scratch.

Add Page Breaks to Custom Docs

Custom Documents, with their conditional logic and dynamic e-signature capabilities, have long been a Lawmatics staple for fee agreements and other important firm documents. With the new addition of page breaks, we’ve made it much easier to maintain the look and layout of your new and existing document templates.To add a page break, simply edit the document, and drag over a page break from the Standard Blocks menu. Any text below the page break will automatically be placed at the start of a new page when the document is previewed and/or sent.

Forms

Set Conditional Logic Multiple Conditions

Onboarding should be a seamless process for all prospective clients, regardless of the circumstances of their inquiry. This update in Lawmatics allows you to add multiple conditional fields to your intake forms using AND or OR logic. These fields then only appear based on the responses entered into previous fields.

Hidden Form Fields & Default Value

Did you know that you can trigger automatic updates to a client’s contact information, matter information or even stage in your sales pipeline whenever they fill out a form? Hidden form fields do just that.This feature allows you to set form defaults by making any field on a custom form ‘hidden’. You will add the field to your form, select the “Is Hidden” option, and then enter your default value. Your lead or client will not see that field on their form, but when the form is submitted it will auto-submit the hidden value along with the rest of their information to trigger any actions or changes to their information in your Lawmatics account.

This helps you efficiently track your intake pipeline as simply as possible while eliminating the need for certain Automations previously set to update default values, the sales pipeline stage of a matter, their tag, practice area, etc.

reCaptcha on Embedded Forms

Lawmatics Custom Forms make it easy to capture new prospective client inquiries from your website, and we’ve now made this feature even better with the addition of reCaptcha. This technology prevents spam bots from entering your Lawmatics contact database via the ‘Contact Us’ form embedded on your website, ensuring that your account is protected against disruptive spam leads.reCaptcha can be added to any embedded form via the form Settings menu in the left sidebar. Simply toggle on the reCaptcha option the reCaptcha will be activated anywhere this form is embedded - no further steps need to be taken.

Access Existing Contact from Internal Form

Internal forms have long been a user-preferred way to create new matters for new contacts in Lawmatics. A new dropdown menu option in our internal forms feature now lets you create a new matter for an existing contact or company when filling out a form.

Simply select the contact for which you wish to create a new matter and Lawmatics will pre-fill the form with their existing contact information. Upon form submission, a new matter will be created for said contact.

Booking Form Updates

Automatic scheduling is a favorite feature of many Lawmatics users, and this year it got even better. To accommodate virtual meetings in addition to face-to-face meetings, you can now select Zoom as a meeting location option, along with any of your physical office locations on your Booking Forms. Furthermore, we added the ability to allow multiple attendees in one event. If any of your matters involve the representation of multiple clients, easily add them both to the meeting invite. With the growing popularity of virtual meetings, these upgrades grant your clients the flexibility to choose which option works for them, and have the zoom link added in automatically when needed.

Automations

Set Multiple Entry Conditions with And/Or Relationship

You can now designate multiple entry conditions (or triggers) that add contacts to an Automation workflow, automatically. Using AND or OR logic, triggers such as form fills and eSignature completions can be paired or conditional.Entry conditions can be added easily within Automations in Lawmatics by clicking on and toggling the AND /OR labels, after which you can select your Workflow Entry Rules.

Date Field-Based Automations

You can now create time-relative automations (one hour before, two days after, etc.) for any date type field in Lawmatics. Our new Date Field-Based Automations take the existing concept of event-based automations and apply it to date fields. This new functionality allows you to trigger automated reminders or check-ins relative to a client’s court date, filing date, anniversary, or any other custom date field you may use in your practice — all from simply populating the date into a date type field.When creating a new automation you’ll select the Date Field option, then select from any of your firm’s date type fields as your target field to create a Date Field-Based Automation. You can then add your time-relative automations by clicking on the yellow label at the top of your page (highlighted below).

Time & Billing

Invoice Automation

You can now automate the delivery of your flat fee invoices! Automations in Lawmatics feature a new Create Invoice automation action that generates an invoice for any matter with a balance due that it runs on. Doing so enables you to accelerate your billing process in a manner that gets you paid faster while freeing up time to focus on other priorities needing your attention.

Payment Plans

For firms who want to offer their clients more flexibility of payment, use this new feature to set up invoice installments to be paid over time on a fixed cadence.

Of course we’ve made this feature highly customizable, allowing you to create unique terms for each individual payment plan as needed. This includes setting an initial payment amount, interval length, and the number of installments.

Custom Forms Payment Gateway

Collecting payment for consultation fees just got a whole lot easier with the addition of the LMPay Gateway in custom forms and booking forms. Add this advanced field to your consultation forms to make it easy for clients to schedule an appointment and pay for a consultation in one fell swoop.

Hours Billed & Payment Activity Reports

Our new Hours Billed Report provides a real-time snapshot of billable hours based on criteria of your choice, so you can make business decisions accordingly. Get as granular as you need with your report by selecting one or more of the following search criteria: date range, user, and practice area.

Use the Payment Activity report to set custom filters for the date, payment method, and/or contact. Run the report to see a snapshot view of the payments that meet your criteria, making it even easier to keep an eye on your firm’s incoming cash flows.

Evergreen Trust Alerts & Request Funds for Trust

Our new Evergreen Trust Alerts give you the option to set a minimum trust balance notification, making it easy to take action when a matter’s trust balance dips below the minimum you have specified.

To use this feature, turn on the toggle on the ‘Minimum Trust Balance Alert’, as shown above, and then click the edit pencil on the far right to set the minimum balance for a particular matter.Another addition to our Time & Billing system allows you to request funds from a matter for their trust account with the option to let them pay via credit card. Paired with your minimum balance alerts, this will help ensure that a client’s trust balance stays above your designated minimum amount.

Custom Invoice Reminders

Avoid the frustration of seeing past due invoices go unpaid by notifying clients of an impending due date or past due balance. Reminders can be sent relative to the invoice due date, such as the week before or the day before, or anytime after. Customize each invoice reminder by using merge fields in your email reminder template and even create different templates for your different invoice types.

Settings

Update Contacts and Matters Via Import

In addition to importing contacts and clients into your Lawmatics database for the purpose of data migration, you can now use imports to update existing records in Lawmatics with new information. This is especially useful if you are migrating data from multiple software solutions or if you erroneously imported a contact list with missing information.When importing a list of contacts into Lawmatics, a new option appears to Update Existing Records in your database. Simply select .CSV file to upload, check the box, and all existing records with matching email addresses will be populated with any new field information.

Appointment Availability Settings Improvements

Several new upgrades to one of our most beloved time-saving features, Booking Links, help you further customize your calendar availability so that you can ensure you and your staff are booked automatically and appropriately for each of your firm's event types.First, specify at which intervals you’d like to be available for people to book a meeting with you. For instance, if you select 15-minute intervals, people are able to book you at 9:00, 9:15, 9:30, 9:45, etc, based on your availabilityYou can now also customize your “time before” as well as your “rolling period” for all custom event types. “T​​ime Before” refers to how soon you can be booked by someone whereas your “rolling period” refers to how far in advance you can be booked, allowing you to specify an ideal booking window per lead or client.

Integrations

MyCase

Lawmatics users can now automatically or manually sync matters over to MyCase. Any records that have been created in Lawmatics as matters will be pushed into MyCase along with corresponding details like notes and files. The integration, which takes only moments to activate, saves users time by eliminating redundant tasks and matter creation.

QuickBooks

Automatically create a customer and invoice in Quickbooks when an invoice is sent to a matter via Lawmatics. Map your accounts, field types, time entries, and expenses to ensure that pertinent matter data syncs from Lawmatics to Quickbooks. Whether you or a fellow staff member manage your firm’s books, this integration is sure to make invoice generation a breeze.

New Zapier Trigger

For any software that Lawmatics doesn’t directly integrate with, there’s Zapier. This powerful third party tool enables you to connect the robust features of Lawmatics to any of the thousands of other applications available within the Zapier platform.While you may already know and love our popular Zapier triggers such as ‘Matter Converted’, ‘Filled Out a Form’, among many others; we are happy to add yet another trigger, ‘Appointment Created’.Here at Lawmatics, we couldn’t be more excited for all we have in store for 2023, but we are also thrilled at this retrospective of features that have been released this year. We are privileged to be working with so many wonderful firms who use Lawmatics and share new feature ideas and incredible feedback with us.Thanks for following along as we continue to develop and grow Lawmatics. Wishing happy holidays and a wonderful new year to all of you!

In the latest episode of Legal News Reach, Lawmatics founder and CEO Matt Spiegel joined host Crissonna Tennison to discuss what it takes to set up a law firm for success. They talked about what a growth mindset looks like at modern law firms. Here are some key takeaways:

The legal experience

Law firms don’t just provide legal services; they provide legal experiences. In addition to judging attorneys by case outcome, clients judge their attorneys by less tangible metrics:

• What was attorney-client communication like?
• Did the attorney follow-up with the client in a reasonable time?
• Was the process of making an appointment and sharing documents quick and convenient?

For modern law firms to surpass client expectations, they have to consider and design for the client experience.

Your law firm as a business

The client experience is why you need to evaluate your firm’s processes as both a lawyer and a businessperson. Along with building your firm to produce legal outcomes, you need to build it to produce business outcomes:

• How is your marketing strategy targeted?
• What’s your strategy to grow the size of your firm’s staff?
• How will you secure the reviews and referrals that are crucial to acquiring new business?

When you’re balancing your legal and business priorities, the tasks pile up and the to-do list runs longer and longer. You can only get so far with manual processes. Modern law firms are capable of a dynamism that’s only achievable with a sophisticated tech stack and an understanding of a law firm as a business.

Final thoughts

Modern businesses have entered a new era of potential because of the tools at their disposal. While CRM and marketing automation platforms have been widely adopted in other industries, only recently has the legal industry gained access to similar tools that can meet the unique needs of law firms. With legal automation software like Lawmatics, you can do more while having fewer to-dos. Freeing up valuable time from administrative work allows you to design and deliver the best possible client experience.

Podcast transcript

Crissonna Tennison

Thank you for tuning into the Legal News Reach podcast. My name is Crissonna Tennison, Web Publication Specialist for the National Law Review. In this episode, I will be speaking with Matt Spiegel, founder of Lawmatics. Matt, can you tell us a little bit about your background and what led you to start Lawmatics?

Matt Spiegel

Yeah, sure. So first of all, I'm very excited to be here, so thank you guys for having me. But yes, I’m Matt Spiegel, I am the founder and CEO of Lawmatics. I was a practicing lawyer, I don't actually practice anymore, I haven't practiced in like 11 years or so, but I still have my bar card. Long story short, I had a problem at my law firm that I wanted to solve with technology, and ended up starting a company called MyCase. So I founded MyCase, back in, like 2010. For those of you that don't know, MyCase is now one of the biggest practice management software platforms on the market. So I was the original founder of that company, I also ran the company for five years. And then I left, and after a couple years doing some things unrelated to law and legal tech, I decided to come back into the legal tech space. I'm a glutton for punishment, and Lawmatics was what I decided to build. And it was really a product of what we saw when I was at MyCase. We saw the shift in the market, we saw lawyers starting to think about their law firm like a business and not just like a law firm. And when they start to do that, then they need business tools, right? They need the same kind of tools that other companies throughout industries, different genres of companies, tools that they've had forever, right? And so there was a little kernel of this idea of lawyers shifting to this mentality, you know, back in 2014. And so fast forward to 2017, we really saw this starting to become an opportunity that we thought was going to be a big one. And so we built Lawmatics to really address the business needs of a law firm and not as much of the practice management needs, right? The practice of law, we felt like that was pretty well taken care of. Our goal was to focus on the business side of it, you know, the lead management, the marketing, the automation, that sort of thing.

Crissonna Tennison

That’s awesome, and it sounds like a major change for you. When you were first starting your switch from being a lawyer to starting MyCase, what skill sets did you have already? And what skills did you have to develop along the way?

Matt Spiegel

Yeah, so it's a good question. I mean, obviously, starting a software company is pretty different than being a lawyer. But I would say that I was probably a bad lawyer. And I just was always, I always had the skill set to be a decent entrepreneur, I guess. But I was probably just a really bad lawyer. It was very different. Well, I should strike that. Because the way I approached law--I was a criminal defense lawyer. And so I was in court all the time, I was doing a lot of trials, you know, it's a very unique practice area. But I treated my law firm like a business right from the get-go. So I worked at a big law firm for like, four years, and then I started my own practice. And when I started my own practice, I was like, “I need to treat this like a business.” And I think that was the way I thought about it, even more so than being a good lawyer. And I think that was just because I was probably very entrepreneurial, even then. And so I was thinking about my law firm as like a business that I could build, not necessarily, “I'm a lawyer, I'm going to practice law.” So I think I always had that mentality, it was just manifesting itself within the confines of the legal space with starting my law firm. But as soon as I saw this need in the market for a product, which became MyCase, I kind of ran with it. It was like, “Wow, I'm building this business, a law firm, which can be big, but it's going to have a ceiling, or I can start this, like, software company, which the ceiling is unlimited.” That just felt so much more exciting to me.

Crissonna Tennison

I do think it is very interesting that you brought up the entrepreneurial mindset, because from what I've observed there does seem to be a difference between that mindset and a lawyer mindset. It's really interesting to hear you break that down a little bit.What are some challenges that you're most proud of overcoming in starting both MyCase and Lawmatics?

Matt Spiegel

What I'm most proud of, I think, is the legal tech space is not an easy space to enter. You know, there are a lot of companies that get started and not a lot of companies make it through. The fact that I've been able to build two companies in legal tech that have both been able to support these teams--like what I'm the most proud of in MyCase and Lawmatics are the teams that we built. They're the people who made the company go and at MyCase, we just had an incredible team. It was such a great culture and at Lawmatics I think it's even better, like, you know, we've built such an incredible team with with such an incredible culture, and it's such a fun place to be and to work at. And so that's a hurdle, right? It's hard to build good cultures. You know, it's hard enough to build one company, one startup that becomes successful, let alone two in the same space, especially when the space isn't the biggest space in the world. So I think for me, you know, that hurdle of coming back into the legal tech space and trying to innovate in it, I'm think I'm most proud of that. And then the fact that we've been able to build such great teams. And that has nothing to do with the legal tech space, that's just, you know, company mindset in general, company building in general. I think if I had to say what I'm most proud of it would be the teams that we've built.

Crissonna Tennison

That makes a big difference. And I feel like the teams you're able to build and the workplace culture you're able to foster really is everything when it comes to building a company.You say that you saw some problems that you thought could be solved while you were a practicing defense attorney. So what exactly were you looking for that wasn't available?

Matt Spiegel

MyCase came as a result of client communication problems. So my first company was a result of actually a State Bar complaint that I got. When I started my first law firm, I got a State Bar complaint pretty much right away. And it had nothing to do with the way I practiced, it was nothing to do with the outcome of the case, it was simply, “Hey, you didn't call me back quick enough.” Right. And this is a tale as old as time. This is like, the most common complaint at every state bar still, even 12 years later, is attorney-client communication. And so I thought there has to be a better way to communicate than like, just calling me on the phone when I'm in court all day, every day. That cannot be the answer. And so I sought to develop a client communication portal. And that is what MyCase started as. Now it evolved into something so much more powerful and such a more robust piece of software. But the initial version, the initial idea was just simply a client communication portal. And so that's how MyCase came about. Lawmatics really came about from what I observed talking to thousands and thousands of law firms in my time in MyCase, and what we saw was this shift, this idea that lawyers were starting to think about their law firms as a business, and not just the practice of law. And when I saw that, it's like these people, if they have that mindset shift, they are going to experience some challenges with how to do that. Right? If they're going to start doing marketing, if they don't have a way to measure those marketing efforts, they're going to be met with challenges, if they don't have the ability to automate touchpoints, nurture campaigns, newsletters, like all the different things that are kind of marketing 101, if they don't have that infrastructure in place, they're going to be met with a lot of challenges. We anticipated that happening. And that's sort of the problem that we look to solve with Lawmatics. And again, we weren't reinventing the wheel. Products to solve the problems that Lawmatics solves have been around for decades, products like Salesforce, or HubSpot, they've been around for a really, really, really long time, they are not new concepts. What is new is a platform that is specifically built for law firms. And that's where lawyers are a bit unique. They do and I'm not gonna say they require, but they do significantly better and they adopt more often tools that are designed for them, because they do have some unique requirements. And so that's ultimately the problem that we look to solve with Lawmatics.

Crissonna Tennison

So as a lawyer, and as a person who's running a law firm, you want to provide a great client experience, but you actually need to find clients in the first place. So what can law firms do from a marketing and client intake perspective to help this process?

Matt Spiegel

It's about the client journey, right? A law firm needs to think about, “What is the journey that a client goes through with your law firm?” and we break that journey down into three phases.Phase one is the intake phase, which is from the moment that they reach out to your law firm, by whatever means, all the way through to the point where they sign a fee agreement, and they pay you your retainer. Then you have phase two, which is an active case, you're actually handling a case for them that has a definitive start and end time. And then phase three is after the case is over. Now, they are a former client. That is a very important part of the relationship.So what Lawmatics is designed to do is help you with everything in phase one and everything in phase three, the practice management software like MyCase, they are designed to handle everything in phase two. So that journey starts from the very moment that a client reaches out to your law firm. And you have to understand that from that very moment, you have opportunities to delight your customers, and you need to think about it in terms of customer service: what kinds of service, what level of service are you providing to your client? And this is right from the get-go. So if someone reaches out to you, and they fill out a form on your website because they're interested in talking to you, and maybe they don't hear anything from you until the next day, that's not good customer service. The first impression that they're going to get is that you don't respond to things very quickly. And so that initial moment of contact, there's an opportunity to delight your customer, right, you can immediately engage them and show them that you're on top of it. And that's not something that a lot of law firms can do without the help of technology, right? You need technology to help you with those automated touch points. And so that's just one example. But every step of the journey is an opportunity to delight your customer with customer service, not law. Forget about law. Right now we're just talking about providing good bedside manner, good customer service. I have a saying that I'd love to repeat, which is that you could be the best lawyer in the world, but if you provide bad customer service, you are going to have a failing law firm. And the vice versa is true. You could be a mediocre or even a bad lawyer, but you could provide really, really excellent customer service, and you could be wildly successful. The outcome of the legal matter is not always the most important part of that relationship.

Crissonna Tennison

That's something that I never would have thought about. But that makes sense that as a lawyer, of course, obviously, you want to win your case for your client, but you really want them to feel cared for and respected and like they can get in contact with you. And yeah, that is a lot of work to keep that going, especially because being a lawyer and running a law firm is so much work.

Matt Spiegel

Some of it is totally impossible! So here's another example, let's say after the case is over, something that would be a pretty nice thing to do would be to just send your former clients a note on their birthday every year, pretty simple. But you've got 2000 old clients, how are you going to keep track of all their birthdays and make sure you're sending an email? It would take you, it would take an army to do that. So if you have a tool that can automate that whole process, all you do is click one button when you first set up the software, and then in perpetuity, every one of your former clients is going to get an email on their birthday every single year. So there's so much that you can do that you can't do manual, you have to have technology to help you do it. I think that that's really important for law firms to understand when they're looking at, “Well, what does this mean? How do I provide good customer service? Like what role can technology play?” I think it's just really important to think about things that way.

Crissonna Tennison

The last few years have been a really chaotic time, especially for growing law firms. So what kind of feedback have you gotten from users of Lawmatics during this time?

Matt Spiegel

So the feedback that we get from our customers is pretty profound. So it's two things, it's what Lawmatics has enabled them to do. And then, you know, maybe not as sexy of a response is the amount of time that Lawmatics has saved them. So obviously, a product like Lawmatics that does so much around automation is going to save you time that really can't even be put into words, the true impact can't just be measured. And you know, some law firms are saving 20 hours a week. And that's just a crazy amount of time. And the impact that has on a firm as a whole is pretty remarkable. But it's really what Lawmatics has enabled them to do. Right? I mean, Lawmatics has really enabled growth for its customers. I think that's the way to look at it. I think law firms before you know, our customers, before they used Lawmatics, it was really difficult to facilitate big growth for them. I'm not saying that law firms couldn't grow before, that's not true. But our customers were really struggling with certain aspects of it. They were getting into marketing, they were getting into intake management and thinking about things beyond just practicing law and how to attract more leads, and how to convert more of those leads into customers. But they had no way to manage it all. Maybe some of them knew what best practices were. But they couldn't actually deploy those practices because they didn't have the ability. Lawmatics has really enabled them to do the things that they've wanted to do on the lead management, the conversion side, the generating leads, it's really pretty cool to hear the stories from these law firms that were struggling before to execute on growth plans, and now are exceeding what they thought they would be able to achieve.

Crissonna Tennison

I'm curious to hear more about why it's so essential for those people who are running growing law practices to invest in quality practice management and CRM software. At this point in the game, how much do firms risk falling behind their competitors if they don't use one?

Matt Spiegel

Personally, I feel like practice management software, right, like the MyCases, the Clios, the Practice Panthers of the world right now, I feel like that's kind of table stakes, there are definitely still a lot of law firms out there that don't use a platform like that. And for those firms, there must be some valid views. And but the vast majority of firms out there will have some sort of platform in place to help them with their time and their billing and their case management. I think that that's table stakes in the industry now for the most part. But if you don't have that, if you're like doing your billing manually, that just is a colossal waste of time. And you would be falling behind the rest of the industry significantly, just because of the time that you're wasting to input billing hours and send out invoices and things like that. But as far as CRM, this actually has the potential to make you fall behind even more. So first of all, we are at the inflection point for like CRM software and law firms. It is starting to become the focus of law firms, their understanding just how valuable it is and what they can do with it. And there's a massive shift going towards this type of thing. That's one reason why, you know, if you're not on that boat, then you just fall behind technologically, but more importantly, it's the byproduct of using a product like this. It's the shift in thinking that is happening where you're really going to fall behind because what it means is that law firms are out there thinking about marketing. They're thinking about lead generation, they're thinking about how to get more business and build their law firm. That means they're going to be going out and taking leads from you if you're not also thinking about that. So it's so much more than just a piece of software that you're talking about adopting, you're talking about adopting a strategy for your business and your growth. So if you're not on board with that, you are going to fall behind in ways that you probably haven't necessarily thought of just yet.

Crissonna Tennison

That definitely makes a lot of sense. When we look at recent years, how have expectations of legal clients evolved, kind of along the lines of what you're saying, if more and more firms are starting to really reorient their thoughts toward how they run their businesses and interact with their clients? How have their expectations evolved? And what changes have you seen in law firms and their operations since you started practicing?

Matt Spiegel

What we've really seen, I think, again, to me, it's just been the wide adoption of some type of software platform and that software platform being in the cloud. So in starting MyCase, I was one of the people who was at the forefront of this shift to cloud computing in legal. I've gotten to observe this whole thing over the last, more than a decade at this point. And it's really profound. It's really cool. Right? It's a mainstay in law firms now, cloud software. And what that's enabled, operations are just easier. And there's less operative people at a law firm, I think now, right? It's just, it requires less, because so much is in software, it's automated, it's easy to access, it's just makes things more streamlined. And so we see less of a need to have operators in a law firm and the ability for lawyers to focus more on actually handling their cases. A lot of this depends on the size firm that you are at. There's a massive segmentation inside of the law firm industry, right? Like if you have solo and small law firms, they operate very differently than midsize or large law firms.

Crissonna Tennison

That kind of goes along with things that we've heard about in the past and prior conversations about CRM systems in general. Do you think that law students will have to start having practical knowledge of CRM systems as they enter the industry?

Matt Spiegel

No. I mean, it can't hurt. But no, we saw this with practice management, too. I remember at MyCase, I would go down to the law schools, and I would help teach classes on managing a law practice and practice management software and what that meant and what it was. So the concepts we were teaching, but we weren't giving them familiarity with the actual software themselves. I don't think it's difficult to pick up, I don't think it's really that critical. What I think is important is understanding the importance of these concepts to the business. But I don't think it's critical for people coming into law firms to like, have knowledge of the systems. I mean, that would be a bonus, it would be cool. I don't think it's something that is required.

Crissonna Tennison

So along those lines, would you say there's been a change in law school education, in terms of a focus on how to run a law business? Like is that something that's showing up a little bit more in legal academia than it was in the past, or maybe when you were in law school?

Matt Spiegel

So when I was in law school, it was really not a focus. Within five or six years after I left law school, it started to become a focus again, I started getting invited into law schools that actually had practice management classes, right, like how to run a law firm. To be honest with you, in the last few years, I haven't seen it as much. So I don't know if there was a small shift towards it, like 10 years ago, and now it's shifted away from it. Maybe people thought that it wasn't a practical class. I don't really know. But I don't think that we've seen a massive shift towards it in the last five or six years. I think it's valuable to be honest with you. I think everyone always says, you go to law school, and the stuff you learn doesn't necessarily help you as a subject matter. It doesn't necessarily help you, when you get out of law school. What law school does is teach you how to think like a lawyer. Right? And that's like the old cliche, but I think it's relatively true. If law school is focused on the practicalities of running a business and running a law firm. I think that would be incredibly helpful. But unfortunately, I don't have that much influence over this.

Crissonna Tennison

For our listeners who are interested in checking out Lawmatics, can you kind of take them through the process of getting started using your platform? Where can they find you?

Matt Spiegel

Finding us is very easy, anybody can go to our website, www.lawmatics.com. And from there, what we always have people do is we have them sign up for a demo. And when I say signing up for a “demo,” I use that term a little bit loosely, because what you're really doing is you're going to be talking to one of our specialists, who's really going to spend some time learning about your law firm trying to, first of all make sure that as a law firm, you're ready for a tool like Lawmatics, like Lawmatics is going to make sense for you as a law firm, and then starting to understand “What do you do currently? What are your processes like?” and then starting to show you how Lawmatics might be able to help. So when we get on this demo, it's almost like a consultation. We have a lot of best practices that we share with people during this consultation, this demo, to hopefully get these law firms thinking about things a little differently. We really like this process. And that's the most important thing for people to do is to just come to our website, sign up for that demo, you're going to learn a little bit about Lawmatics, you might learn a little bit more about your law firm and certain steps you might need to take in order to execute on some of the initiatives that you're looking to execute on at your law firm. And then we will show you how Lawmatics hopefully can help you do that.

Crissonna Tennison

That's awesome. It sounds like the Lawmatics experience can be tailored to a variety of different law firm types.

Matt Spiegel

Lawmatics is really for everyone and anyone. We see it all across the spectrum. Sometimes brand new firms that are just trying to set up their tech stack and Lawmatics is the foundation of it or law firms with several hundred lawyers who have been around for a long time, but they need to update their tech stack and they see a lot of value in it.

Crissonna Tennison

Our time is coming to a close, so are there some points you would like to showcase that align with your organization's experience?

Matt Spiegel

Lawmatics is Lawmatics, it's great if people want to check it out, I encourage them to do that. But what I encourage all lawyers to do, regardless of the software platform, is to just start thinking about your law firm a bit differently and start thinking about your law firm as, you’ve got to be good at customer service. You have to think about satisfying your customers outside of their case, you cannot think, “if I get them a great outcome, if I'm a criminal defense lawyer, and I just defended my client out of prison,” you can't just assume that that's going to be enough, that that's going to make them really happy. What you need to do--and this is a point that I was thinking about earlier that I want to bring up now--is this is what you need to remember. And if you remember this, I think it gives you a different lens to look through almost all practice areas, right? Almost all of them fit into this mold, where it is the most important thing happening in their life. If it's a criminal offense case, if it's a personal injury case, if it's a bankruptcy case, if it's a family law case, immigration, all these practice areas, like the vast majority of practice areas out there, the case that you are handling for your client, it is the most important thing that they have going on in their life. For you it's just another client, right? And so sometimes it's hard to have that perspective. But if you think about it like that, if you think “Hey, wait a second, this is the most important thing happening in their life. If I had the most important thing happening in my life right now, how would I want to be treated?” If you shift to that line of thinking I guarantee you will provide incredible customer service, and that's going to benefit your firm.

Crissonna Tennison

Yeah, that makes a lot of sense, especially because if they're dealing with something that is the most important thing in their life, and you're the person guiding them through that, then that relationship is pretty important. So thank you for kind of expanding on that a little bit more.Thank you to Matt Spiegel for taking the time to join us on the podcast to talk about Lawmatics and the different mindsets that can help a law firm be more successful. We really appreciate you joining us today.

Matt Spiegel

Yeah, thank you guys so much for having me. I really appreciate it.

Conclusion

Thank you for listening to the National Law Review’s Legal News Reach podcast. Be sure to follow us on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts for more episodes. For the latest legal news, or if you're interested in publishing and advertising with us, visit www.natlawreview.com. We'll be back soon with our next episode.

‘Tis the season for holiday sweaters and eggnog, as well as a new batch of features from the Lawmaticians! Cozy up by the fire and unwrap these exciting new additions to Lawmatics.

Quickbooks Integration

We are thrilled to share the release of our latest integration, Quickbooks! Automatically create a customer and invoice in Quickbooks when an invoice is sent to a matter via Lawmatics. Map your accounts, field types, time entries, and expenses to ensure that pertinent matter data syncs from Lawmatics to Quickbooks. Whether you or a fellow staff member manage your firm’s books, this integration is sure to make invoice generation a breeze.

Learn more about this integration here. Not yet using LMPay? Click here to get started!

Send from Outbox

A highly anticipated feature among Lawmatics users, any emails sent via Lawmatics can now be set to appear in the outbox of your preferred email client. This update will help improve your firm’s email organization by storing all email correspondences in one central place — alongside your other communications. Once activated, any email sent to or received from an email address that is tied to a matter in Lawmatics is automatically logged in the timeline for that matter. And for quick reference, you can easily go to your outbox to see all emails sent from your address, including those sent via Lawmatics.

To learn more about Send From Outbox, click here.

Matter Numbering

To easily track down and reference cases in your docket, you can now auto-generate a case number and custom title into a matter’s title field as unique identifiers. Further refine your case numbering sequence by adding custom text or database fields such as practice area, lead attorney, client’s last name, etc. Once saved, the resulting case title format will automatically be applied to each of your matters moving forward. Begin auto-numbering your cases by navigating to the Matters page within settings, scrolling down on the page and toggling on “Enable Auto Numbering”.

Read more about auto numbering here.

Booking Form Updates

Automatic scheduling is a favorite feature of many Lawmatics users, and it just got even better. To accommodate virtual meetings in addition to face-to-face meetings, you can now select Zoom as a meeting location option, along with any of your physical office locations on your Booking Forms. Furthermore, we have added the ability to allow multiple attendees in one event. If any of your matters involve the representation of multiple clients, easily add them both to the meeting invite. With the growing popularity of virtual meetings, these upgrades grant your clients the flexibility to choose which option works for them, and have the zoom link added in automatically when needed.

Click here to learn how to use booking forms.

Time & Billing Additions

Request Funds for Trust Account

The latest addition to our Time & Billing system allows you to request funds from a matter for their trust account with the option to let them pay via credit card. Paired with your minimum balance alerts, this will help ensure that a client’s trust balance stays above your designated minimum amount.

Learn more about Trust Accounting here.

Payment Activity Report

Lawmatics Reporting, a core function of our platform, now features a new report for tracking incoming client payments. With the Payment Activity report you are able to set custom filters for the date, payment method, and/or contact. Run the report to see a snapshot view of the payments that meet your criteria, making it even easier to keep an eye on your firm’s incoming cash flows.

Click here to read about the different reporting options for Lawmatics time & billing.

MyCase Integration - Relationship Sync Added

In case you missed our recent announcement, Lawmatics now integrates with MyCase! This integration has only been available for a month and we’ve already released an update: Relationship Sync. When syncing a main matter contact from Lawmatics into MyCase, you can now sync related contacts with a simple toggle (pictured below). This is yet another way Lawmatics removes tedious data entry from your process, and replaces it with automation.

Read up on the MyCase <> Lawmatics Integration here.

New Task Statuses

Get more tasks accomplished, and keep your to-do list tidy with a new and improved list of task statuses. Whereas previously Lawmatics tasks could only be designated as complete or incomplete, we’ve introduced new statuses that account for dependencies or stasis in your processes. In addition, the Tasks dashboard can now be sorted by these statuses for quick reference. Stay tuned for more updates to come regarding Lawmatics tasks.

Click here to learn all about tasks.—We hope this batch of additions to Lawmatics keeps you warm during the holiday season. Until then, we’ll be cooking up a hearty helping of new features to release over the coming months As always, reach out to us at support@lawmatics.com with any questions. See you in the new year!

While Lawmatics has all the tools you need for collecting and inputting data, what good is all that data if you aren’t using it to gain insights on the performance of your firm? With the power of Lawmatics Custom Reporting and the Analytics Dashboard, you are able to make decisions from a business standpoint to grow and improve your firm.In addition to the KPIs you should be monitoring, Lawmatics gives you the ability to customize and export any of your reports. Meanwhile, the analytics dashboard grants you easy access to metrics like conversion rate, cost per lead, and custom growth goal settings.With all of these features at your fingertips, you’ll be able to grow your business without any guesswork or lack of insights into the trajectory of your business.

Custom Reporting

With custom reporting the possibilities are truly endless in Lawmatics. Slice and dice your data any way you want by essentially creating a table with any fields, filters, grouping, and date range. Furthermore, your reports automatically refresh in real time, meaning that each time you view one, you are seeing the most up-to-date information.

Columns

The first step in creating your custom report is to add fields to be used for your columns. Select from any of the built-in system fields, or any of your custom fields. Simply scroll though the complete list of fields, as shown below, or start typing the name of a field to easily access it.

Any fields that you select will be added as a column into your report.

Filters

Depending on the goal of your particular report, filters can be your best friend. These let you keep the report relevant to the specific KPI, field, etc that you wish to report on. For example, you may create a custom report to only show hired clients. This can be useful if you are looking to narrow in on a data point relevant only to current or past clients, as opposed to leads or lost leads. To do this, simply add a filter. In the example below, we have filtered the report using the Source field, and have selected to only show the Hired matters.

Once you make this selection, the report preview will update to show only results specified by your filters.

Date Range

Similar to adding field filters, you may also filter your report by date. Create a report that shows only the current week or month at a glance, and each time you view it it will be up-to-date for the current date match. Use the drop down in the top left to first select which date field you want to filter on. For instance, the date the matter was created, converted, or any other custom date field.

Then select the date range, using one of the preset options, or create a static custom range for this report.

Grouping

You may have plenty of reports where simply adding columns and filters gets you the data you need. Grouping is a power feature that can add even more insights to your report. When you group by a particular column you will be able to easily see the total number of results in each group, which can help determine performance.For example, you may wish to see how many leads came in for each of your practice areas in a particular month. Grouping would be very useful in this situation. Click the column header, and then select Group by this column.

The report will then look as follows:

We can easily see that Criminal Defense was the most used practice area in the graph above. Also notice how you have the option to subgroup, as shown in the top right corner in the image above. This will add a second grouping by that field within each main group.

Sample Reports

Let’s walk through a few sample reports that may be useful for your firm. Keep in mind that the sky’s the limit when it comes to custom reporting, so these are merely suggestions to get you started.First, you may find it useful to create a report showing the marketing source of each matter in your CRM. When you select your columns for this report, make sure to include both the “source” and “campaign” fields, in addition to whatever fields you may wish to see like practice area, converted date, phone number, etc.You will find grouping on the “source” field helpful for this report, so that you can easily see how many matters came from each source. Then, we suggest adding a sub group by “campaign”, so you can also see insights on each campaign within your sources. Your report will end up looking something like this:

Example KPIs pictured above:

• Matters per marketing source
• Campaign breakdown within each source

Another way you can use a custom report is to track the estimated and actual values of your cases. When you add either, or both, of these fields to your report you will have the option to sum or average each of these columns. Of course with this report it is important to make sure that you are populating these values on each of your matters accurately and timely in order to get best results.When you use any currency or number type field on a report you will have the option to add a sum or average calculation, as shown below.

In this example, we have opted to sum the estimated value, but average the actual value.

Example KPIs pictured above:

• Matters per practice area
• Total value in pipeline per practice area and per source
• Average revenue per practice area and per source

Remember that any of these custom reports can also be exported to excel, where you can apply more advanced calculations and formulas as needed.

Analytics Page

In addition to building your own custom reports, Lawmatics also provides you with a built-in analytics dashboard for basic firm KPIs and other statistics. You’ll find this page by hovering your mouse on the Insights tab, and then select Analytics.

Dashboard

When you first arrive on the Analytics page you will first see the Leads at a Glance section of the dashboard. Before diving into these stats, first note that you can adjust the date range of this page as a whole. You’ll find this in the top right corner, it defaults to All Time, but you can make a custom date selection accordingly.

Once you have selected your desired date range, all data on the page will update automatically. First, in the Leads at a Glance section you’ll see a quick breakdown of some key statistics for lead intake and conversion.As you scroll down the Analytics page, you will see a number of different graphs and charts for nearly every aspect of your firm. We’ll walk through a few of them here.First, set customized growth goals for new leads and converted clients by clicking the icon highlighted below.

While you can also use custom reporting for reporting on things like leads per practice area or source, the Analytics page gives you a visual breakdown of the same information. This can be great for getting a snapshot view.

Additionally, you’ll find a built-in graph for tracking your appointment show rate by event type. This may provide great insights on performance of different types of meetings you hold with leads and/or clients that you would have never thought to look into before.

Some firms have designated sales people as opposed to (or in addition to) intake staff and paralegals. As with any sales team, it is crucial to be able to track each individual’s conversion rate in order to compensate and incentivize the team. Use the Sales Stats graph to do just that, by viewing a breakdown of conversion stats by sales person.

Stats By Source

Lastly, on the Analytics page you will find the Stats by Source section. This gives you a comprehensive breakdown of key KPI calculations for each of your marketing sources.

In this section you will be able to clearly see an apples to apples comparison of each source, taking into account how much you spent on that source, how many leads came in, the conversion rate, and a breakdown of cost per lead and client.Example KPIs pictured above:

• Total new leads and converted clients by source
• Total revenue and total spend on each source
• Breakdown of cost per lead and cost per client

ROI Tracker

When used in conjunction with the Stats by Source analytics, the ROI Tracker helps complete the full picture of the marketing performance for each of your sources. The tracker takes into account the number of new leads, the conversion rate, and the revenue and spend from each source to give you an ROI calculation.

Marketing Source Spend

Before using the tracker, it is crucial to make sure that you are entering your marketing spend accurately on the marketing settings page. Once you navigate to that page in settings, you can make sure that you have all of your sources entered, along with any relevant campaigns under each source.The marketing spend is logged at a campaign level. Once you have added your campaigns, click the dollar sign icon for each one to enter the spend for that particular campaign.

This spend will be used for calculations not only on the ROI Tracker, but also for the Stats by Source section of the Analytics page.

Matter Values

In order to get insightful ROI results you will also need to make sure you populate the revenue on each matter into the built-in Actual Value field. This step is crucial for making sure you get an accurate return on investment calculation.Remember, you’ll populate both the estimated value and actual value in the details page on any matter.

Put Your Data to Use

While all this data collection and reporting potential is great, the crucial next step to growing your firm is interpreting your KPIs and reports to make insightful decisions about the future of your firm. Instead of just being aware of a marketing source that has low to zero ROI, you now have the insight with Lawmatics to reduce your spend accordingly so you’re not investing in a poorly performing source. Maybe you have always had an idea of which of your practice areas was the most profitable, but now that you have the ability to actually track the exact performance, you may realize that it makes sense to invest more in a different practice area.All of these insights are right at your fingertips with the power of Lawmatics reporting and analytics.

2022 has been a whirlwind. Our team has taken massive strides this year, celebrating product milestones like the launches of Conflict Checking, Time and Billing, integrations with partners like Quickbooks and MyCase, and so much more. We’re thankful for every member of the Lawmatics community, from our internal team to our partners and customers. The spirit of collaboration and gratitude make it such a joy to work with our community every day to build the solutions our customers need.As an expression of our gratitude for working with such an amazing team, we hosted a potluck to bring folks together and share food, companionship, and thanks.

We also asked our team members what experience(s) they’re most thankful for in 2022. These were some of their responses:

“I am most thankful for the warmth and energy that I experience everyday when I walk into the office at Lawmatics.”- Matt Spiegel

“I'm thankful for the ability to work in a hybrid/remote environment! My mental health, sleep schedule, and cat back home really appreciate it”- Callie Burns

“I am thankful to be surrounded by such great coworkers and I am thankful and lucky enough to call them my very close friends!”- Kennedy Wickham

“I am most thankful for having gotten to experience all of the fun-filled gatherings, trips, and adventures alongside all of my favorite people this year. Another amazing one in the books!”- Sarah Bottorff

“I am grateful for a lot of different experiences, but I believe working two jobs this year really gave me perspective on how hard my mother and father worked to make sure we had the opportunities we had growing up. I worked two jobs for three months. My mom worked 2 - 3 jobs for at least 6 years from what I can remember, and my dad worked 2 jobs for 2-3 years as well. I am super grateful for the experience because it allowed me to understand how great my parents are! I am forever grateful for my parents’ sacrifices! I am thankful for the experience of working more than one job because it is humbling when you realize how hard working more than one job actually is.”- Cary Robertson

“I'm thankful to be a part of a great company and to work alongside a fantastic group of individuals as we grind for every inch of our success on our way to the throne of legal tech.”- Bobby Orozco

“I am so thankful for all the experiences I get to share with my family and friends both in San Diego and when I go back home to New York! I will always be grateful for getting to spend time with loved ones.”- Clare Struzzi

“In the midst of a lot of changes happening in the world and within my own life, I'm grateful to have a supportive team that values and supports its employees when life is unpredictable and tough. I also really love that I have a team I can depend on, work well with, laugh with, and learn from. I genuinely feel so lucky to work with such an incredible team of people.”- Joanna Alday

“Being rid of Bolsonaro. Was terribly, terribly disappointed in Brazil with him being elected in the first place, but with him being the first brazilian president to be purged out without a re-election through the same democratic means that elected him gives me a fresh breath of hope in us as a society.”- Herick Oliveira

“Running my fist marathon with friends and family there cheering me on.”- Anna Gasperlin

“I am thankful for meeting all of my teammates at Lawmatics. Getting to work side-by-side with everyone is such a privilege. It constantly pushes me to be a better team member and makes me look forward to showing up to work!”- Andrew Field

“I am thankful that my wife and I had the opportunity to travel to Spain and meet my niece! I feel incredibly luck to work for a company that prioritizes a healthy work life balance for its employees.”- Johnny Bissell

“I'm the most thankful for the six months I had to grow as an individual while my spouse was on deployment. In that time I gained confidence, a few great communities, and had the chance to reflect and enjoy my own company. My growth with Lawmatics is a direct reflection of that and I'm so proud to be a part of such a great team.”- Rachel Koscil

“I am most thankful for my first phone call with Monique, she opened up an opportunity that has challenged me time and time again and helps make $$$.”- Eddy Adame

“I am most thankful for the memories I have made this year with some of the greatest people. Being able to live life surrounded by good company is something we could only hope for!”- Connor Brown

“An experience I am thankful for with Lawmatics is when we all went to the "haunted" trail. It's great to be able to see your team outside of work and bond over having to embark on a journey of terror and delight. The happy hour drinks helped too! Hahaha, but truly... I am thankful to experience such a collaborative, creative, and motivated team that wants to build each other up and be team players. Culture is everything, and I feel incredibly thankful to be a part of Lawmatics. Cheers to more memories to come!”- Julia Anderson

“This year has brought me in fact two experiences that stood out, and for which I am incredibly thankful. I have received amazing opportunities for growth as a professional, as I developed my craft and earned new responsibilities at Lawmatics. I am surrounded by a very special group of people and without them, none of these accomplishments would have been possible. I also recently had the opportunity to visit my family and friends back in my home country after several years apart, which meant a lot to me. I look back to 2022 and feel my heart warm in gratitude.”- Erika Beaudette

“From a company events standpoint, seeing the Padres game from the Western Metal box. From a general standpoint, having the ability to work from the mountain remotely and rip snowboarding runs between work blocks.”- Eric Nelson

“I'm thankful that I got this job and also that I was able to experience Italy when I've never been to Europe!”- Dominic Viola

“I'm thankful that Lawmatics gave me a job.”- Ian Thorleifson

“Grateful for all the cool people I get to work with!!!”- Nihal Razak

“Being consistently productive at work during this year and being able to save some money throughout the months.”- Leandro Camargo

“I am most thankful for being able to take my dream vacation to the Maldives for my honeymoon! It was the trip of a lifetime that I will never forget!”- Monique Padilla

“I am most thankful for getting the job at Lawmatics this year. I have never felt this appreciated, supported, or encouraged in any other job. Not only is my team incredibly kind and supportive, the entire company has welcomed me and encouraged me to succeed. I am so very thankful for being able to work at this phenomenal company.”- Enid Migault

“I am thankful for all the memories I made with my coworkers this year!”- Ryan Brown

What is your role at Lawmatics, and what does your job entail?

I am the in-house Product Trainer for all of our teams. The majority of my day is spent building our onboarding training and specialized training for each team's needs. I work closely with each team to identify areas of opportunity for improvement. With that being said, I am also a sales engineer. I provide our future customers with information on how our software can fill gaps in their intake process, and facilitate a better case journey for their clients.

How did you end up working for Lawmatics?

I graduated from California State University San Marcos during the pandemic. Job offerings during that time were scarce so I was constantly searching for new opportunities on LinkedIn. After finding the Lawmatics customer success position posting on LinkedIn, I enjoyed the interview process. Once on board, I knew Lawmatics was a place I could see myself growing as a leader and professional. I officially joined Lawmatics at the beginning of 2022.

What’s the best part of your job?

The best part of my job is watching everyone on our team begin to understand the platform more and more as time goes by. I believe I have the privilege of working with each and every team and really understanding the ins and outs of our users (customers) journey. There is nothing like watching a new hire or coworker start to understand how our product really does make the intake process for firms a lot smoother and seamless. The phrase I hear most often is “Wow, this software really is amazing!” The phrase is common in-house and when speaking with existing customers/users! It is hard to get much better than that!

What challenges have you faced or opportunities you’ve uncovered working remotely during COVID-19?

I believe all of the challenges I faced during the Pandemic all became huge opportunities. The first challenge of working remotely was time management. I make work objectives priorities, and can really get wrapped up in getting everything done with very little breaks to no breaks at all. Therefore, I found myself doing great work, but missing the human interaction with others and feeling tired from constantly working. I learned short breaks were important and allowed me to work better. My second challenge, as with many others, was human connection. Working remotely can make everything feel transactional, which is how I uncovered an opportunity to make genuine interactions even through zoom or google calls. When working in person or remotely, it is important to not get sidetracked by ONLY completing objectives. The conversations I have with coworkers over zoom or slack can be just as meaningful as conversations in person. Our ability to build connections has limits, but the limits don’t have to stop us from trying to build meaningful connections when it is hard.

Where are you originally from, and how did you end up in San Diego?

I am originally from Rockingham, North Carolina and Buckeye, West Virginia. I moved to San Diego for college and don’t think I will be moving away any time soon.

What do you like to do when you aren’t working?

When I am not working, I spend a lot of my time being active or creative. I really enjoy spending time in nature and the gym. Surfing, hiking, running, swimming, and playing sports have either always been a part of my life or are hobbies I’ve picked up recently. The creative part of me presents itself in so many different ways. I love photography and videography. There is something extremely beautiful about telling a story with a photo that makes me smile. On the other hand, I love to capture a story that is going on around me and edit the video from an experience perspective.

What is a fun fact most people may not know about you?

When you meet me or see me, you would never guess I am a pretty decent surfer. Don’t let the Jordan’s fool you, I really can surf.

Tell us about one of your craziest SFW experiences?

I was selected as one of the players to play against the Harlem Globetrotters. We had a NBA player on our team, Bimbo Coles. It was the craziest experience I ever had on the basketball court. It is literally impossible to guard any of them.

What is the one thing you can’t live without and why?

I can’t live without Jesus, because I understand what he has done for me.

Do you have a favorite saying, quote, or personal mantra and if so, what is it and why?

“Your intention is not what sticks with people, what people will never forget is how you made them feel” I love this quote, because it challenges me to truly listen, and not just listen to respond. Sometimes listening and not responding can be really hard, because it is extremely hard to not always have the last word.

Can you walk us through your "Aha" moment - the moment when you realized how powerful the Lawmatics platform is for lawyers and law firms?

Honestly, I have “Aha” moments all the time. I think every time I am on a sales call or customer success call and the firm says “oh, wow your software can do that too, this is great” it’s another Aha moment. Whether it be an automation feature, document feature, or integration, it all just solidifies the power of our platform for each firm’s unique needs.

Based on your experience, what words of wisdom or advice do you have for legal professionals looking to help their law firms win more business, impress clients, and be more efficient?

If I were to say one thing, it would be this: Automating a response to your client or matter is not taking the personalization away from your interactions with them. I believe it does the exact opposite, because more than likely they will still have questions and call you to get those answers. Now instead of having to complete several tasks, send an email, and be on the phone, you can actually take the time you need to provide the client with all of your attention to answer their questions. There is nothing better than being able to breathe because while you know you are busy, you are not in a hurried state of mind.

Recently, Lawmatics founder and CEO Matt Spiegel joined the Law + Finance Podcast to discuss the legal tech landscape. Learn more about the founding of Lawmatics, how new features come about, and how the needs of law firms are changing. Read the transcript below, or watch the full conversation above.

Podcast transcript

Terrell Turner

Hi, I'm Terrell Turner, the host of the Law and Finance Show, and today we have another great guest on. Now, the reason why I'm excited about this guest is because many law firms that I have talked to, ones that we do bookkeeping for, and helping them with CFO services, are really trying to figure out how do you really keep a good handle on the CRM part of your business? Just managing that pipeline, all of the data, and the insights that you need to get to make sure that you're growing your firm, and you're on top of that sales funnel, and the front end of your firm. And there's so much more value that you can get when you are using the right tool. So, today we're going to be interviewing Matt Spiegel from Lawmatics, and we're going to be talking about some amazing things that they're doing, weigh his history with being a lawyer, helping build out some of the world's most successful law technology solutions, so stay tuned for today's episode. So, without further ado, let me bring on Matt. Matt, welcome to the show. How are you?

Matt Spiegel

I'm doing well, Terrell. How are you?

Terrell Turner

I am great. I am great. Matt, now a lot of lawyers that I've talked to are, they're familiar with Lawmatics, and I've heard great things. Like I said, literally as you, and I were talking right before this, I was working with a lawyer onboarding, and they were telling me about how much they love Lawmatics. So people may be familiar with Lawmatics, but they may not be as familiar with Matt. So can you tell us a little bit about your background?

Matt Spiegel

Yes. So happy to give you some color there. So, I'm a lawyer, I still have my license. I think my parents would be very upset if they spent all this money on my legal education, and then I didn't at least keep my license, even though I don't practice anymore. So I do maintain my license. So I still technically am a lawyer, but I practiced for five years. And then long story short, I ended up starting the company called MyCase, which is most of your listeners, if they're in the legal tech, they are in the legal world. They probably know what MyCase is. So I started that company back in 2010, and I sold the company, I stayed with the company until 2015. Obviously, MyCase today, especially kind of coupled with a lot of your listeners who are interested in finance, and how it intertwines with the world of law, MyCase is now owned by LawPay. LawPay bought MyCase about, I don't know, a couple months ago.So, it's very much one of the biggest legal tech companies in the world. And so now in 2017, so I took some time off doing some other things unrelated to law, or legal tech. And then in 2017 I decided that the law firm world, the legal world, was very much missing a critical part of business management. A lot of tools had been built to help us manage our cases and to help us make sure that we get paid. That's good. But no tools had really been developed to help us run our business, and nurture our clients, and create better customer experiences. And so that's why I ended up starting Lawmatics at the end of 2017.

Terrell Turner

Awesome. Now, one other questions I'm curious about, because you hear a lot of people talk about, they went through law school, become a lawyer. You don't often hear the storyline of, you know what? I started developing legal technology. So where did that kind of come into play for you?

Matt Spiegel

I mean, I think most people in legal tech have a similar story in the sense that I scratched my own itch. So I experienced a problem. I mean, MyCase, most people don't really know, but MyCase was started as just a simple client portal. That's all MyCase was. It was not a practice management tool. It didn't do time, and billing, or all the other bells and whistles that it does now. It was very simply a tool to just share data with your client. And this was because I had a client complaint. I had a bar complaint from a client about my communication, just basically that I didn't call them back quick enough. I didn't return their calls.Even though I did, it wasn't on their time. And so I thought to myself, "This was really silly, there should be an easier way to communicate these things to my client." And doing so with technology was really the only way and there was nothing out there to do that. And so that's, ultimately, how MyCase was born. So, I think this idea of experiencing a problem, and going out, and determining that there was nothing in the market to solve that problem for me, just going out, and building a solution myself, that's ultimately how it went.

Terrell Turner

Awesome. I wonder for when it came down to Lawmatics, I mean creating another technology solution to solve a problem that not only you experienced, but probably thousands of other lawyers when it came down to that, doing the research on, hey, first, let me see if there's something else that's out there. About how many different options of different tech solutions did you end up looking at before you came to the conclusion, "Hey, you know what? No one does what I need it to do?"

Matt Spiegel

Well, luckily, I knew, right? Because I had been in this space for a long time. So, I think I had an advantage in that building MyCase. I kind of knew everything that was out on the market. I knew what solutions were there. I knew what problems were being solved and what problems hadn't been addressed yet. I also had an idea for what problems were on the horizon. Lawmatics, kind of take a step back. Lawmatics would not be possible if lawyers weren't starting to think about their law firms as more than a law firm. If they weren't thinking about their firms as businesses, then Lawmatics wouldn't make sense, because Lawmatics is a tool that helps you think about the business of your law firm, and the things that make up a good business, not just practicing law. And so if you rewind 10, 12 years ago, the legal space was not there.They were not thinking about their law firms like businesses. They were just thinking about them like law firms. They were just focusing on being a lawyer. But in 2014, 2015 when I was still with MyCase, we started to see that sentiment shift a little bit. We started to see a little kernel of this idea, this concept, of thinking about your firm as more than a law firm, and thinking about it like a business. And so now fast forward two more years, your 2017, and now that environment has really started to change, and this idea of running it like a business was starting to become much more mainstream. And so that made a tool like Lawmatics very valuable.

Terrell Turner

One of the things that, it makes me wonder, because I see a lot of parallels between how lawyers think about law firms, and even when I talk to other accountants. I mean it's just where a similar journey of, for the longest accountants did not think of the firm as I'm running a business. It's just like, "Hey, I'm just practicing accounting." I wonder, from your perspective, did you see anything that started to trigger people to open their eyes to, hey, I'm not just practicing law, I'm actually running a business that happens to practice law?

Matt Spiegel

Yeah, in my opinion, what we saw was a shift to smaller law firms, and competition. So what I think you saw was you saw lawyers, you saw a lot of lawyers leaving big firms, and going to start their own firm, become a solo lawyer, hang their shingle. Then so you now have the market flooded with more small law firms. And all those small law firms are like, "All right, we need to go and advertise. We need to go get business." So when you have more firms, you're just naturally going to have more competition to get clients. And when you have more competition, now you need to do more things than just practice law. You've got to do things you're not necessarily used to doing in order to earn that business.You have to go and get it. It's not just going to come to you before. If you're in Cleveland, Ohio, and there's 10 law firms, business is going to just come to you, you're going to have plenty. But if you're in Cleveland, Ohio and there's a thousand law firms, business is not just going to come to you. You got to fight for it. And so I think that's what happened. And that forced lawyers to start to think about things beyond just practicing law. They had to think about how to wow their customer, how to go and market, how to attract them, and then how to close them, right? They got to sell.

Terrell Turner

Gotcha. I would guess probably similar to accountants, that became a new skill that they had to learn. Now, as they're kind of learning that new skill, I mean, then having a tool that helps them kind of understand, "Hey, where is this client in that journey? Or how is that working?" How did you find creating a tool in a way where the learning curve for using Lawmatics isn't so high that they get discouraged, because they're having to learn sales, and they got to learn how to use the tool to help them. How did you approach that where it's like, "Hey, how are we going to make this learning curve for this tool?"

Matt Spiegel

That's a tricky question. I don't know that we've done that well yet. I think we're still learning. I think, well, you make the assumption that we're good at that. Maybe we're not. No, I mean, we're always getting better at that, but I think that is the tricky thing. But I think what's what we've done, one way that we approach that is, look, we've been doing this for a long time. We've worked with thousands of law firms at Lawmatics and have worked with tens of thousands of law firms at MyCase. So, we've got a lot of experience at this company now. And so when we sit down with a new customer who's like, "All right, I've never used a CRM. I've never thought about my customer journey, I've never thought about different touch points and how to nurture them. And I've never thought about when someone's case is over, how I want to continue to communicate with them for the first year, or the first five years, or every year on their birthday. I've never thought about that."So, this is a big ask of them. And so the beauty is we do know some best practices we can help. And so our approach is to actually really push them in a direction, and help them with best practices so that they're not just doing it all from scratch, and they're not relying on themselves. This is not something where they're on an island just trying to figure out what processes to implement on their own. We really want to be a partner for them, and share our experiences, couple that with what they do, and see if we can actually improve their whole process, and experience.

Terrell Turner

Awesome. Now, I'm curious for, as you develop new features, or there are different things that have come out with Lawmatics, have there been any features that you introduced that you may have been surprised how well people gravitated to it, or how well it actually connected with the pain points that the clients were experiencing?

Matt Spiegel

I think so. And I think what I would say more that I was surprised about is I think I've been surprised at how deep we ended up having to go on certain features, that I thought would be good enough at a surface level. So, a good example of that is when we first launched Lawmatics, we knew that something that was going to be very important was going to be e-signatures, right? So, being able to, as part of an intake process, it's obviously very important that you send out your fee agreement, and that they sign it, and now they're signing up with your law firm. So we needed to support those e-signatures, but we thought that, "Look, this could be pretty basic." They have their document in there, we can just give them a little word editor, and they can create their document, they can slap a signature on it, and it's going to be good.We now have this massive document assembly platform that allows you to create PDF forms, and use Microsoft Word documents, and create really robust online, almost like Google Docs. And we have conditional logic, so you can have these documents that are based upon data in your system, and merge it all in there, and it's pretty robust. And I would've never thought at the beginning that would've been a direction that we would've gone down. It seemed we would've just needed something really basic. So, I'm always fascinated with how we create what we call an MVP, for a product. It's called minimum viable product, the minimum amount that you can do for a feature to deliver value to your customer. And I'm always surprised at where we start. So where are we release an MVP, and then where that feature ends up after. And so it's always really fascinating to see.

Terrell Turner

Awesome. I gotcha. Now, I guess also thinking is, were there any features that when you first worked on that MVP version of that feature, where in your mind you were like, this is going to be the feature that really knocks it out the part, but then when you released it, you got the actual customer feedback like, "Oh, they're not as excited about this as I was."

Matt Spiegel

So, that happens all the time. That happens way more than the other side. It's way more often that we release something that we're like, "This is going to change the world." And then it's like nobody uses it. I feel like that's almost everything. And honestly, I think that that happens with almost every feature. It's like, because what's funny about law firms, and I think it's also CPAs, we actually look at law firms, and CPAs interchangeably, and we actually suspect that Lawmatics will be available for CPAs at some point down the road, because we just see it as such a similar vertical.But what I find really interesting is everyone thinks that lawyers are technologically challenged, and they're very slow to adopt technology, but you would be shocked because if that was the case, then giving them something really, really simple would be enough. But that's never how it is. You always give them an inch, and then they want a mile. And so we always release a feature that's super basic, and it's never good enough, because then they need this, and they need that, and they need this, and they need that. And so the product just has to evolve so quickly around it. And I mean that's what keeps it fun and exciting, but it's pretty funny sometimes.

Terrell Turner

It's probably pretty interesting. I mean, when you think about, you guys are helping your clients do a better job of managing the client, their client experience, but on the same hand, I mean you got to manage your own client experience about introducing those new features. Building a product that you're focused on how we help them improve their client experience, do you find that you also have to take a step back? Or do you guys have a client success team, or happiness team that's devoted to how are you improving your client's experience?

Matt Spiegel

So, we always have to think about that from our perspective, and this is where I'm glad that there are law firms that are starting to think about client experience, and client success. From my perspective as a software company, it's all I think about. And we have a massive team of customer success agents who are helping our customers, which are obviously law firms, day in, and day out. And it's a part, we view it as a competitive advantage. If we have a good customer service team, then we are better than a competitor potentially. But what's also interesting is that we will actually use Lawmatics in our own company to do things that law firms would use Lawmatics for. So, we don't just build Lawmatics, but we actually use it for ourselves because of how powerful it is. But we also use Salesforce, and we also use some other marketing automation platforms, which are designed for companies like us.Lawmatics is not designed for a big tech company. Lawmatics is designed for law firms. So we are very open with the fact that, yeah, we have a CRM, but it's not designed for us, so we're not going to use it for everything. We're going to use Salesforce, right? Because it's designed for us. But Salesforce is not designed for a law firm. It's going to be really terrible for a law firm, not to mention very expensive. So, it's really an interesting experience for us having this type of a platform as our product, and how when we use it, when we don't use it, and how we take experiences from the products that we do use, and translate that into our product that we offer to our customers.

Terrell Turner

Awesome. Now, when you mentioned about MyCase, MyCase bought, and purchase Lawmatics. From that purchase, what have you seen has been some of the synergies that's come from the combination of those two companies?

Matt Spiegel

You mean MyCase? LawPay bought MyCase, right?

Terrell Turner

Yes, yes.

Matt Spiegel

So, what's interesting there is that a big part of MyCase business, which people don't necessarily realize is payments. So, MyCase as a practice management platform, they obviously charge a monthly fee, and they can do all your time tracking and they help you do all your invoicing, but then they also have a huge part of their business called MyCase payments. So, that all the lawyers are running credit card payments, they're sending out their invoices, and the clients are paying the invoices, and MyCase is taking a portion of that processing revenue. That's natural, but they're processing an insane amount of money, a huge amount of money. It would make your head spin. So it's a big revenue source. So now you have a company like LawPay, which all they do is provide credit card processing to law firms buying that company because MyCase, a huge part of what they do are payments.So, there's a lot of synergies there. It's been a really interesting experience to sit on the outside and watch what is happening over there. I think the whole legal industry, the legal industry, as a whole, is really kind of sitting back and waiting to see what happens with that marriage. I don't know that, in my opinion, it was a little unexpected, and I think it's going to be interesting to see how that relationship plays out and where it goes. I mean, I think for the first time in a lot of years MyCase has shown some signs of life. For a while it was pretty stagnant, and now it's cool to see it moving along. From my perspective, obviously, I will always be tied to that. That's my legacy. Lawmatics is a great company, and will probably be bigger than MyCase one day, hopefully, but MyCase was my first, and so always going to kind of be remembered for that. So I do want to see it be really successful. So it's interesting to see what's happening with it.

Terrell Turner

And I'm curious for yourself now with focusing on building out Lawmatics, as you look and see what other players in legal technology are doing. One of the things that I've seen in the accounting world is vertical integration becomes a common strategy for a lot of your tech stack, or tech companies in the accounting space is when you look at Lawmatics, do you see other kind of legal technologies trying to make a vertical move into the CRM space?

Matt Spiegel

So, we don't see it that much, right? We have great relationships and integrations with most of the other legal tech companies out there, the big ones, the ones that do practice management, the companies like Cleo, and Practice Panther, and File Vine, and Rocket Matter, and Smokeball, all these companies that really have dominated the space, and we integrate with them. And so what a CRM does is so fundamentally different than what most other software in legal tech does. And it's very hard for them to just sort of say, "Oh, we want to do CRM stuff now, so we're going to go ahead and develop that." It would be a very unnatural transition. So we don't really see it. There are less than a handful of competitors out there, and most of them have actually been purchased by other companies already. And so that has of removed them from the market as a whole, and has made them very specific to the solutions that they're partnered with. So we feel like we're really the only solution out there that does what we do, and does it without any real ties to any other company.

Terrell Turner

Awesome. I love it. I love it. So a couple things before we wrap up. One of the things that I always love to hear from the founder of the company is when you think about the solution that you provide, when people are asking, "Hey, what's the pain point that you guys are addressing?" In your own words, how do you usually explain that to, "Hey, here's the pain point that Lawmatics is addressing, and here's why our customers are happy with what we provide."

Matt Spiegel

So first of all, Lawmatics, I think delivers on what I call the holy grail of value to a law firm, and CPAs act the same way. But if you're a provider of services or a product to a law firm or a CPA firm, I think that there's only two real value propositions that you can deliver, right? One, you can save time, because time is money. We bill by the hour, we're expensive. So, if I save you time, that's valuable to me. And the second thing is you can bring me more business, but those are really, the only two value props. Save me time, and bring me more business. Now, most legal software out there is designed to save you time, and then you have marketing agencies, which are designed to bring you more business, but there are very few companies that can actually deliver on both value propositions.Lawmatics helps you do that. So Lawmatics saves you an in incre... The average law firm saves 20 hours a week. It sounds crazy, but they save 20 hours a week combined, because usually we're at law firms with four or five, six lawyers, or more. We're going to save 20 hours a week, which is insane. But because of what we do, we are going to actually help you get more business with nurture campaigns helping you develop referral business, and then helping you convert more of the leads that you're getting into clients. So, that's the value prop. But at the end of the day, I think where we really help lawyers is the way we do this is by helping them deliver a better customer experience. That's what it's all about to us, is we look at the journey that a client goes through with a law firm, and we try to help a law firm delight that customer at every step of the journey.

Terrell Turner

Awesome. I mean, that's an amazing point of reference for, I guess, for all the lawyers that are listening. I mean, let's say if you charge $200 an hour as your billable, I mean, if you're saving 20 hours. I mean the tool more than pays for itself.

Matt Spiegel

Yes, very much so.

Terrell Turner

So, I mean, if people are interested in finding out more about Lawmatics, and learning more about the great things, where should they look for you guys online?

Matt Spiegel

So, very easy. Just head over to Lawmatics.com. That's where you can go, and you can check things out. You can get a demo there, see a little bit about what we do. That's great. Also, I'm always around. I love hearing from lawyers. I love getting random questions. It could have nothing to do with Lawmatics, I get asked about all kinds of stuff. MyCase is fair game law. Lawmatics is fair game. Being a lawyer is fair game. If you want to talk golf, that's fair game. So anybody can always email me matt@lawmatics.com. I get emails all the time. I'm super, super responsive. I truly do love it. It also helps me. You have no idea how many random conversations get started, and they end up turning into something that helps me grow, or helps me learn what we might need to do differently at Lawmatics. So please feel free to reach out.

Terrell Turner

Awesome. Awesome. Well, before we wrap up, one final question, if you're thinking about all the experiences you've had from MyCase to Lawmatics to being the lawyer yourself, and just growing a business, if you had to share one piece of advice for lawyers who are trying to manage, and grow a law firm, what would be that piece of advice you would want to share with them?

Matt Spiegel

I would tell them to worry less about being a good lawyer, and worry more about providing good customer service. Think about your law firm like Trader Joe's thinks about their customer service, or Amazon thinks about their customer service or Nordstrom for that matter. You go back to those places, not because they sell something that other people don't, but it's because you have a great experience when you shop with them, or when you go to their stores, or when you buy things from them. Make it the same at your law firm.

Terrell Turner

Awesome. I love it. Well, Matt, thank you so much for coming on. Thank you for being an amazing guest, and taking some time out to help us understand the value, and the benefits that Lawmatics has, and then just also your advice, and your wisdom on building a successful business. It's been a pleasure having you.

Matt Spiegel

Yeah, thank you, Terrell. I appreciate it.

Terrell Turner

If you're looking for ideas on how to manage and grow a profitable law firm, this Facebook group is perfect for you, because every week we are featuring conversations with successful lawyers, and businesses related to law firms on tips, ideas, and technology that are helping many people grow, and manage a profitable law firm. So, if you're looking for great tips and ideas, you definitely want to click the link below so you can join the conversation, and be part of the Law Firm's and Finance Facebook group.

Growing your law practice isn’t easy, but it doesn’t need to be an uphill battle. Marketing, technology, and operations can work seamlessly together to provide a best-in-class experience for prospects, clients, and attorneys alike. Leveraging these proven systems will allow you to increase your law firm's revenue while decreasing your caseload simultaneously.In this webinar, Lawmatics founder and CEO Matt Spiegel welcomed David Crum and Brent Harkins, co-founders of Cardinal Concepts, an agency that provides marketing services for law firms across the United States. Some of the key points they discussed:

• Turning basic marketing best practices into a sophisticated client acquisition strategy
• Building a technology stack that converts more leads and automates internal tasks
• The staffing and processes needed to become a market leader
• How to assess new business opportunities to expand your practice

Webinar slide deck

The legal industry is in the midst of a rapidly changing technology landscape. Until relatively recently, lawyers have lacked software solutions built specifically for the unique needs of their industry, including nuanced timekeeping, billing, document security, and data collection. Lawmatics CEO Matt Spiegel recently joined the podcast Everything Except the Law to share how legal-specific software like Lawmatics can address two critical issues for legal businesses: saving time and acquiring more business.

Save time

The most direct way to save time is to have a legal software that can do your work for you. Automations save so much time that they’ve essentially become mandatory for a modern law firm. An average firm that uses Lawmatics saves 15 to 20 hours a week because they automate tedious tasks like appointment confirmations.

Increase business

In addition to saving time, automations increase your capacity beyond what you could ever do with human power alone. Take this example from Matt’s experience as a criminal defense attorney in California: you represent a client who is charged with a DUI. That client has potential to become repeat business because they want the DUI expunged from their record after California’s three year waiting period. It wouldn’t be practical for you to manually track such a timeline, stay in contact, and maintain necessary records for all of your clients with that kind of repeat potential. An automation system like Lawmatics does all that work for you. It can even automatically email that client to let them know they’ve become eligible for expungement. A CRM system like Lawmatics provides all kinds of data, like insights into how maximizing your capacity to handle repeat business increases the ratio of revenue to your client acquisition cost. You can define key progress indicators (KPI) that are relevant to your firm’s business model, and make sure you’re spending your money in the most effective way possible: what types of cases provide the most revenue, what types of cases cost the most to acquire, what marketing efforts provide the most bang for your buck. Those KPIs are essential in making strategic decisions for optimizing your firm’s business.

Key takeaway

Legal tech platforms like Lawmatics are a necessity for managing the back-end, administrative functions of your firm. They’re also necessary for creating a great experience for your clients. An automated follow-up system won’t increase repeat business if your clients have a bad experience the first time around. A CRM as powerful as Lawmatics can make each client feel like they’re your only client. Instantly confirm appointments with personalized automated emails and SMS messages. Stay top of mind with newsletters. Provide comprehensive and easily digestible billing statements. Analyze your marketing performance with detailed analytics and KPIs.If you don’t use a system like Lawmatics yet, a new era of success for your firm is still waiting. Get started by booking a free Lawmatics demo today.

Podcast transcript

Matt Spiegel

What Lawmatics does and what I think any law firm needs to have this day and age is an automation platform, right? Is automating things that are mundane, the processes that happen all the time. I got to be honest, Nick, it's crazy to me the amount of time that our customers are saving. I had no idea. Our average law firm, which has like three to five lawyers in it, right? They're saving a total of 15 to 20 hours per week.

Nick Werker

That's insane.

Matt Spiegel

Over 50% of the firms were saving that kind of a time. So automation is mandatory now.

Nick Werker

Hey everyone, welcome back to Answering Legal's Everything Except the Law Podcast. As always, I am your host, Nick Werker. If this is your first time tuning in, this is the podcast where we share expert advice on all the parts of running a law firm that attorneys weren't exactly trained for back in law school. Now in this episode, we're going to be taking a closer look at Lawmatics, one of the most popular CRM platforms for lawyers for good reason. If your practice is looking to boost its efficiency, client engagement, and number of new prospects overall, you're definitely going to want to stick around and learn more about Lawmatics. Luckily for us providing us all the details on Lawmatics today will be the platform's founder and CEO, Matt Spiegel. Matt, thank you so much for joining us today.

Matt Spiegel

Yeah, likewise Nick. Very excited to chat with you.

Nick Werker

Yeah, been looking forward to this. So can you tell our audience a little bit about Lawmatics, how the platform originally came to be? Where'd you come from?

Matt Spiegel

Yeah, good question. I guess, and the background is relevant to the discussion, but I'm a lawyer, so I cut my teeth at a big law firm and then started my own law firm. And ultimately the idea for Lawmatics or the concept of Lawmatics really came from research that we were doing at my previous company. So my previous company, which I founded out of my own law firm is My Case. So one of the biggest practice management companies out there still. I started that company in 2010 and I left the company in 2015. And so it was really, at My Case, we were dealing with thousands and thousands of law firms and doing a lot of research and trying to understand not necessarily what lawyers needed or what problems they needed to solve now, but how were they thinking, right? What was top of mind for them when it comes to their business?And really at that moment we saw the kernel of an idea and that idea was that lawyers were starting to think about their law firms as businesses and not just law firms. But this was not a mainstream idea yet. This was just sort of, like I said, it was a kernel. And this was in 2014. So then we fast forward to 2017 when I was looking to come back into the legal tech world and I just thought that the market was now ready. I thought that this idea that started as, in its infancy in 2014 was now picking up steam. And lawyers were really starting to think about their business and not just the law firm. And so we started Lawmatics really as a tool to help you focus on the business of your law firm and not on the practice of law or the management of the cases.

Nick Werker

So I'm personally curious, what was it like to... What made you... I know you said that you saw the evolution, because I agree with you, I remember that timeline in 2017 kind of being, I would say the turning point that I remember that lawyers were ready to take on technology and really build up their firms as a business. But what made you come back and what was it like leaving My Case?

Matt Spiegel

Well, so I left My Case in 2015 and then I went and just messed around for a while. I did things that were very unrelated to tech, and I guess I thought that that's what I wanted to do. I actually just took on as CEO, running a consumer electronics company, I guess is the best way to describe it. It was kind of like Nest, right? The camera product, it was like that. So it was a hardware and a software company and I thought that was what I wanted and it was just really hard and not for me. So what drove me back to legal was really just, it was time for me to start my own business again, my own startup. And I just realized that this was a space that I knew very, very well and it just kind of drew me back.And so I think that was one of the problems I had with being in the consumer tech space. I'm a consumer, but I don't know, that doesn't make me an expert. It doesn't put me in that space necessarily. And I wasn't necessarily as passionate about it. And I think the passion is really important. And so coming back into legal tech was kind of an easy transition for me, but I think I felt very strongly that, and you probably can sympathize with this, as entrepreneurs or I guess business owners in the tech world, we use tools to help us run.... We live die by tools to help us run our business. We live and die by CRM tools or business analytics tools, business intelligence tools, things like Salesforce or HubSpot or whatever dashboarding software we use. And that's been the way that we've run our businesses for 20 years.But legal wasn't quite there, but now you saw that legal was wanting to go that route and we're like, "Wait a second, they don't have these tools that we've used forever." And so it seemed just very natural to just take the best of the tools that we use and try to put it into a platform that an industry that has been technologically slow could actually use.

Nick Werker

So I couldn't agree with you more and that's why, so I want to talk about specifically Lawmatics. So you leave in 2015, you come back in 2017. I'm sure that at the reentry point in 2017, because I remember trying to get integrated with a bunch of the platforms that were around and they didn't... I could have used them. And that doesn't say much for running a law firm because I don't run a law firm. I run a pretty big corporation. So I want to ask why do lawyers need a platform like Lawmatics and why is it so important for them to invest in a quality CRM? Because it's not one of those things that is so prevalent that everybody knows which one to get and how to customize it for themselves. What is it specifically that lawyers need that Lawmatics can address?

Matt Spiegel

Well, so this is a really good, I think this is just a good holistic discussion, right? Because one, the tools to do this, you and I just talked about how we've been using tools like this for 20 years. Well, there's no reason why a lawyer couldn't use the same tool. So these tools have been around forever. It kind of highlights the fact that lawyers need software that is built for them. It's a professional service industry like legal, I think just needs products that are tailored to their way of being, right? To their processes to... They have nuanced time being, tracking your time billing. Those are important things.Signing documents, maintaining the security of documents, gathering large pieces of information, collecting data from a particular client. There's unique things that a professional service industry like legal needs. And so you look at, well, why haven't lawyers just adopted other software out there? Well, the reason is because those softwares haven't been tailored to their needs. And this is the same for any software. Forget, just forget CRM, forget Lawmatics. It's anything, right? There's a reason why lawyers use My Case or Cleo and not Fresh Books or some general platform that is designed to do invoicing, right? It's because they need things, they need trust accounting, they need certain things that are more specific to the legal world. And so every lawyer should want a software that helps them measure their business and engage their contacts, their leads and their contacts more.One thing that's really critical to remember I think, is that it's about 75% of all law firms business comes from referrals. And that's not just other lawyers, it's your own clients. So what I see, I'm sure you see the same thing, but what I see in working with so many law firms, the lowest hanging fruit, the part that lawyers are screwing up the most, is they're sitting on this gold mine of business. They've got thousands of clients that they've helped in the past and then they're not doing [inaudible 00:10:10] to engage them once their matter's over. That matters over and they're like, "All right, see ya." Right? Five years later when that person knows somebody who needs a lawyer for the same practice area, it's been five years, maybe they remember you, maybe they don't. You haven't been nurturing them, you haven't been making sure that you stay top of mind. There's so much missed opportunity. And you can't do that without software. You can't do a good job of that nurturing without software.

Nick Werker

It's not like you and me, where we get one customer and the customer stays for whatever. I think my average customer stays for two years, right? I don't really have to live and die by referrals because my customers aren't just one off things. I build a relationship with each individual customer. So it is funny to hear that you're sitting... It's funny to hear how law firms have to run differently as a business, but how it's all the same principles. If you could automate this process, you'd make so much more money just by simply nurturing the clients that you already have and telling them, Hey, when you run into a friend or a colleague or a coworker or so on and so forth in the future who needs my help don't hesitate to send them to me. And you can automate that. You can automate that by emailing them, by keeping in contact, by engaging them, by educating them. The possibilities are endless.I do want to talk about... I hate to say that the past few years have been chaotic, but I don't want to say chaotic. I want to say the past few years we've seen a great amount of change and really a shift in the mindset of law firms in their willingness to adopt software and technology for their firms. But from the source, I want to hear what type of feedback have you gotten from users of your software during this time? What are users and what are lawyers saying about Lawmatics? What have they been able to accomplish over the last few years?

Matt Spiegel

Well, first of all, I think that at least now in the legal industry, because look, I've been in the legal tech industry since late 2009. So I've been with it through thick and thin. And we started with My Case in the days when it was me, it was Jack at Cleo, it was Larry at Rocket Matter. And we were just sort of getting this whole cloud thing going. They even started it before we came along. And now at least the idea of the cloud and even practice management in the cloud is table stakes. People are okay with that. By being okay with that it's like they've accepted all other types of platforms. And so it's nice we're not having to educate people on this is why you need to use web based software anymore. We've kind of crossed that chasm. So that's very helpful because when I was starting My Case, it was not that we had to educate the whole community on, "Hey, it's okay, it's safe to use the cloud. In fact, it's safer to use the cloud than whatever it is that you're using currently."So we don't have that problem anymore. But what we've heard, really what we've heard through the last, for the few years, during the pandemic obviously, I think that's also been a good push for law firms. They almost had to use technology. If they didn't use technology before, they almost were forced to just by nature of the circumstances and by nature of what their clients now wanted of them. And what I mean is maybe they didn't want to use Zoom because they were afraid of it, right? Now they're forced to. So we've seen that forcing of technology on top of the idea that it's okay to use technology now being very commonplace. So that part of it I think has been great and wonderful for the industry as a whole.For us, what we're really seeing and what people tell us about using a software like Lawmatics, which is actually pretty incredible, it's two things. There are two value props. And actually, I'll take a step back here because it's important and I think, curious if you'll agree with me on this one. I think there are two value props as a service provider that you can deliver to a law firm. And it's really only two. You're either going to save that law firm time, which is going to... Time is money, or you're going to get them more business some way. But at the end of the day, that's really kind of it, those are only really kind of the two value props that you can provide. It's the very rare company that provides both. You guys actually interestingly, you guys probably provide both, right?

Nick Werker

Yeah. I don't want to be that guy and say that, but...

Matt Spiegel

No. But you do because you're obviously saving them a ton of time by taking phone calls off the table, letting someone else handle that. But you're also then answering the call and you're situated in a way that you're going to help them convert and get that lead, that potential new client connected quicker and hopefully a higher percentage close. Right?

Nick Werker

Yeah. And we don't generate new business. We don't help them make more money, but we do help them capitalize on the opportunities that their marketing...

Matt Spiegel

That's exactly...

Nick Werker

And goodwill have already generated.

Matt Spiegel

Yeah, that's exactly right. Lawmatics delivers on the same two value props in the same way. The amount of time... So what Lawmatics does, and what I think any law firm needs to have this day and age is an automation platform, is automating things that are mundane, the processes that happen all the time. I got to be honest, Nick, it's crazy to me the amount of time that our customers are saving. I had no idea. I actually thought that it would be the other way around, that our bigger value prop would be all the new business that we're getting because of our conversion, the intake process. We're going to help you convert more leads and we're going to nurture your past clients and that's going to bring in heaps of business. And that's true, that happens. But what's astounding is the amount of time we are looking at, we surveyed our users and our average law firm, which has three to five lawyers in it, they're saving a total of 15 to 20 hours per week.

Nick Werker

That's insane.

Matt Spiegel

And I was completely floored. And so we double checked all the data because I thought that there was, people were just clicking the wrong thing. But it was over 50% of the firms were saving that kind of a time. So automation is mandatory now. And the best example I give to tie some of the stuff we were talking about earlier together, and I ask this question all the time is, "Okay," so I have a room of lawyers and I say, "All right, who has more than 500 past clients?" Everybody raises their hand. I say, "Awesome. How many of you are communicating with all of them on their birthday?"And then all of the hands go down, right? Because how the hell are you going to do that? How are you going to send an email to every one of... You have 2000 past clients. How are you going to send an email to them on their birthday? Well, you can do it with an automation platform. It just does it for you, right? It's such an easy concept to kind of understand. And if you don't understand how sending an email to your past clients on their birthday can help you get business, then I'm not sure that we can really help you. It should be pretty easy to understand how valuable that could be.

Nick Werker

I like the idea that, because I don't do that. I don't email clients on their birthday, but I do have other automations that happen when clients reach certain milestones or.

Matt Spiegel

Yeah, exactly.

Nick Werker

It's just automated. So...

Matt Spiegel

I used to do criminal defense, and in California, when you get a misdemeanor, you can get it expunged from your record in three years. So if I get a DUI, I can't wait for that three year mark because I really want to get that thing expunged, right? That's huge. You need a lawyer's help to get it expunged. And as a criminal offense lawyer, I would charge 1,500 bucks to do an expungement, right? Here's the problem. How am I going to remember when everyone needs their expungement? I'm going to set a little calendar date three years out, and I'm going to look at my... "Oh, it's time to contact this." No, but how awesome would it have been when I was practicing criminal defense if I already have their conviction date, I'm keeping track of it in my software. So how awesome would it be if just two years and nine months after their conviction date, it just automatically sent the person an email saying, "Hey, guess what, come back. It's time to do your expungement." It would've been a printing press. I would've just been printing money.

Nick Werker

And how much money do you save on lead generation? Because you've already converted that person as a customer. They're already comfortable working with you. You don't have to go out and find new expungements. You already have pending expungements. That's your...

Matt Spiegel

That's exactly right. And it's value. So this brings us to a discussion, which I'd love to have with you, and you'll probably like it too, I guess. But the other big thing about a software Lawmatics and we haven't talked about yet is metrics, KPIs. I believe truly that if you cannot measure a marketing source that you are spending money on, then you shouldn't do it. And it might be working really well for you and taking it off the table might kill your business, but if you can't measure what's working, you shouldn't do it at all. Right? And so to come back to one of the most important metrics, I think is acquisition cost. These are things, you and me, Nick, we know that like the back of our hand, we live and die by CAC, customer acquisition cost. But lawyers don't even know what that is, but they should.If your average revenue from a customer, from a client at a law firm is 2,500 bucks, but you're spending $5,000 to get that client in marketing, well that doesn't work. So to come back to this example where it's like, all right, let's say you spent $500 to get that DUI client and you made $5,000 from them for the case. Well now if you go get another $1,500 from them, that just increases the ratio of your cost of acquisition to the revenue side, which is really, really good, big metric to pay attention to. But these metrics, these KPIs are so critical. We're trying to introduce these business defining metrics to law firms that they typically don't measure.

Nick Werker

We will be right back after this short ad.Speaker 3:When a client calls, they're really looking for immediate service. Because we have Answering Legal and we're able to see every client message and we're able to contact our clients immediately. My name is Margo Gannes and I'm a partner at Gannes and Musico. We started using Answering Legal because we were unable to answer all of our phone calls. Answering Legal has allowed my firm to get hired on numerous clients that we never would have. We get messages throughout the night and on the weekends, sometimes we're in court or we're dealing with other clients. And because of Answering Legal, my partner and I are able to address any client concerns or any new clients immediately. And it's really increased our business. Answering Legal has allowed us to service our clients in a way that their needs are met and their phone calls are answered, and we're able to spend more time doing the things that are necessary for our clients.

Nick Werker

I want to pose a question to you because I have a feeling that the answer is yes, and it seems like from what I know about Lawmatics, that the KPIs are really strong, but the insights that you can glean from the KPIs are really strong. I want to do this with a story because this is a true story. So about a week ago, a very, very, very close friend of mine called me up and he's like, "Hey, you do marketing, right?" And I said, "Yes, I do marketing." And he said, "Well, I'm trying to find another income stream..." In so many words, this guy used to be a high end waiter, he has a day job, but he just wants to make more money for his family, he needs more money. He's like, "I've been writing freelancing online, but that's not really sustainable. And I'm looking to do... I do SAT tutoring and I can do tutoring virtually, and I'm really good at it."And so I'm talking to him about, I was like, "Yeah, I could. I'll do it for you, man. I'll set up your website, I'll set up a calendar, they can book, I'll host it. Don't even worry about it. I'll do the whole thing." And he's like, "Oh, but what about Google? Can I spend money on Google? I have a friend who spends money on Google." And I was like "Off the top of my head, I don't know if each of those clicks that we would generate for you is going to be more or less or profitable for you based on what you try. I know nothing about your business. I can't tell you if you're going to make more money than it's going to cost me to bring you a client. On the flip side is I can't even tell you what it would cost in any space on what it would would cost you, nor the amount of time that it would take either you or me to generate an ad or..."So I want to know, because I think that this is kind of true, is lawyers have different types of cases that might take a certain amount of time. So the return on spend or the revenue that you might make versus the amount of time that it takes you to complete that case could be different. And each different medium has a different cost. So is there a way to cross reference all of that and see where I should be spending more money here to get this type of criminal defense case, and I should be spending more money over here to get this type of criminal defense case, because this one might take me a little bit more time, but the spend on this platform is way lower. So can you optimize where you should spend-

Matt Spiegel

Absolutely.

Nick Werker

... Your money on?

Matt Spiegel

Absolutely. Again, this is where... And we can geek out over metrics and stuff, but my view is you need to be able to slice and dice. You need to be able to slice and dice your data however you want. I view it as you need to be able to ask whatever question you want of your data. So if I want to ask that question, which is like, "Okay, which type of criminal defense case is more valuable to my business?" You should be able to ask that question of your data and get an answer. And I think that's pretty fundamental. I mean, well, most fundamental would be just general source tracking. I'm spending this much money on an AdWords campaign and this is the ROI that I'm getting. But being able to slice and dice that ROI and analyze the revenue that you're generating from a particular matter, a particular type of case, and how much time you're spending on it, these are all things that you should be able to look at in many different ways.

Nick Werker

Yeah, you're right. I just geeked out and tried to ask you a complicated question because I get excited about... Because I have that... I can do that. I can find a certain type of law firm that I get from this certain type of ad and they only use... Obviously I want people to use more minutes, but I find a certain... I can only find, say I charge by the minute, I can find bigger customers in one place, but I find a lot more smaller customers in another place. And what's more valuable to me and how much does it cost to obtain each one? And where should I be doing that? So I just get nerdy.

Matt Spiegel

I mean I'll be like... I mean, you should see our data. I'll be like, "Hey listen, I want to know what... Is a lead more valuable if it comes from Google after 4:00 PM on a full moon."

Nick Werker

Yep.

Matt Spiegel

Right? I mean, we'll get crazy with our data.

Nick Werker

I run into that problem a lot too, where I'm like, "Am I overthinking this? Am I putting too much? Is it just random?" There's no trend for the full moon, but I want to know.

Matt Spiegel

It's really, to me it's all about, you do have to be a little careful, I think is good advice to share with law firms. It's like you want to make sure that you have some statistical relevancy. So if you're looking at a particular data set and you're trying to drill down into numbers and your sample set is two cases or something, it might not be statistically relevant. So you want to make sure you have enough sample set that you're getting data to make a decision off of, right?

Nick Werker

Totally. Don't change your entire strategy because you've got one big whale or... You know what I'm saying? And don't quit before the miracle happens too.

Matt Spiegel

That's exactly right.

Nick Werker

You have to give yourself, I would say, ample opportunity in order to and sample size, what's statistically relevant for my stats people out there in order to make decisions. But I want to talk about clients because I think we sort of give lawyers in the past six to 12 months, a lot of people are like, "Oh, lawyers are doing so good. They've caught up, they took on the technology, they did this." But I give more credit to the law firms that have become what I'll call client centric. And what I think is becoming a term now. How have the expectations of legal clients evolved in the recent years and why might law firms need a platform like Lawmatics in order to meet those expectations?

Matt Spiegel

So look, this is my bread and butter. This is what, when I go around and talk to bar associations, this is what I talk about. It's about thinking about customer service. I think customer service can outweigh performance in the courtroom or results in matters. It's just as simple as that. And so you need to take a look at the customer experience, the service that you provide. I call it the path to delightenment, which is looking at this client journey and trying to figure out every step of the journey, what opportunities do I have to delight my client or my potential client? And that's starts from the very get go. When they call, do you answer right away?It's as simple as that. And it goes all the way through how you communicate with them, how you make them feel. You got to remember something. And almost everybody who's listening to this, and almost every one of our customers and probably every one of your customers, Nick, they do a certain type of law. It's going to be personal injury, it's going to be bankruptcy, it's going to be criminal defense, it's going to be estate planning, it's going to be family law, it's going to be immigration. That's like majority of it. The case that you are representing them on, this is the most important thing happening in their life.

Nick Werker

That's right.

Matt Spiegel

Categorically. To you, it's just another matter. Put yourself in their shoes. This is the most important thing happening in their life. How do you think they want to be treated? Put yourself in their shoes and think about it that way. And it will change the way you think about customer experience, customer service and what you do at your firm I think.

Nick Werker

I love that synopsis. And at the risk of being chastised by my friends and colleagues and my family members, I'm a very anecdotal person. I like to tell stories. I play a lot of slow pitch softball. Because that's what I'm capable of, not no shame to my slow pitch guys out there.

Matt Spiegel

I love it.

Nick Werker

But I've always worked under the assumption that it's really easy to market a good product. And over the years people will compliment me, "Oh, you're doing a great job marketing this, that." And I'm like, "Nah, dude. It's so easy to market a good product." It's because we have a good product and it's not necessarily the truth. In essence, all that I offer is a call center. And yes, my people really, I do believe in my people. And that's my point is that the people who run this organization top to bottom are superior. And that's what customer service is it's a person to person connection. So when I play softball, they have these bats are made out of this crazy material. You hit the ball and it makes the ball go farther. And if you can get an extra 20, 30 feet out of a hit that turns a ball, that somebody catches into a home run. So you want to maximize the amount of feet that you can hit a ball. And there are bat companies out there that make the best bats on the market.

Matt Spiegel

And there are people that will pop a top off that bat and shave it so that you get even more...

Nick Werker

Oh, they'll shave it. Oh, that's dangerous. But these companies, there's one specific, I'm not going to name them because I don't want to be sued because I don't know if they'll come after me. This is a small podcast, but I'm not going to do that. They make the best bat on the market and they have the worst customer service of anybody I've... Like, it's almost as bad as airplane like airlines, right? Well, you're calling them up and be like, "Hey, my bat it cracked, it did this, it did that." So on and so forth. And they tell you, "Sell it." Right? "We're not going to replace it, try to get the money." They're insane. So yeah, they might have a great product, but if their customer service is terrible, I'm not going to buy, even if I get the extra... I don't care how good of a lawyer you are, if somebody calls you up and you say, "I'm the best, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah." No, you're a jerk, right?

Matt Spiegel

Totally.

Nick Werker

Your customer service sucks. I can't get ahold of you. I don't know what to expect. I'm not going to hire you, right? Because I have a level of expectation that I need you to meet. So you summarize that beautifully. I want to ask you, because I think most lawyers have a general idea of the benefits that they get from a CRM like yours. Not totally the automation and the analytics, but I think we've covered that. I do want to ask you, are there any under the radar features that Lawmatics provides that attorneys should be aware of?

Matt Spiegel

I think... Well, it's hard because it depends on the firm. I think that email marketing is under the radar to a lot of firms, even though it shouldn't be, right? And Lawmatics provides all that, email campaigns, newsletters, all that kind of action is handled inside of Lawmatics. So while it's not under the radar to us, it may be under the radar to a lot of law firms out there. Lawmatics now offers some time and billing components. So we've kind of gone down that road a little bit. It's certainly not nearly as robust as My Case or a Cleo is, but to a lot of law firms out there, it's plenty. And it actually just allows you to live in Lawmatics for the entire life cycle, which is a pretty cool thing.

Nick Werker

Well, and the more data that you can collect inside of Lawmatics, the more robust that your insights can be, right?

Matt Spiegel

That's exactly right.

Nick Werker

You need an email, but it's all right there. You can cross reference that with the whole entire life cycle of a lead, to a customer, to a returning customer.

Matt Spiegel

And just the fact that we're an automation platform and we have this beautiful automation engine means that anything we do, we can plug into that engine, which means things like time and billing and a lot of other things, document management, all that stuff can just be automated.

Nick Werker

So I'm going to selfishly ask you for a sneak peek. Is there anything that you can tell us about platform development? Something coming out, maybe?

Matt Spiegel

We are this week, so I'm not sure when this is going to go, but this week or next week we're going to launch a feature that seems small, but it's maybe one of the biggest features we can launch in a while, which is we're giving... So Lawmatics has booking platform built in, so you can send out a link and people can book meetings with you. We're now going to have the ability to tie that to a required payment. So if you want to charge for a consultation, which so many people are doing now, you could limit it so that they can't actually reserve that appointment until they've made a payment. And that all goes through our platform. It's automated and it's really fantastic. So that's one that we're really excited about.Another one that we're in the process of releasing right now... So email is a really tricky thing. Lawmatics is ESP, it's an email service provider. Getting email delivered, man, it keeps me up at night. It's not... When you have thousands of law firms and they're all sending... I mean we're sending millions and millions of emails every month. Making sure that that gets delivered is really hard. One way that we can solve that though is by sending email through someone's own outbox. Not the mass emails. That's going to get you black...We don't want to get you blacklisted. So we don't want to all of a sudden have 5,000 emails go from your outbox in Google. But the critical emails in Lawmatics like sending out an invoice or sending out a document that needs to be signed or sending out a form that needs to be filled out or a booking link, very easy to send those directly through your outbox. So now you're not even... You worry not about sending through Lawmatics IP, the IP address and spam issues or anything like that. It's literally you sit down at your computer and hit compose. It goes through your own outbox.

Nick Werker

Interesting.

Matt Spiegel

This is a really big feature and we actually will be releasing the feature for mass campaigns. What we do in that situation is we throttle it. So we only send one email every 30 seconds. So it could take a while, but at least you know that you're going to have no issues with deliverability. So this is, these are the things that we think of sometimes. It's not a super sexy feature that actually makes the most impact.

Nick Werker

Totally understand. I'm excited for that. I like the idea of throttling because I need email throttling, so I don't know how, but I'm going to hit you up for help. So instead of asking like, "Oh, why should lawyers... Where should they go to get, to check out Lawmatics?" For anybody who's listening to this, who's interested in trying Lawmatics, can you sort of explain the process of getting started using the platform?

Matt Spiegel

So this is an area that we care a lot about. So we put a lot of effort into onboarding. So when you come onto Lawmatics, the thing is it's a Ferrari, right? But not everybody knows how to drive a stick shift in a Ferrari. So we will really walk through and we will help you think about your processes and help you develop the automations that you really want. It would be unfair of us to sit a lawyer down and say like, "Hey, just go do email marketing." Not going to know what to do. So we really help and an onboarding process for us can, it takes 30 to 45 days. We really spend time working with you and making sure that you're going to be set up for success on the platform.

Nick Werker

Love it. Matt, I would like to thank you so much for joining me on the show today. Really appreciate you being here.

Matt Spiegel

Yeah, Nick, thank you so much for having me. It's good to talk one on one, but I look forward to being on more panels with you too like we've done in the past.

Nick Werker

Yeah, same here. So for anybody who's listening, we hope you enjoyed this conversation. We will be back with another episode of Everything Except the Law soon. Be sure to check out previous episodes on the show on Apple Podcast, Spotify, Anchor, the Answering Legal YouTube channel. Links to everything covered in today's conversation can be found in the description of this episode, including the link to get started with Lawmatics. We hope to see you next time everyone.

No matter the size of your firm or the practice areas you serve, professional networking is an important aspect of growing your business. While growing your professional network is important, we know that you are accustomed to dealing with competing priorities and this one may sometimes take a back seat to other more pressing items.Lawmatics is just the tool to aid you in not only tracking referrals, but also interpreting insights into your network and making informed business decisions based on them. With the help of automations, you are able to “set and forget” an all-encompassing process for building and strengthening your referral relationships.In order to make the most of your referral tracking efforts in Lawmatics there are several things you first need to account for. You’ve probably heard the phrase “garbage in, garbage out” when it comes to entering and interpreting data. This phrase certainly applies here: without clean data going into the system, you will not reap the benefits of the helpful insights that can come out. When all of these elements of referral tracking come together, you will wind up with the key pieces of data you need to determine where and how to best invest in your referral network. Lawmatics not only makes these results easy to produce, but also simple to interpret and take action upon. By the end of this tutorial you will be able to provide a better experience for both new referral clients and referral partners, leading to more conversions, more referrals, and more bottom line.

Setting Up Marketing Sources

Your first step in tracking referrals is to familiarize yourself with and make any adjustments to the marketing settings in Lawmatics. To get started, click on the “Settings” gear icon near the top right corner and then select “Marketing Sources” from the left sidebar. If you are brand new to Lawmatics, you will only see one source here, and that is Referrals. Take the time to add any other sources from which your firm may get leads.Let’s focus on that built-in Referrals source. This source is different from any of the other custom sources you may create in that it will allow you to track individual referrers under this source rather than tracking a subset of campaigns.

Notice how in the image above, you see a list of names under the Referral source. To make the most of this feature, we suggest importing a list of all your firm’s referral partners using our mass import feature.It’s recommended to use a tag to label these contacts as referral partners, so before you import your list, format your spreadsheet as shown in the image below:

Feel free to include any additional fields such as phone number, company name, birthdate, etc. Then go to the “Import” page found on the left sidebar in settings to run your import. We’ll dive deeper into how you go about actually using and populating this data in your CRM in the section of this tutorial.You may have noticed that the built-in Referrals field does not necessarily differentiate between attorney referrals, client referrals, and any other type that may come into your firm. If this is something you would like to track, we suggest making a custom field for this data. Try to avoid creating additional custom marketing sources for these different types of referrals as they won’t follow the same format as the built-in Referrals field.Your custom field for tracking referral type may look something like this:

Now you’ll be able to select not only who referred the new PNC, but also which of these categories they fall into.Last but not least, if you also would like to track other attorneys that you may refer matters OUT to, we suggest setting up a custom field for this as well. This is completely optional, but is something that we recommend if you would like to view any statistics on this data down the road. That custom field will look something like this:

By making it a lookup type field, you will be able to select from any of those contacts that you have imported in from the spreadsheet example above (or any other contact in your CRM).All of these steps are setting you up to avoid the “garbage in, garbage out” debacle that can happen so often with CRMs. Take this a step further by reading onto the next section.

Populating Data in Your CRM

With referral tracking setup taken care of, refer to the following best practices when populating actual referral data into the CRM. There are several methods by which data can be entered, the first of which is the matter profile.

Matter Profile

Remember that Source and Campaign are both built-in fields in Lawmatics designed for data entry and we do not recommend making custom fields for tracking referrals except for the “type” and “referred TO” fields explained above. When you go to a matter’s profile, click on the “Details” tab to view all data fields for this matter, and then click “Edit” at the bottom right to populate or change any data. You will find both the Source and Campaign fields under the “Matter Information” section on the page. Note that once you select “Referrals” as the Marketing Source, the Campaign field label will update to display “Referrer” instead, as shown below.

In the “Referrer” field, you will be able to select from any contacts in your CRM. Simply begin typing their name or email address and the contact will appear in the drop down. Remember the import we discussed earlier? Any of those referral partners that you imported in will be available to search for in this drop down list.The reason for populating this data via drop down list rather than having you type in the name is to normalize the data for future reporting purposes, avoiding any misspellings or name variations. You’ll be able to easily generate lists of which referrers brought in which matters along with any other data points, covered in the reporting section of this tutorial still to come.

Custom Forms

In addition to populating data directly in the matter profile, you can also capture this information in a custom form. This can be very useful if you use an internal intake form for leads calling in, a staff notes form, or really any other variation of an intake form for collecting initial information.The main thing to keep in mind when collecting this data via form is to once again make sure you are using the proper built-in fields. You will find the fields for Source and Campaign (remember, this field changes to Referrer when Referrals is selected as the source but it is still technically called Campaign) in the Standard Fields section in the form builder. Drag and drop the fields onto the form, as shown below.

If you are using an internal form for the intake process you may also wish to include the “Referred TO” or “Referral Type” custom fields that you created in the first section above. However, remember that lookup fields can only be used on internal forms, which applies to your “Referred TO” contact lookup field.

Automate the Referral Process

You now have everything in place to effectively track your referral data. Take your setup to the next level by adding automation to the process. There are many different ways that automation can be implemented into your referral tracking, here we will discuss a few suggestions from the Lawmaticians.

Thank the Referrer

One of the best and most simple ways to strengthen your referral relationship is to thank someone for sending a referral your way. Without Lawmatics it may seem tedious and labor-intensive to keep tabs on who referred each lead and to actually go about thanking the correct referral once the lead hires your firm. An automation can make this a quick and easy step in your process.In the example below you will see that we have created an automation that triggers when a lead changes to the Hired status, only if their source is Referral and a Referrer (Campaign) has been populated. We are then assigning a task to call and thank that referrer.

Depending on your process, you may find a different automation trigger or action item works better for you. Feel free to customize this so that it best suits your firm. However you decide to set it up, the small step of thanking this referral partner can greatly strengthen and solidify your relationship to that person.

Refer a Matter Out

If you commonly refer matters out to other law firms, you may like to set up an email template for sending the matter’s information to this partner. Begin by going to the Emails page under the Assets tab and create a new email.When creating this email template you will need to keep something in mind regarding field merge. This email template will either merge in the matter’s information or the recipient’s information, but it will not merge in both. Most commonly, you wish to have the matter’s name, phone number, email address, and any other pertinent information merged in as opposed to the referral partner’s information.To accomplish this, note how we have addressed the email Dear Friend as opposed to using the referral partner’s name, since the name merged in will be the matter’s name.

When you build this email template into an automation, it is crucial to make sure you select the email recipient, as well as the merge data from option accordingly. This is demonstrated in the example below.

This tells the system to send the email to the contact selected in the Referred TO field, but any merge fields in the email will display the automation target (the matter)’s information.You will see that we have implemented a custom sub-status of Referred Out as the trigger for this automation. This is a great way to set up future reporting on how many leads were referred out of your firm and to whom they were referred.

Referral Reporting and Analytics

Lawmatics custom reporting puts you in the driver seat to slice and dice your data any way that will prove insightful for your firm. While there are infinite ways to customize a referral report, here we’ll walk through some of the basic steps.

Create a Custom Report

You’ll find the reporting feature under the Insights tab at the top of your page. Once you create your report, you will begin by adding columns and filters. Below you will find a sample report showing some columns and a filter that we would recommend for tracking marketing sources. Feel free to add any additional columns or remove any of these on your report as you see fit.

Filter the Report

Note that we have filtered this report if Source Has Any Value. This will show us our referrals in comparison to other marketing sources as well, if you wish to only see referrals on this report, simply select Source Is Equal To Referrals.

Add Grouping

If you do keep the filter that we have demonstrated in the image above, then we recommend grouping the report based on the source field. This will blanket your Referrals together, and show you the total number versus your other marketing sources.

Now we are seeing valuable information on our referral performance. First, we see that four matters came from referrals versus less for the other two sources shown. We also see the referrer Saul Goodman brought us two leads, where our other referrers only referred one each. Looks like it might be time to take Saul out to lunch and build that relationship.

Analytics Page

In addition to custom reporting, you can also utilize the Analytics page, also found under the insights tab, to gain insights into your referral performance. First, use the provided source stats graph to visually see where Referrals stack up against your other marketing sources.

When you scroll to the bottom of the Analytics page, you will also notice the Stats by Source section. Expand the campaigns on the Referrals source, as shown below, to see an abundance of data on each referral partner, including any money you have spent on that person as well as how much revenue they have brought in to your firm.

Whether you are customizing a report or taking advantage of our built-in graphs and calculations, Lawmatics has all the tools you need to make informed decisions on how to best manage and strengthen your referral partnerships.

Conclusion

While you may or may not enjoy networking, there is no doubt that it is an essential part of running a successful law firm. With these referral tracking tips Lawmatics helps you streamline this once-tedious and time consuming element of your practice.One key takeaway from this tutorial is the importance of creating a strong foundational setup for your referral tracking. If you aren’t populating data into the system correctly then you won’t end up reaping all the benefits. When you put good data into your CRM, you will come out with good insightful reporting on that data. Use these insights to determine where to invest further in your referral network.Like everything in Lawmatics, once you add automation to the referral process you will up your game to the next level by removing any need for manual labor. Not only will you save time, but you will also create stronger relationships with referral partners than you ever have before through the use of automated thank you’s and check-ins.Worry less about managing the business side of things, and create more space to think about your clients and practicing law. We’d love to hear how you use Lawmatics to track referrals and how it has helped build your relationships, email us at support@lawmatics.com to share!

As we find ourselves in the midst of sweater weather and pumpkin spice season, Lawmatics has another new round of feature releases that we hope kicks off your autumn season with a loud and celebratory bang.

Payment Gateway

Collecting payment for consultation fees just got a whole lot easier with the addition of the LMPay Gateway in custom forms and booking forms. Add this advanced field to your consultation forms to make it easy for clients to schedule an appointment and pay for a consultation in one fell swoop.

To start using this feature, email us at support@lawmatics.com and request LMPay activation.

File Folders

Lawmatics is a great tool for securely storing important files and documents from your firm’s many matters. With this huge improvement to our file storage system you can now create custom folders within a matter’s files tab and move files between folders as needed.Click here to learn more about using file folders.

Multi-Select Files (Bulk Actions)

In addition to creating folders for your matter files, you can now bulk select files with the option to download or delete multiple files at once, saving you the time of managing files one by one. It’s easy. Simply select the box adjacent to the file name and click on the action of your choice.For additional information on our file request feature, click here.

Payment Receipts

We are thrilled to share yet another feature addition to LM Pay: Automatic Payment Receipts. Create custom receipt email templates for each type of invoice, such as consultation fee vs. retainer fee, and then select whether or not you would like to include the official receipt as a PDF attachment (sample shown below). Once you have created a receipt template for any particular invoice type, said receipt will automatically be delivered upon successful payment. This is yet another way of delighting your clients every step of the way, sans any heavy lifting.

To learn more about creating custom receipt templates, click here.

Evergreen Trust Alerts

With our time and billing features you can use Lawmatics to manage your firm's trust account (IOLTA). Our new Evergreen Trust Alerts give you the option to set a minimum trust balance notification, making it easy to take action when a matter’s trust balance dips below the minimum you have specified . To use this feature, turn on the toggle on the ‘Minimum Trust Balance Alert’, as shown above, and then click the edit pencil on the far right to set the minimum balance for a particular matter.Read up on Trust Accounting in Lawmatics here.—Thanks for checking out the latest features from the Lawmaticians. We hope you enjoy these cozy days of fall, and stay tuned for more exciting releases to come!

Lawmatics CEO Matt Spiegel joined Adriana Linares on the podcast New Solo. They discussed the purpose of a CRM (client relationship management) software and why client relationships matter, even after a matter has concluded. Here are some highlights:

Why do I need a CRM for my law firm?

In any kind of consumer-driven law, from family law to personal injury, your client’s matter is likely the single most important thing going on in their life. With a client relationship management software, your firm can make each client feel like they have your full attention.Whether you’re a large or solo firm, relationships matter. A previous client might return with new business or refer a new client, so continue communication after their matter has concluded. Consider sending a newsletter or even personalized birthday cards to keep in touch. A CRM brings clients within reach and keeps them there.With a CRM like Lawmatics, you can create an intake process customized to your firm and practice area. Automations enable you to engage new leads immediately after they reach out — whether you’re in court, bed, or the Bahamas. Track and bill your time, send documents, analyze your marketing results, and free up valuable time. No matter your firm size, a CRM is critical to increasing bandwidth.

What’s the difference between a CRM and case management software?

A CRM and case management software are not necessarily the same thing. The difference lies in the specific features a software offers.Practice management primarily focuses on features like time & billing and document management. These tools are cornerstones of the work that goes into managing an active case. A CRM has tools needed to manage a client regardless of the status of their matter or how many matters they have. It focuses on features like client communication, emails, forms, and marketing.To put it simply, practice management tools help you practice law; a CRM helps you run the business. If no one software has every feature you want, research what softwares or platforms integrate to create a seamless solution for your firm.

What should my law firm’s intake process look like?

Any law firm’s client intake process should be easily repeatable and consistent. It should also plan for contingencies.What if a new lead contacts your firm but doesn’t follow through with scheduling a consultation? What if they ghost your firm after their consultation? Not every new client will have a perfectly linear intake path, so your firm’s intake process should anticipate different branches of a client’s journey. Identify the spots where a lead might fall through the cracks, and make a plan to re-engage them.

Takeaways

Running a law firm is a lot of work. Between working active cases, consulting potential new clients, organizing marketing efforts, and taking care of administrative business, a modern law firm isn’t built to run manually. As much as possible, get your CRM or case management software to do your work for you. Automations can not only make your intake process more efficient and consistent, they give your firm the bandwidth it needs to anticipate and respond to any contingency.If you’re evaluating your firm’s processes around client relationship management, ask yourself three questions: is my intake process consistent? Have I planned for contingencies? Is this as efficient as possible? If you answer ‘no’ to any of these questions, then it’s probably time to look for a CRM.

Podcast transcript

Adriana Linares

Hi everyone, it's time for another episode of New Solo on the Legal Talk Network. My name is Adriana Linares, I'm your hostess, I hope with the mostest, thanks for joining me today. We are going to have another round of wine questions with my guests today.If you have listened to our last episode, I was having a little bit of fun because I've been taking a professional wine course in New Orleans. I want everybody to know I graduated top of my class. I'm going to quiz my guest today. Matt Spiegel. Hi Matt.

Matt Spiegel

Hi Adriana. How are you?

Adriana Linares

I'm great. What do you do. Where do you work? I'm kidding.

Matt Spiegel

What do I do? I don't know anymore.

Adriana Linares

No, I think you do. Let me help. So everyone, Matt Spiegel is a name that might be familiar to you. If it's not, you are certainly familiar with products of the past and products of the current that Matt has developed.He's a legal technology expert. He's a lawyer as well. You were the original founder of MyCase. You grew up that baby, you let it leave the house and you created a new baby called Lawmatics, and I want to thank you so much for becoming a new sponsor of New Solo.

Matt Spiegel

Yes, thank you. So we're very happy about that. I feel like that was a long time coming for us and we're very fortunate enough to be in a position to be able to do that, which I like. And yes, I did. I am the original founder of MyCase. I did grow it up and then let it leave the house and then go from house to house, to house to house.

Adriana Linares

It's still couch surfing. We don't know if it's found a permanent home yet, but it's still couch surfing.

Matt Spiegel

Exactly right. It really took after me in college, just like trying to find places to live.

Adriana Linares

Well you must be very proud of that baby because it has certainly gone off grown up and become a very successful product out there. And I know we have lots of listeners that use MyCase and they have you to thank for it. I like MyCase a lot. So Lawmatics though is not necessarily new anymore, but I think you should definitely tell everybody what Lawmatics does and the things they can use it with.

Matt Spiegel

So we just technically celebrated our five year birthday.

Adriana Linares

I was guessing five years, mentally.

Matt Spiegel

And it's weird, right? Because I think it doesn't feel like five years and obviously the whole pandemic thing just fast forwarded time, and has definitely created this wonky sense of the past.So it doesn't feel like five years, but I go back and I think about it and it's just been a lot, and we've built this massive product and what it's become, it's definitely exciting to me.I had no idea what we were going to really build when we started to build it. And so to see what it's become now is pretty exciting and I'm pretty happy with where we're at. Although, and again, while it does feel it's been a long time and five years feels like a long time, it also feels like we're just getting started. So I think that's why there's definitely a bit of a dichotomy there.

Adriana Linares

Are we still calling it a CRM or have you grown it to a point where it's beyond a CRM, it's like a platform?

Matt Spiegel

We refer to it as a platform, but like-

Adriana Linares

Okay.

Matt Spiegel

... I mean Salesforce is a platform and Salesforce is a CRM. I think we still have this problem where people don't know what a CRM is or-

Adriana Linares

Yes, and that's where I was going. Please tell us.

Matt Spiegel

If you look at the definition of what a CRM stands for, is like customer relationship manager, right? Management.

Adriana Linares

Client.

Matt Spiegel

Client, customer, whatever you want to call it, right? It's a relationship management tool. Well to me, everything that you do for your business, when it comes to your clients, is part of managing that relationship. So obviously, nurturing that relationship through intake process, that is part of the relationship management. Nurturing them after their case is over with newsletters and trip campaigns, that's obviously-

Adriana Linares

Staying connected, top of mind.

Matt Spiegel

Same thing. That is very much relationship management. But there are a lot of other things that are relationship management too. You could argue that helping them manage their case, whether maybe even billing them, to getting paid, managing their documents, that's part relationship management as well. So to me, I view CRM as all encompassing, is pretty much everything. Anything that you really need to manage your business. If your business deals with customers or clients.

Adriana Linares

And I should say, just to give you more credibility than you already have, you practiced law for a long time. Well, not that long because you're not that old.

Matt Spiegel

Five years. Five years.

Adriana Linares

You practiced law. So you came from the background of understanding what it's like to run a law firm from the backend, not necessarily just the practical side. So you've got experience running a law firm, you started a practice management system and now we've got Lawmatics that's a CRM.I think a year or two ago, someone asked me for a newsletter or magazine something, "What do you think is going to be the biggest trend of..." It was either 2020 or 2021? May have even been 2022 when they asked me and I said, "Well, it's probably CRM." Because I talked to so many lawyers that what I get asked about repeatedly today, isn't the cloud anymore? Woo, we're over that. We're on the cloud, we believe in the cloud, we got there.The two hottest things that I hear about right now, are attorneys asking me about, client relationship managers and document assembly, which back to your point is if you can start the relationship with a client where you're gathering data, gathering information digitally in something like an intake system, a CRM, and then you're able to push that data digitally from the intake form all the way to the final bill that you're sending out, then you're managing your client relationship and using technology to make it smooth and seamless.So as far as Lawmatics goes, because I do always like to talk about pricing and people are going to wonder, and you're a sponsor, so we're going to say, "Go to Lawmatics and check them out." Tell us about pricing a little bit when it comes to Lawmatics.

Matt Spiegel

So pricing is pretty straightforward. We're kind of like anything else in the market where it's generally going to be based off of the number of users that you have in the platform.I'm a big believer in playing around with pricing, but I'm also a big believer in value pricing. And what that means is really you want to price your product off of the things that deliver, the perceived value that your customer looks at. And what I mean by that is, a law firm tends to think about how successful they are by the number of people they have.And that's not necessarily the best measure, but tends to be the way it is. It's not necessarily how many cases they have, it's really more how many people do they have. So because they look at people as a big measure of how well they're doing and how big their law firm is, then we base our pricing off of that.That's what I mean by value based pricing. And so we continue that trend. We've experimented in the past with doing pricing based off of the number of cases that you have. And again, we just, lawyers didn't necessarily attribute the same value to that and it was difficult.

Adriana Linares

Oh that's interesting.

Matt Spiegel

So we charge like 250 bucks basically per month. And that comes with three users and a bunch of other great stuff. And then if you need to add users on beyond that, it's just as user pricing.And then we have another tier when you get to 10 users, that changes the pricing a little bit as we do serve everywhere from the solo law firm all the way up to firms with, we have a firm with 500 lawyers, so we really run the gamut there, which is also something that's pretty unique about what we do, is that we serve segment to the market that not a lot of other products can span across. And so yeah, that's kind of how our pricing is structured. We have little add-ons here and there, but generally speaking it's the user based pricing.

Adriana Linares

That's the starting point. And so at $250 a month, is that whether you're one or three people?

Matt Spiegel

Yeah. If you're one, you're paying $247, if you're three, you're paying $247, after that, you pay more. And what we find is there are very few true solos out there. Even if you are true solo, I can promise you, you spend 240... In fact, the true solos probably save more money using Lawmatics than the people who have three or four lawyers.

Adriana Linares

I cannot have conversations today where somebody says to me, "$67 a month, that's really expensive," or $250 because I want to say, "We should have had this conversation 15 years ago," because my number would not have been in the double or even the low triple digits.We would've been having a conversation in the thousands of dollars about the server and the software and the maintenance and the upkeep that you would need.So when something sounds expensive to you attorneys, I want you to think about one billable hour a month that you would pay equivalent to a product like this and what it would save you in time and energy and duplication and reducing risk in making mistakes, because the more tech savvy and digital you are, the less mistakes you can possibly make. I won't say you won't make.So I think that's very reasonable, especially what CRMs can do. Before we break off, move on to our next segment where I want to ask you to teach us a little bit more about CRMs and what to look for and a little more open... Not necessarily about Lawmatics, but if you're shopping for a CRM, here's what you're looking for. That's what I want to ask you about next. But before I do that, I have a quiz question for you, Matt. You told me you were a wine guy.

Matt Spiegel

I love wine, but I did something very strategic, which is I became a wine guy and then found friends who were really rich and really like wine. And that's the best place to be.

Adriana Linares

You're a baller man. I just want to grow up and be Matt Spiegel and get to go golfing-

Matt Spiegel

No, you just want to go. Yeah, I'm telling you the key is to just make friends with people who spend a lot of money on wine.

Adriana Linares

Yeah. Because I don't ever see myself paying $300. I'd rather buy myself a little Hermes bracelet than a bottle of wine. So you're right, I need those friends. And listeners, if you are that friend, let me know. I'll come-

Matt Spiegel

Hit you up.

Adriana Linares

... Hit me up. Okay. Matt, a Roaja, R-O-A-J-A is, multiple choice: a method of making sherry, a wine from Spain, a rust colored wine or a grape type?

Matt Spiegel

So I do actually notice, I know it's a wine from Spain because when I was 16, I spent a summer in Spain and you can drink at 16. Insane.

Adriana Linares

So civilized.

Matt Spiegel

Yeah,

Adriana Linares

We'll be right back. We're going to listen to some messages from some sponsors.

Joshua Linen

Here's a fact. When it comes to sharing documents with lawyers, clients prefer online options. I'm Joshua Linen, lawyer and resident at Clio. And this is just one finding from our recent legal trends report.It's not surprising that at least 62% of law firms support electronic documents and esignatures today because that's what clients want. Our data shows that email, secure client portals and online file sharing all outran physical mail in terms of how clients want to receive and share documents.Today's services reduce the time it takes to get a simple signature from days to seconds, making it more convenient for you and your clients to work together.For more on how today's clients prefer to work with their lawyer, download Clio's Legal Trends report for free at clio.com/trends. That's Clio spelled C-L-I-O.com/trends.

Adriana Linares

All right, we're back. In our first segment, I wanted to ask you about Lawmatics. I want people to... If they haven't thought about getting a CRM, I want to help them understand what a CRM will help them with insofar as managing their practice.And look, I could talk about this all day, but I've got the actual expert in front of me. So when somebody says, "What do I need a CRM for? I'm just a solo practitioner, or we're a small firm, five people, we don't need to spend money on a CRM. I got a person that does that." What is your answer and your response to that? Encourage people to look into CRMs.

Matt Spiegel

Well, I usually have some questions for them and it's pretty simple, right? Well first of all, it's asking, "Do you know what is the average percentage of business for law firms that come from referral?" Or I'll just straight up ask them, I'll say, "Okay, that's great. Where does most of your business come from?"And they're going to say, referrals.

Adriana Linares

Of course.

Matt Spiegel

It's 75% of law firm business comes from referrals, generally across the board. And so then I say, "Okay, awesome. This means that all your former clients are important to the success of your law firm."So then I say, "Great, do you have 500 former clients?" Most of them say, "Oh, I've got a lot more than that." I say, "Awesome, what are you doing every year on their birthday?" And they say, "What do you mean?"

Adriana Linares

Nothing?

Matt Spiegel

Well, are you sending them a card? Are you sending them an email? They're like, "No, how would we-"

Adriana Linares

Text message?

Matt Spiegel

"Yeah, we have 1500 clients. How are we going to inform our clients? How are we going to send them all a message on their birthday?" And then I say, "Well, first of all, how are you going to generate referral business?" You ushered these clients through the most important thing in their life.Because most law firms, most consumer law firms, whatever that client is going through, is the most important thing that is happening in their life at that time. So whether you like it or not, you are an integral part of their life, at least for a period of time.And so you want them to refer business to you, you want them to have a good experience. I think at least acknowledging their birthday, maybe sending them an email would be the right thing to do. You can't do that without a CRM. It's impossible.The reason why you don't do it, is not because you don't want to do it, it's because you don't have the bandwidth to do it. You don't have the capability to go checking a calendar every single day of the year and then filling out a card and putting it in the mail.So you need a system to help you do that. So that's, I think a very top level example of how I would respond to that question. But I think it's really just holistically, it's helping lawyers understand and get them to think a little differently in the sense that, forget about this as a law firm and think about this as a business.You're a business that provides a product. Your product is legal services. But as a business that provides a product, customer service is the most important thing. I don't care about the outcome. I really don't.I think that you could be the best lawyer in the world and have an unsuccessful practice because you provide terrible customer service. So people are going to like, "Yeah, I got a good outcome." But all they're going to think about is how you are just a total ass hole. And the flip side is true too. You could be a mediocre lawyer, maybe even a bad lawyer, but you could provide an amazing customer experience and you're going to be very successful.

Adriana Linares

And let me put a positive spin on this, which is you could actually lose the case, but if you established a good relationship with your client, and they saw how hard you worked and every effort you made and they were part of that process with you, they're probably going to... Of course we might be disappointed in the outcome, but you still may have done a good job and they would recognize that and still refer you business.I mean, I can't think of a bigger compliment that attorney could get, which is, "we lost my case, but he's still a great attorney and I would still hire her." And I think that CRM, that client relationship managing part is critical, especially when that happens. Not if or when, but if you happen to lose a case, which happens every case, somebody's got to win and somebody's got to lose, if you're nurturing and managing that relationship in a way where they understand how hard you worked, how hard your team worked, you're going to win.

Joshua Linen

Yeah, I agree with you completely. And I think lawyers lose sight of that. They think that, "Oh, I'm just a lawyer, I'm just going to represent them and they're going to be happy." They don't think about the customer service side of it. To me having a CRM, it doesn't necessarily solve all the problems. It doesn't necessarily mean that now you're just going to provide good service. I don't want anybody to think that. But what it does say is that it's a priority to you.

Adriana Linares

A lot of attorneys lose sleep at night wondering where a case is in the process or did I remember to, where are we in the workflow? A lot of the management of, and a lot of that can be done through a case management system. So help us understand the difference or if there isn't one or the integrations with, if you've got a case management system, do you automatically have a CRM? If you have a CRM, do you automatically have a case management system?

Matt Spiegel

So I would say, if you have a practice management system, you do not automatically have a CRM.

Adriana Linares

I agree.

Matt Spiegel

And I would say that if you have a CRM, you don't necessarily also have a practice management system, I think that that depends on the product. But I think if we look at the traditional definition of what these platforms are, I would look at practice management... And I know that practice management tends to focus on a couple things; it's time and billing and it's document management. Those are the two big things that kind of go into managing a case. Managing inactive case.And I look at it as practice management are tin theory are the things that maybe should help you practice law better or do your job of lawyering better. And some of those things that we traditionally think as being practice management actually falls more in line with being a CRM.So it's just that I think the terminology in the legal space is a little out of whack. We're not going to change that necessarily, it's been kind of the case for a long time. When people think practice management, they think of something very specific. But I think that what practice management should be are tools that help you practice law and CRM are tools that help you run the business.

Adriana Linares

So let me see if I can help because this is the way I look at it. If you don't mind my injecting the way I think about it, which is, there's the beginning kind of how a case starts, how you gather the information, how you engage, and then once you've got past a conflict check and now they've signed the engagement letter and you've got a client, you have to have a way to manage dates, deadlines, details, parties, tasks, notes and documents.To me, you are now managing the case, managing the matter and you might have one client with six matters. And that's what your case management system helps you do. Your CRM helps you manage that client regardless of where they are in the process and no matter how many matters they have.And then to me, I have to say this because it's just me. I don't think you get good document management in every case management system. So a lot of times when I'm helping a law firm start, that's one of the first things we decide, do you need net documents? Because OneDrive isn't going to cut it, Clio Drive isn't going to cut it, Box isn't going to cut it. So to me, document management isn't always part of a case management system. So a lot of times I think law firms need three systems. The thing is they have to talk to each other.

Matt Spiegel

I don't disagree with you at all. I think that document management specifically is one that probably falls a little bit outside the traditional purview of a CRM.

Adriana Linares

Especially with emails now.

Matt Spiegel

But emails to me very much falls within CRM. Because anything that is communicative, is important to be kind of tracked and managed in your CRM. Documents can kind of go either way.So I think a good CRM will have some level of document management available, but it shouldn't necessarily be what you would be used to seeing in something like NetDocs. You should be able to tie a CRM in.Like if you look at Salesforce, Salesforce is the epitome of a CRM. It's the biggest. Most law firms are not going to use Salesforce, it would be insane. But as a tech company, we're going to use Salesforce.I don't think ever managed a document in Salesforce, ever. That's just not what it's designed for. It would have a great plugin to do that or another company that it would tie into, but it's not designed to do that. It's not really part of the relationship with the client himself. Now you may take documents from some other product and share them with the client through your CRM, that's something that the CRM would handle because again, that's communicative. But the document management itself is probably an external tool.

Adriana Linares

Yeah, it can be. Before we take another quick break, let me ask you another question, Matt Spiegel. True or false? A super Tuscan is another name for a magnum.

Matt Spiegel

False.

Adriana Linares

Super false.

Matt Spiegel

Magnum is just a giant amazing bottle of wine.

Adriana Linares

Two in one.

Matt Spiegel

Who doesn't want a giant Magnum?

Adriana Linares

I wish I had my cheat sheet in front of me, but when we were learning about wine sizes in wine school, there's your standard 750 liters bottle that we all can imagine that a magnum is two of those and then they get bigger and they all have these great biblical names. The Nebuchadnezzar, the Methusa. So it's kind of fun and funny. Good job. That's two out of three for you.

Matt Spiegel

I love this question though because you're like, I love the creativity there. You're like super Tuscan. Someone might think that this is a Tuscan wine just supersized and that's how they call them giant, it's just super.

Adriana Linares

That is a good question. And just real quick, a super Tuscan is a wine from Tuscany that breaks their laws and rules and blends in other grapes other than the sangiovese grapes. So the winemakers got aggravated with all the rules and the laws that these governing bodies of Tuscany were saying you can and can't do with wines.So they're like, "Screw you, we're going to make something new and it's going to be called Super Tuscan."

Matt Spiegel

I love it.

Adriana Linares

I do too. We like rule breakers around here. We'll be right back. We're going to listen to some messages from some sponsors.Bill for lawyers notice cloud-based business banking is ideal for running a solo or a small law firm. Notice audit ready IOLTA accounts save you time. Reconcile down to the penny with their three way reconciliation report. Assign all money in and out of your IOLTA to a specific client matter.You can even print checks right from your desk. Business checking trust accounts and great service. Visit trustnota.com/legal. Nota, banking built for law firms like yours. Terms and conditions may apply.LAWCLERK is where attorneys go to hire freelance lawyers. Whether you need a research memo or a complicated appellate brief, our network of freelance lawyers have every level of experience and expertise.Signing up is free and there are no monthly fees. Only pay the flat fee price you said. Use rebate code New Solo to get a hundred dollars Amazon gift card when you complete your next project. Learn more @lawclerk.legal.All right, I'm back with Matt Spiegel and I want to talk about intake, Matt, because do you think that Lawmatics starts with intake? Like CRMs start with the intake process. You've got to have someone that you're communicating with in order to push them through the flow. I feel like a lot of attorneys, and I think this is the type of thing you don't learn in law school and you just figure it out later. Well, I've got to have an intake system, what does that mean and how do I create a good one?

Matt Spiegel

So an intake system to me is really, it's something that every client will go through, so it's something repetitive. I guess every law firm probably has a process even if you don't think that you do-

Adriana Linares

mm-hmm . Or if it's bad.

Matt Spiegel

Or if it's bad.

Adriana Linares

You might have one, but it's probably bad.

Matt Spiegel

But basically it's like, "Okay, when a new lead comes in, I do this and then if they do this, I do that. And if they do this, I do something else." And it's understanding all the different ways that people can go with whatever your process is. And everybody could be a little bit different.I think a good example of an intake process and probably a pretty standard one out there is, somebody calls your law firm or they come to your website and they raise their hand, they're like, "I want to learn more about your firm, or I need a lawyer." And the next step is, "Okay, well let's talk." So you just schedule a consultation. I think that's the typical process is lead comes in, let's get them scheduled for a consultation, and then maybe before they come in for that consultation, you want to capture some information from them so that you can review it before meeting with them.That's a process, that's an intake process that is Lead comes into my website, fills out a form, they get a link to book a consultation with me, after they book the consultation, I send them a confirmation email, after that, like a day or a couple hours before, I send them another form to fill out so I can learn about their case before they come in and talk to me. That's a process.Now, what can happen with that process is it can go a number of different ways. What if that lead comes in and they don't book an appointment? Well, now I need a process for that. I need a process to get that person re-engaged, get them to book a consultation with me. So you have different branches that can go in different directions and those branches could then get someone to come back to the main process or they could kind of spin off down some other processes that you have.But a good intake process will understand the perfect linear journey that a client will go through. And it will account for all of the different spots in that linear journey that somebody can fall through, like all the cracks that somebody can fall through, and it will have processes there designed to catch them.

Adriana Linares

And it will be automated and not require a lot of humans. Can we talk about that too?

Matt Spiegel

Sure.

Adriana Linares

So the thing is, when you have that sort of question and answer tree, "Did the lead come in? Yes. Where did they come from? Website. If website, then this. If they walked in the door, then this. If referred by a client, by a old client or best referral that we've got, then this."That should be spelled out in through a CRM so that if you hire somebody brand new, they're not sitting there figuring out which branch to take this lead through, the system helps them do it, or it helps you do it when we are busy and you don't want to have to figure it out or remember.

Matt Spiegel

So I think repetition is really important and building a process, being able to repeat it the same way. I read a book when I started my law firm called The E-Myth.

Adriana Linares

The Attorney E-Myth or did you do E-Myth or did you read The Attorney E-Myth ?

Matt Spiegel

I just read E-Myth.

Adriana Linares

Oh, find The Attorney E-Myth, it's really interesting. But go, go. I got it. I love E-Myth.

Matt Spiegel

Yeah, with me. And so the whole idea of that book is like, it's like how to build a franchise, how to build this business that is just repeatable. Every experience is the same. And I took this very literally, and I remember at my firm, I was like, "Okay, you know what? Every lawyer, every person that comes in for a consultation is going to get a folder. They're going to get the same folder, it's going to have my logo on it's going to have my business card in the same place. It's going to have this on the right side, it's going to have this on the left side."And I would just do it every time. It's this repeatable process, it's a habit. And that's important to building a good process. Now the thing is, if you keep that manual, you're not going to do it. It's not going to be the same every time you're going to skew. The only way to keep it very repeatable and to keep it the same every single time is to have it automated. Not to mention that it saves you an incredible amount of time.

Adriana Linares

And resources.

Matt Spiegel

But if you automate it, everything is the same. And when everything is the same, you can measure and you can experiment. You have relevant data that you can go off of to determine whether something is working or not. If you're doing something a little different every single time, then you have no idea what's working and what's not.

Adriana Linares

I feel like every small business owner, especially me, has gone through that with my website, with newsletters... I never knew what worked. Everything kind of worked and I survived. So I just kept doing random things and never had a process until I had... I actually use a CRM called Vcita that I really like. So yeah, so I think that makes a lot of sense. But someone has to also, you can't take advantage of a tool that you're paying a lot of money, for if you don't sit down and actually create those systems and those processes.

Matt Spiegel

So you got to sit down and write them out.

Adriana Linares

Write them out, and then you put them into the system, which isn't hard these days. All the little robots are so hard.

Matt Spiegel

No, it's super easy. But also my recommendation too, you can take it so far and you can get up to a certain point, but the company, like Lawmatics is a good example and a lot of other software companies are the same way. But we know what we're doing. We work with thousands and thousands of attorneys. We see what works, we see what doesn't, and we will help you. You can take your processes a certain... Get it most of the way there and then we can help you understand some best practices and just push it over the goal line, or maybe think about something in a way that you haven't thought about it before, which could be really helpful.

Adriana Linares

One of the things I want to make sure I say out loud to listeners is if you intake form is in Microsoft Word, or if it's a PDF file, that's really nice and it's fillable form unless you can export that data into a system, you are putting the information that you're initially collecting from a client to what I call, "Data prison."And a CRM is designed so that let's say someone lands on your website, they fill out a form, they answer a couple of questions, that data gets put into the CRM, the CRM notifies you that a new lead came in, then... I don't know how automated this part gets, but is the next step automatically to create the opportunity for an appointment or is the next step that they have to answer a few more questions?Or is the next step that you send them another document through the CRM in a format that can capture the data and be used so that if they do become a client? You move them from the potential client file into the existing client file and all that data moves with them.Your goal in building your law firm, should be that data only gets entered one time ever somewhere. And then from that point forward, it just flows through the process of working the case, closing the case.When they come back, the information that's relevant to their second matter or their third matter is still in there, you don't have to ask them again, you don't have to repeat that. You're just looking for the new information.So I hope this encourages everyone to look at CRMs if you haven't, to consider getting one. And then Matt, tell us real quick, are they standalone, do they integrate? What am I looking for if I'm looking for a CRM for the first time?

Matt Spiegel

So there are definitely CRMs that you could get away with standalone and maybe not need any other piece of software. But to me, my recommendation is, a good CRM will be very, very good at what it does, which is CRM. And then it will leave some of the other stuff to other platforms, whether it's integrating with Clio, in MyCase, PracticePanther, Filevine, Smokeball, Rocket Matter, whatever.So a good system will integrate with those. And a lot of other things. You might want an integration with Google AdWords because you're spending a lot of money on marketing. You might want an integration with CallRail, because you're doing call tracking. So firms that are a little bit more sophisticated when it comes to marketing and tracking, which I think all firms should be, but that's a different story-

Adriana Linares

I agree.

Matt Spiegel

... for a different day. But a CRM is going to help you track all of your marketing efforts. That's a big part of what a CRM will do. A good CRM.

Adriana Linares

If listeners have been listening to this for a while, especially toward the end of the year, here's a reason you want a CRM. If there's nothing else that convinces you holiday mailing cards.

Matt Spiegel

Totally.

Adriana Linares

So if I could solve one problem for every law firm on this planet, whether it's one or 1000, whether they are in Greece or in Boise, Idaho, it's figuring out who gets one, not three from every attorney in the firm, a holiday mailing card.In the old days, we would print out and then pass around and everybody would put their initials next to which client they wanted their card for and stuff. It's so much easier today guys, stop working so hard and so manually find technology that helps, that makes your life easier, that helps you run your practice easier. Matt, I've had you here a long time. I'm going to ask you one more question.

Matt Spiegel

Yeah. Let's see if I can go three for three.

Adriana Linares

What is a Cremant month? This is cremant and the E has a little dash over the top.

Matt Spiegel

Oh, now I know.

Adriana Linares

A type of Sherry, A. B, a type of sparkling wine. C, a method of filtering wine or D, none of the above.

Matt Spiegel

So I really don't know, but it just sounds to me like it's something sparkling, probably because I don't know what it is and I'm not a big sparkling guy. That would be my guess.

Adriana Linares

Well you did a good deductive reasoning because Cremant sounds French, and a type of sherry is Spanish wine. And they said, What is a cremant? Which means it's probably not a method of filtering wine and it's never none of the above. So you got it exactly right, a french sparkling wine that did not come from the champagne region is known as a cremant.

Matt Spiegel

Have you ever had a cremant?

Adriana Linares

I have. Sure.

Matt Spiegel

Is it delicious?

Adriana Linares

They are.

Matt Spiegel

Okay, I'll have to try one.

Adriana Linares

Yeah, and they're obviously all very different, whether you like them dry or sweet and they're great. But yeah, I've been trying a lot of wines. Again, remember I'm trying to become a big girl with my wines.

Matt Spiegel

Yeah, you should. I like that.

Adriana Linares

Matt, I appreciate you coming on so much and thank you for becoming a sponsor of New Solo. I hope everybody goes out, takes a look, signs up for a demo, learns more about Lawmatics. Tell them where they can find, friend, follow you and do those very things.

Matt Spiegel

Yes.

Adriana Linares

How do they get in to your CRM?

Matt Spiegel

I appreciate you Adriana, always. And you can just come check us out lawmatics.com. Also, I'm always available. I love when lawyers, if they just have random questions, business related, customer service related, just anything.It's really cool sometimes, I'll just hear from random lawyers being like, "Hey, just curious, what are your thoughts on this?" Just email me matt@lawmatics.com. I'm super responsive and I love getting messages.

Adriana Linares

You are very generous with your time. I have sent you people in the past where I've been like, "I have no idea. This is such a great question for Matt Spiegel. Can I introduce you to him?" You say that and you mean it.So yeah, everyone, if you have some questions, please reach out to Matt. Thank you so much for listening to another episode of New Solo. If you have liked what you've heard today, please think about giving us a five star review. But honestly, you know what I'd rather you do, I'd rather you forward New Solo to another attorney who you think would be able to learn from it.I get a lot of nice compliments about New Solo. It's not about me, it's about my guests and all the information that they bring. So if you think another attorney could benefit from what we talk about here, share the show with them. Thanks so much, Matt. I will see you soon and everyone else see you in the next episode of New Solo.

1 Understand your law firm as a business

You didn’t go to law school to learn how to run a business. But at the end of the day, you provide a service to customers. If you understand your firm as a business — and look for ways to improve your operations as a business — you’re setting up your firm for success. In turn, you’re putting yourself in a better position to set clients up for success.Communication is at the center of any successful business operation. In the legal world, clients (i.e. customers) can often feel overwhelmed about a process they may not understand. Feeling out of control and out of the loop is a recipe for a dissatisfied client — and is why insufficient communication is one of the most common bar complaints against attorneys. A client intake process designed to over-communicate at each step of your client’s journey will lessen their anxieties, and make them feel more at ease in the hands of your firm.

2 Understand the client journey

Quality customer service is what separates good law firms from great law firms. To maximize opportunities to delight your clients, you have to meet them where they are. With the right tools and process, you can create a seamless personalized experience for each client.Ask yourself critically: when does your client’s journey actually start, and when does it actually end? Does it only start when they sign an engagement agreement? Does it really end when they’ve paid their last invoice?The reality is that the client’s journey with your firm starts before they even schedule a consultation. Your client’s experience with your firm’s intake process — how easy it is to find your firm and make an appointment — forms their first impressions of the quality of your customer service and your effectiveness as a firm.Keep in touch with clients after their matter has concluded. Something as small as sending an email on their birthday improves their customer experience and increases referral opportunities.

3 Automations are a necessity for modern law firms

It’s become almost physically impossible for law firms to rely solely on manual processes to provide robust experiences throughout the client journey. Consumer expectations in the digital age demand immediate engagement, clear communication, and convenience. Automations are a necessity to create a seamless experience that can keep up with the demand of the client intake process.With automations, you can engage clients immediately at the start of their intake process, even if you’re not available. Expand your capacity to delight clients with personal details, like sending a birthday card or newsletter, without additional administrative labor. With automated follow-ups, make sure nothing slips through the cracks or gets lost in the shuffle.

Takeaways

In any kind of consumer-driven law practice, your client’s matter is likely the most important thing going on in their life. Your client intake process should reflect that. Give clients the convenience of booking a consultation on your website. Give them peace of mind with an automated confirmation email. Use the tools at your disposal to engage your clients at every stage of their journey. Take a step back and ask yourself, “How would I want to be treated if I came to this law firm with a matter that was the most important thing in the world to me?” Let your answer be your lodestar.

Podcast transcript

Allison Williams

Hi, everyone. It's Alison Williams here, your Law Firm mentor. Welcome to another episode of The Crushing Chaos with Law Firm Mentor podcast. Today, I have a special guest for the podcast. His name is Matt Spiegel. Now I'm sure you know who he is even though you may not necessarily know his name because he is someone that I consider to be a big innovator in the legal space. He helps lawyers in a variety of different ways, but the ways that you guys probably know about is practice management software MyCase. He is founder and CEO of MyCase, and he is founder and CEO of Lawmatics.Now, the beautiful thing about bringing Matt to the podcast is that we got to talk about both aspects, practice management software and legal automation. I know that these are two areas where we get a lot of requests. People that reach out to the podcast will say, "Hey, you did a show on such and such or so and so. I'm really interested in learning more." And almost universally, that deals with some form of efficiency tool for our law firms. Because we all know that with each day and each moment that passes more and more data, more and more people come into our orbit, and managing that effectively is what is going to keep us out of the realm of grievances and malpractice suits.So we actually talk about bar grievance and we talked about Matt having had a bar grievance. I personally had one as well. And when people make complaints, it usually is not because they didn't get the result that they wanted. Most clients can intellectually understand that you can't wave a magic wand and get them to a great result, but it's how they felt in the process. And so, how do you get to a better client experience for your customer? How is it that your client can get the star treatment when there are only so many hours in a day?The answer is automation. So Matt and I talk about that, but I want to let you know that Matt is a serial entrepreneur. He is actually a lawyer. He still has his law license. No longer has his law firm, but he was a law firm owner. And through the experience of being a law firm owner, he created the solution that he needed in practice, which was the tool of MyCase, which started off as a client portal, which you're going to hear more about when we speak.He also then founded Lawmatics. After a break from MyCase, he shifted over into the world of legal tech automation, and it's really interesting how he got there. He is somebody who actually is scaling Lawmatics. The way we talk about scaling law firms, he's scaling Lawmatics, it is a venture-backed company, and their approach to automation may be a little bit different than you realize. Something you may or may not have heard before. So you're going to hear it here on the podcast. Check out my talk with Matt Spiegel of Lawmatics. Here you go.All right, Matt Spiegel, welcome to The Crushing Chaos with Law Firm Mentor podcast.

Matt Spiegel

Thank you, Allison. I'm very, very excited.

Allison Williams

So it's great to have you here. I'm really excited that we have the chance to connect. Because I think what you do is somewhat similar to what I do in the sense that you started a law firm, you had experience from that, and then ultimately you grew into serving lawyers from your experience with something very specific. And in this instance, you did both practice management software and automation, and you refer to yourself as a serial entrepreneur. So talk to us a little bit about what that journey was like for you.

Matt Spiegel

I appreciate you saying that we're similar, although I would think that your story and journey is a bit more impressive and you're juggling more than I'm juggling probably at once. So I appreciate you putting me in the same light, but I'm really impressed with things that you do and you are doing, and there's other people in the same situation as you, which just continues to impress me and also fuel the industry a bit. It's been really cool to see the growth of podcasts in the legal space. It's not just non-lawyers out there preaching for their products. It's actual people like you helping, which is awesome.For me, it was a bit of luck, maybe opportunity at the right time, which I think always is part of it, but it was a fun journey for me. I was like everybody, like most listeners, I am a lawyer. I obviously don't practice anymore, but I still maintain my license. I was a criminal defense lawyer, as cookie cutter as it gets. I started my own practice and it was very quickly in starting my own practice that I had an itch that I needed to scratch, which I think is the way that this happens for a lot of entrepreneurs. It's kind of a tale as old as time. You start doing something and you're like, "Man, this is difficult. I wish that there was the way to do this better." Then if there isn't, you decide to build it yourself.And so, that's kind of what happened, and it's how I ended up starting the company MyCase. It just started out of a need that I had at my own law firm. I think I've always been a little bit more business-centric when I started. I went into criminal defense, quite frankly Alison, because I thought it would be a good business to run. I thought that consumer-driven law, especially criminal defense, was something that you could sort model a franchise off of. You could create a process that was going to be repeatable for each client. You could have a fee structure that was repeatable. So I liked it from a business standpoint. That's one of the reasons why I went into that area of law, and transitioning into building software companies felt somewhat natural for me.

Allison Williams

So I love that you actually own the fact that you had a business mind when you were approaching your law practice. Because I think, first of all, it's very unique. I think a lot of us, we start practicing and then we figure out that we happen to be in a business. But you really had a very different perspective on that, and it informed both the practice area that you chose and the way that you approached business. So talk to me about what was missing in your business that you saw that was a hole in your law practice that you filled by virtue of creating MyCase.

Matt Spiegel

At the time, and so to piggyback off that point, because you make a very good point and I think we'll probably talk about it a lot more today, but that's one of the problems, is that lawyers don't think about their law firm like a business as much as they need to. They just think about it as being a lawyer. But for me, that moment, it was actually client communication. I think very few people know this at this point. But when we first started MyCase, it was not a practice management software. It was simply a client portal. It was the first ever client portal, but that's all it was and we tried to launch it like that. It was met with awful response. Lawyers were like, "Okay, this is cool, but this should be part-"

Allison Williams

I got dropouts for that. We go for that.

Matt Spiegel

Or, "This is great. This is useful, but it needs to be part of a bigger system." And so, that's ultimately how we ended up building the full practice management system around client communication. But the catalyst was, it was actually, to be honest with you, Allison, it was a bar complaint. I got a bar complaint and it was stupid. It wasn't like that I was a bad lawyer. It wasn't that I got a bad outcome or that it was malpractice or ineffective assistance accounts or anything. It was quite literally, "I didn't call you back quick enough." It was attorney-client communication. And so then I went down-

Allison Williams

Number one complaint, by the way that we'd get.

Matt Spiegel

It was the number one complaint in 2009, and it's still the number one complaint. It's ridiculous and actually embarrassing that that is still the number one issue that we have as lawyers. But that's what caused this, that's what kicked off this whole journey for me was a bar complaint.

Allison Williams

Well, bar complaints, we don't talk about them a whole heck of a lot. In fact, we ought to do a whole series here on Law Firm Mentor, on the podcast, about bar complaints because they're embarrassing when you experience them, but they cause a lot of terror in the hearts of lawyers. It's usually because of some inefficiency in the business that cause either a breakdown in communication or a disconnect in expectations or a lack of client service. That pisses off a client so that they find something to point at whether it's right or it's wrong. Then ultimately, the lawyer is raked over the coals while the bar is trying to find the justification of whatever the person said.So you actually were not just ahead of your time in terms of proactively dealing with that for your own business, but very much on what I would refer to as the cutting edge in terms of pulling together the client journey and the client-centric approach with the necessities that we have of sending out our bills and getting our calendar organized and making sure that our client documents are all cataloged together.So now, I want to shift and talk about how that really fits with your second venture. And I just have to acknowledge this. I just recently hired a lawyer for what is now going to be my third business. That lawyer told me you're going to get your bill through Lawmatics. So it's kind of ironic that you and I are talking today, but those two pieces fit very well together. So let's talk about Lawmatics. Talk about the evolution of all that you learned as the innovator behind MyCase and what you created as a foundation that grew, and then transitioning over into the automation kind of toolkit that is Lawmatics.

Matt Spiegel

It's a good question. I don't know if the story is all that exciting, but I'm happy to share it. The truth is that Lawmatics ultimately was born out of what I experienced. And so, I left MyCase in 2015 and I went and did some other things for a few years. When I look back it feels like I was gone from the legal industry for six years, but apparently I was only gone for two years. So in 2017, ultimately I wanted to start my own business again because I was running a company that had nothing to do with legal, and I was reporting to a chairman and I was like, "I just wanted to do my own thing again." Quite honestly I wanted to go back into legal.What I understood was that back in 2014 at MyCase, we started to see lawyers, they were showing signs of thinking about things a little differently. They were showing signs of starting to prioritize the business side, especially on the solo and small firm side of the market. They were starting to show signs of thinking about their business. As tech companies, we've always had these tools that are 100% business driven. They are designed to give us KPIs on how our business is performing. Things like Salesforce or HubSpot or Infusionsoft or whatever CRM we were using to give us insight into our business.I started to think that, "Man, if lawyers start thinking about things from a ... " Well, actually it really came from my own law firm too, because I was thinking about things very economically. When it came to my law firm, I was looking at things like acquisition cost, cost per lead. To me, it was formulaic. If I could go and spend this much money for a DUI case and a DUI case brought in this much money, it's a formula. And so, I thought to myself, I'm like, "Man, these business metrics, that kind of dashboard KPIs that I'm used to getting as a tech company, why wouldn't lawyers want that? They're a business just like anyone else."And so, we started to see that shift in 2014. We started to hear it come up like, this idea of a CRM or business kind of insight tools. So fast forward to 2017, and looking back at something I knew was a kernel of an idea three years prior was now starting to become a little bit pick up some steam. And so, we decided that there's a massive gap in the market for this, for a true business intelligence CRM backed up with the foundation of which would be automation because that's what drives a lot of these products that we were used to. And so, that's ultimately what led to us going down this path, and it has been a winding journey for the last five years now, and we're really just getting started.

Allison Williams

So as you talk about how you got here, because you have this mind that goes to the KPI, you asked the question that I think was very poignant which is: Why would a lawyer not want all of that data available to them so that they could be more effective in delivering a metrics-driven process and service to their client? And I'll tell you why. Because lawyers have some really fucked up thinking.

Matt Spiegel

You said it. You said it.

Allison Williams

Let's just own it. I said it all right. We're not going to put that on you. But there are a whole lot of us that have the fear that, we get taught we're a professional, and that somehow is antithetical to being good in business.

Matt Spiegel

Exactly right.

Allison Williams

And so, if you're focused on how do I deliver this service as economically and efficiently as possible so that I can generate the most profit off of each person I'm serving, we think that that is somehow not in the client's best interest. So therefore, we're prioritizing ourself over the client which, of course, is nonsense because I always say the worst thing for the public is a broke lawyer. As soon as we have to figure out if we're eating this week and we have to decide whether your deposition is something we should spend money on because we have a family to feed, that is where we start getting into trouble with ethics and with choice over client. But when a client is actually being served well, and the lawyers being served well, it's a win-win. Everybody's happy or as happy as can be with their legal problem in that scenario.So automation really does help that. And it really is something that I think you're right. There is a movement in our profession to get people on board with that. So how does Lawmatics really take the lawyer who has that messed up thinking and they don't quite understand how to get into the numbers of their business? They know that they should, but they don't know how, it's overwhelming. It feels very outside of what they learned as a lawyer. How do they take a tool like Lawmatics and really automate their entire law firm?

Matt Spiegel

It's a good question. Here's one of the ways I look at it is I don't think that lawyers, I think the catalyst for going into automation, is not necessarily like, "Oh, I want to automate." It's more, "I want to provide a better service to my clients," or "I want to be able to have insights into my business." You're asking yourself those questions. It just happens to be that in order to answer those questions, I think you have to have automation. So to me, as a business owner, law firm or any business owner, it's asking the right questions first, which is what leads you down the path of how to automate and what to automate.But I'll give you an example, lawyers that are doing a lot of advertising. Let's say you're advertising on Google or you're advertising on Facebook or wherever it is that you're advertising, but you're spending some money on digital advertising, which my guess is most of our listeners today are doing that. If they're not, they probably should. But that's a different topic altogether. But the point is, and I work with a lot of law firms not just in the capacity of Lawmatics. I will constantly I'll help friends or random people that reach out that just want a little bit advice on whether it's marketing or how to maybe drive more leads and things like that.One of the things I will tell them is, "Look, you can go and spend money on marketing, that's great. But if you cannot measure that marketing, then you shouldn't do it." I don't care if it's going to be the best marketing source, if it's going to bring in a ton of leads and you're sure of it, if you can't measure it, don't do it. The reason is because when you start throwing money at a bunch of different things, you're not going to know what's working unless you have analytics to drive that. You end up spending a ton of money. You're just putting money into a bucket that has holes in it. It's just blind. You have no idea which hole the water's coming out of. There's a bunch of water getting stuck at the bottom, but there's also water going out these holes, and you have no idea which one to plug unless you have reporting and analytics.And guess what? The only way to get analytics and good reporting on where your leads are coming from is to have some automation that is driving that. Something that says, "Okay, this person came from here so I'm going to automatically associate it with this campaign. I'm going to do whatever it is that you want to do to identify that it came from a certain source." And that can happen at any part point in the process, whether it's the moment that that lead comes into your website and fills out a form, the moment that they call your receptionist or call you, or during the intake process, after they've come in. There's different parts of the process You're going to identify where somebody came from. It's important to have automation designed to handle that. Then you can report on it, and then you can get the metrics that you need to make very sound business decisions.

Allison Williams

So when a lawyer says, "I want to dive into this, but I think it's going to be overwhelming for me to even understand things like cost per lead and cost for client acquisition," aren't those the same thing? How are they different? How do I learn it all? How does using an automation tool help facilitate that knowledge and where does the rubber meet the road? Is this something that you only do once you have a certain amount of volume of lead flow? Once you have a certain revenue stream? Where is the entry point for somebody who wants to give their clients a better service, who wants to know their business better, but just doesn't know where to start?

Matt Spiegel

That's actually a really awesome question because there's no rule. There's no, oh, when you reach this amount of clients, then you're ready for an automation or a CRM or business intelligence. If you are interested in providing a better service to your clients, which you absolutely should be, then you absolutely need a tool. The reason is because, and I look at it in terms of the full client journey. So, what does it look like at your law firm when a client from the moment a client comes in and finds you all the way through until after their case is over with you? That entire process is the client journey.There's three phases. Phase one, intake phase. They're trying to determine if they want to hire you, and you're trying to determine if you want them as a client. Phase two is there's an active case. You're handling a matter for them. Most of the time there's a start and end date to that. In family law, there certainly is a start and end date. That end date may be a little ambiguous, but there's sort of an end date. Criminal offense, there's obviously very much a start and end. Phase three, which is the most neglected, I think Allison, is after the case is over. They are a former client. If you are not doing things to engage that former client, you are losing out on business categorically.I always ask the question to people whenever I'm talking a big group is, "How many people here have more than 500 old clients?" Everybody raises their hand. "Well, how many of you are sending them notes on their birthday?" Then every hand goes down. Because they're like, "Well, I can't send everybody an email on their birthday." Well, you can. You just need automations. You just need automation for it.So I think when you look at it in terms of that, think about delivering, at what point of the relationship, the whole journey, can you deliver an amazing experience that delights your customer? Because I will share a bit of insight that I believe very strongly in. I believe that you could be the best lawyer in the world and provide bad customer service and fail. But I also believe the flip side to be true. Maybe not the worst lawyer in the world, but you could be an average lawyer or maybe even a little bit below average, but provide the best customer service in the business and you can be successful. I think that that's something really important that lawyers lose sight of. I think if you think of businesses outside of law that have really good customer service scores, their products are not necessarily better than anyone else. Sometimes maybe their products are inferior, but the customer service, the experience you get brings you back. It's the same with law.

Allison Williams

It is 100% the same with law. Since you mentioned customer service, ironically, I was just with my family at an engagement party over the weekend. A story that I told on social media came up again and it was about the infamous coffee. I won't out the hotel chain, but there is a hotel chain, very well known, that had a conference, and I was staying at a companion property of theirs because the primary property was sold out. At the companion property, they had golf carts that would take you over to the main property at the time of the meeting. And so, on checkout day, I wanted to leave my property. I wanted to leave my bags at the front of the hotel, take the golf cart over to the meeting, and then have my bags delivered so I could go to the airport.As I'm about to leave, I ask for a cup of coffee as I'm in the waiting area. I was told that coffee was not available, but I could buy a K-cup for, I don't know, $5, $3, whatever it was. I was just stunned. I sat there and I looked, I was like, "Let me get this straight I'm spending ..." I'd actually look it up, "$504 a night for the hotel room, and you're going to try to sell me a K-cup." You realize how stupid a business model this is. You could literally charge me an extra dollar. If I'm spending 504, I would have spent 505. You could have made a dollar on every human being in here and made more money by just including the lesser included offense of the coffee in the lobby. But it was the lack of foresight at some level, I'm sure very far, far up the food chain in corporate that led to that result. The offense to the client or to the customer because of just doing things in the way that we're doing things and kind of tacking something on.Automation very much lends itself to taking out that residual. Because when you start to understand numbers as a result of understanding things like how much it costs to acquire a client, how much it takes to deliver a service, you can start to find ways to not just make more money, but to deliver a better service and a better experience so that the person who is being served by you actually perceives it better.

Matt Spiegel

It's a 100%. I think it's funny, right, because your example is very similar, and I know this is what got you thinking about it, but the thing that you off had actually nothing to do with the real product. They're a hotel. It didn't have to do with your stay there. It was something ancillary that could have very easily been addressed. That's often what happens. It's the same thing with law. It's not necessarily the outcome of the representation. It can be something that's unrelated, that's customer service generated. And so, my point is that you're going to start to look at your law firm and think, "All right, what are all the different areas, the steps of the journey that I can delight my customer? Oh, you know what? I can just engage them immediately as they come in even if I'm not available. I can send everybody an email on their birthday. I can have newsletters going out to my current clients, keeping them up to date with things that I'm researching to stay on top of trending issues for their case that I'm representing them on."And guess what? You might be hearing me say that and thinking to yourself like, "Oh my God, that's impossible. How am I going to do all that?" You can't. I'm saying you should do this. You should think about all these different ways that you should delight your customer. But I'm telling you that you can't just do it yourself. You have to have automation to take these things off of your plate because no lawyer is going to be expected to go have a calendar that has all their clients' birthdays on it, and then they're going to go and send an email every day to the four or five clients that have a birthday. Automation is there to help you with this.

Allison Williams

Well, the beauty of it, I mean, since you mentioned that, I know someone who actually does do quite a bit of automation of not just the phase two as you described it, the delivery of the service, but it is in delivering the essentials. Because you talk about delighting your client, and we know, especially I deal in family law, so of course I have a lot of very unhappy humans that were otherwise nice people before they decided that their spouse was the spawn of Satan and they had to escape. But most law clients are not happy. Most of them are dealing with some type of troubling, traumatic, challenging issue in their life. So you are a very easy target for them because you are the thing, the buffer between the resolution. The resolution may be positive or negative, but at least it's over. That trauma that they're going through from problem to solution, you're on that pathway.I know a law firm in Minnesota, I won't name them because I don't have permission to, but very exceptional law firm. They actually automate all of the communications from the start of the case to the end of the case. So all of the education about this is what the next conference is about, and this is what the next, every time we get a letter from the adversary here is how we are going to approach this. They get so much in the automation pipeline that clients are getting an inundation of data and information so that there's never a time that a client actually has to wait to ask a question. It's almost like their FAQs are on redux and they're constantly being given to them.When I learned about that, I thought, "Wow, that's really brilliant if you think about it because so much of clients calls to the office are about the anxiety they feel of not knowing." If you start giving them education every day of their case, they don't really have a time for that anxiety to build. It's still going to build by virtue of life, but it's not going to build by virtue of silence. That oftentimes can ward off things like bar complaints.

Matt Spiegel

Absolutely.

Allison Williams

So, it sounds like you help clients with that process, not just by having the tool, but by the way that your company actually facilitates their understanding of and utilization of the tool.

Matt Spiegel

It's true. So one of the things that we think is important with any tool, it doesn't matter whether it's Lawmatics, whether it's MyCase, or anything, it's important to understand how to get the most out of it. I can't say this about all companies in legal, but I can say this about a lot of them, that they know best practices. They know how to help you with certain things. Kind of tying this back to what we talked about in the beginning about client communication. It's like, there should never be an issue with client communication. You should be over communicating every step of the way and that's one way to delight your customer. You can't do that without automation.The reason why this is important is something that you just mentioned, which I love to talk about as well, which is lawyers lose sight of the fact that with almost every type of law out there, all consumer-driven law, especially family law, criminal defense, this is the most important thing happening in your client's life. No matter what, bankruptcy, family law, estate planning, criminal defense, personal injury, it is the most important thing that they have going on right now. To you, it's just another client. You don't think about it the same way.We need to put ourselves in our client's shoes, and we need to think about like, if this is the most important thing happening in your life, how would you want to be treated? What type of experience would you want? Forget about the outcome. Forget about the letter of the law. Forget about that for a moment. Just think about the way that you would want to be treated. How would you want to be handled? And when you think about it that way, it really, I think unlocks this idea of delighting your client, and you really figure out ways to just create a better experience.

Allison Williams

And so, I think that is such a profound way for us to wrap up today's conversation because it really is about the experience and the fact that automation can help not only the client, but the lawyer to be a better version of themselves. Because the time that you are not expending, thinking through all those communications that you have to have in order to get to the minimum compliance, let alone the delighting stage, you are now going to be able to have an automation tool help you with that. I am platform-agnostic on this podcast. I'm very clear about that. But I know a lot of people that use Lawmatics and I get a lot of positive feedback about how it has transformed the industry. And so, thank you for being a voice and an innovator in this space, and for bringing this level of service and assistance to the lawyers that are out there trying to make their day-to-day experience of being a business owner that much better.

Matt Spiegel

Allison, thank you so much for having me. When we have good chats, I tend to get very passionate and this was an awesome chat, so I appreciate it today.

Allison Williams

Yeah, absolutely. So, one last question. If someone wants to learn more about Lawmatics, if they want to reach you directly, how would they go about doing that?

Matt Spiegel

You can always check us out on our website, www.lawmatics.com. Very easy. You can call, you can explore, you can get a demo of the product. We can just talk in that demo about how you want to automate your firm, what parts maybe are missing for you. So it's not just like, "Hey, this is what Lawmatics does," but we also want to try to give you some assistance and help understand where you're struggling and how we might be able to help or how something else might be able to help. Every customer that comes to us, Lawmatics is not necessarily a good fit. Maybe there's a better fit out there.You can also always reach me personally. I love chatting with lawyers. It's very helpful to me. It's insightful to me, so I really love doing it. Matt@lawmatics.com is my email address. Very easy to get in touch with me there. So I would encourage anybody, if you have any questions or thoughts, feel free to reach out.

Allison Williams

All right. You heard it here. Matt, thank you so much for being here. As I said before, you've been a great resource to the legal community, and of course, by virtue of sharing your thoughts and your experiences here on the podcast. Everyone, thank you again for tuning in to another episode of The Crushing Chaos with Law Firm Mentor podcast. I am Allison Williams, your Law Firm Mentor. Have a great day.