The Lawmatics Blog

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!

A law firm client relationship management (CRM) system, is a software program that helps businesses manage customer interactions. When you don't have a CRM, it's easy for client information to get lost in the shuffle. Paper files can be misfiled or misplaced, and essential emails can slip through the cracks, leading to frustration as your legal team scrambles to track down the necessary information.A CRM for law firms can help avoid these frustrating situations by keeping your client information in one central location. Your team can always find what they need when they need it.

Why do law firms need a CRM?

At its most basic, a law firm CRM is a tool to help you manage your interactions with both your potential clients and current clients, but a good CRM does much more than that. It can help you automate client engagement, streamline your intake process, and keep your client data up to date.Software for law firm client relationship management enables attorneys to manage business development activities, including the client intake process, track tasks, and deadlines, and remind users of upcoming appointments. In addition, a CRM system can help generate reports which can be used to track progress and identify areas for improvement.

Does the size of a law firm matter when considering a CRM?

Ultimately, CRMs can benefit law firms of all sizes thanks to their ability to streamline operations and improve efficiency.

• For solo practitioners, CRMs can help manage and scale their law practice efficiently.
• For small law firms, CRMs can eliminate the busy work that keeps them from focusing on billable work and can help small firms scale their practice with a tech-driven approach.
• For midsize to large firms, CRMs can help deliver consistent, high-quality legal services at every step of the client journey while streamlining operations to accelerate growth.

What areas of law needs a CRM?

In today's world, a CRM can benefit nearly any area of law.

• For estate planning, a CRM can help to elevate the client experience by keeping track of important details and deadlines.
• In family law, a CRM can help attorneys handle sensitive matters efficiently, tactfully, and with the organization.
• Personal injury lawyers can use a CRM to schedule appointments and stay on top of the necessary details of each matter.
• Criminal defense lawyers can use it to give every client the representation they deserve.
• And for immigration lawyers, a CRM can help to build trust with clients and automate tedious administrative tasks.

No matter what area of law you practice, a CRM can help you to work more effectively and serve your clients better.

"Lawmatics has given me the tools I need to scale my practice and take on more volume than I ever thought possible." -- Bill Farias, Founder & Attorney, Farias Family Law, PC

What are the types of law firm CRMs?

There are four main types of CRMs: analytical, collaborative, operational, and strategic.

1. Analytical CRMs focus on collecting and analyzing customer data to improve business performance.
2. Collaborative CRMs help businesses improve communication and collaboration with customers.
3. Operational CRMs automate and streamline business processes.
4. Strategic CRMs help firms develop long-term plans for managing customer relationships.

Top 3 CRM features for law firms

When running a successful law firm, there are many moving parts, from keeping track of client communications to managing your pipeline. A good CRM can help you manage the numerous moving parts of your law firm, making it easier to run a successful business.

1. Legal contact management will help you keep track of your clients in one central place so your team stays organized and up-to-date.
2. Pipeline management tools can help you focus on prospective clients quickly, making the follow-up process more efficient.
3. Automating client engagement means you never drop the ball on lead follow-up and consistently provide value to your clients.

How to evaluate the best CRM for a law firm

Generates Business

With so many CRMs on the market, how should you choose the best one for your firm? Perhaps the most important factor to consider is whether the CRM will actually help you generate more business. After all, what good is a CRM if it doesn’t help you bring in more clients? To that end, you should look for a CRM that has features specifically designed to help law firms market themselves more effectively.

Easy to Use

Another important consideration is the ease of use. We're not saying you aren't tech-savvy, but it's universally acknowledged that many lawyers are not particularly tech-savvy, so it’s essential to choose a CRM that is easy to implement and use daily. So look for a user-friendly CRM with a responsive client support team that offers training, enabling even the most technophobic lawyer to get up and running quickly and easily.

Simplifies Your Technology Stack

Finally, you should consider whether the CRM will simplify your technology stack or add another piece of software to an already complex setup. If you’re already using a case management system and an accounting system, for example, you’ll want to make sure that the CRM you choose integrates seamlessly with both of those systems.

• 5 Questions to Ask in Your Software Demo
• An Attorney’s Guide to Switching Legal CRM Software

Learn more about from our Sullivan Law & Associates case study.

Continue the conversation with Lawmatics

A CRM is a must for any law firm looking to manage and improve its business. At the very least, every law firm should use CRM software to keep track of client information, communications, and case history. However, not all CRMs are created equal. There are many different features available in various CRMs, so you must find one that fits the specific needs of your law firm. We can help you do that – schedule a demo with us today to see how our CRM software can benefit your practice.

Criminal defense attorneys exist to uphold the presumption of innocence — that is innocent until proven guilty. But defending the rights of the accused can be an insurmountable challenge in the criminal justice system. That said, a select few criminal defense attorneys, both famous and infamous, have left their mark in American history with their impressive work defending high profile cases that garnered international attention.Here are some of the most unforgettable defense attorneys of all time.

Johnnie Cochran

For many people, one of the first names that comes to mind is Johnny Cochran. He famously defended OJ Simpson in a legendary case that now goes down as one of the most memorable acquittals of all charges in history. In addition to representing OJ, Cochran famously represented other celebrities from Michael Jackson to Tupac. His theatrical and convincing performance in court coupled with his catchy phrases such as “If it doesn’t fit you must acquit” has earned him a reputation of being one of the most influential lawyers in history.Before he was a household name, however, he was nothing more than a boy with a dream in Shreveport Louisiana. It was a period of time when Louisiana was still significantly impacted by the fallout of the Great Depression and segregation. Despite these deeply challenging times however, Johnny became proof that with tenacity and hard work, he could bring about change in the world.

Ann Bremner

From Michael Jackson, to Amanda Knox, to Mary Kay Letourneau, Ann Bremner is one of the most famous criminal defense lawyers in history. Not only does she have an impressive client list, but she has an even more impressive success rate in winning court cases. During her time as a deputy prosecutor for King County she tried over 200 cases successfully. Recognized as one of the top 100 lawyers in the country, she is almost always considered as an option for representation for highly publicized cases.She regularly appears on television, giving her expert opinion on prominent court cases in the news. As of the publication of this post, she resides in Seattle where she focuses on legal analysis, charity work, and serving as special counsel to a Seattle law firm.

Shawn Holley Chapman

Shawn practices both civil and criminal litigation, and has represented some of the biggest names in the entertainment world: Kanye West, Lindsay Lohan, Paris Hilton, and the Kardashians, to name a few. She was also an active member of the OJ Simpson defense team alongside Johnny Cochran, and served as chief legal correspondent for E!- news coverage of the Michael Jackson trial.Before she was a high profile criminal defense lawyer, she started her career as an LA county public defender. She is consistently voted as one of the most important lawyers in America, and in 2013 was voted southwestern law school's outstanding alumnus by the black law students association. To this day, Chapman continues to take on high profile cases as a partner in a Santa Monica boutique entertainment and business litigation firm. She teaches trial advocacy at Cardozo law school's intensive trial advocacy program in Yeshiva University, and is often asked to speak on television regarding celebrity cases.

Leslie Abramson

Leslie Abramson is one of the most iconic criminal defense lawyers in history thanks to her infamous role on the legal defense team of Lyle and Eric Menendez. The case gained national attention when she claimed abuse as defense for Eric Menendez murdering his two parents. The trial ended in a three-year investigation when it was discovered that she asked Erik’s psychiatrist to tamper with the original doctor notes. Eventually, the investigation was closed when it was concluded there was not enough evidence to conclude she had violated ethical rules.In the early 90s she was poked fun at on Saturday Night Live where she was parodied by actress Julia Sweeney. It's safe to say that once you've been mocked on Saturday Night Live, you're officially famous.

Gloria Allred

Known as the most famous feminist lawyer in the United states, Gloria Allred is known for taking on high profile cases that often involve women's rights. She was even the subject of a Netflix documentary entitled Seeing Allred which was shown at the Sundance Film Festival in 2018.Time magazine called her one of the nation's most effective advocates of family rights and feminist causes. And although she is known for protecting women's rights, notably in her support of the alleged victims of former president Trump’s inappropriate sexual advances, she relentlessly fights against injustices of all kinds from race, sexual orientation, to age.

Dan Webb

Dan Webb famously served as special counsel in the Iran-Contra trials, famously interrogating Ronald Reagan. He is considered the go-to white collar crime defense attorney, and has served as lead defense for some of the biggest companies in the world, from Microsoft to General Electric. His representation of Beef Products Inc. yielded the biggest ever settlement in U.S. history for a media defamation case. He was even asked to represent Donald Trump in 2018 during the investigation of Russia's interference during the 2016 presidential elections. However, Webb issued a statement that despite the offer being “the highest honor,” he declined representing Donald Trump because of business conflicts.Webb is consistently recognized by Bloomberg as being one of the most highly sought after trial lawyers in the US. The New York Times even ran a piece on him in 2008 entitled “Need a Superlawyer? Take a Number.”

Clarence Darrow

Although hardly considered current, Clarence Darrow is well worth mentioning as one of the most famous yet controversial criminal defense lawyers in history. In the early 1900s, he famously represented Nathan Leopold Jr. and Richard Loeb— two teenage boys who were accused of mercilessly killing a 14 year old boy. At the time, this case was known as the trial of the century, as the two teenage boys accused of the murder were from prominent and wealthy families. The American public couldn’t fathom what could prompt such an act by two people so seemingly well established in society. Darrow managed to make a famous closing argument which lasted a whopping 12 hours, and ultimately resulted in life imprisonment for his clients, escaping capital punishment. Following this trial, he was known as one of the most high profile attorneys of his time, and is remembered as one of the fiercest defense lawyers in American history. He has been represented in both film and television, and there is even a full length play dedicated to the history of his career.

Gerry Spence

Gary L Spence is known as a legend amongst lawyers, with some of his cases being the subject of everything from films to books. He has received multiple lifetime achievement awards. His first was the Lifetime Achievement Award from the Consumer Attorney of California, and later he received the lifetime achievement award from the American Association for justice. One of his famous high profile cases include the Karen Silkwood case, which famously went on as a film starring Meryl Streep called Silkwood. Jerry firmly believes in the power of standing up for ordinary people, and is famously known as “the people's lawyer.’ In 2016 Jerry gave a moving TedX talk entitled “Fighting for the People” which was an inspiring take on his passion for practicing law.He has never lost a criminal trial as a prosecutor or defense lawyer, and has not lost a single civic case since the 1960s.

The best of the best

When faced with criminal charges, clients want to be certain that they have the best available representation. These famous criminal defense lawyers proved that with the talent, relentless passion, and a thorough understanding of the law, even seemingly impossible cases can be won. And while many of the attorneys on this list didn’t have access to cloud-based tools that automate their firm’s operational processes, today’s top defense teams certainly do. Powered with the right legal tools like Lawmatics all-in-one CRM, they will do whatever it takes to prove their client's innocence.

A CRM helps simplify sales, marketing activities, customer service, accounting processes, and management for growing organizations. HubSpot can be an excellent CRM (customer relationship management) system for small businesses looking to enhance customer service, increase efficiency, and cut costs — but it is not to be mistaken for Small Law Firm CRM.

Why do companies use HubSpot CRM?

Companies use CRM for many reasons, but the overall goal is to improve the customer experience and increase sales. According to HubSpot’s Ultimate List of Marketing Statistics for 2022:

• Sixty-one percent of overperforming leaders say they are using a CRM to automate at least a portion of their sales process compared to 46% of underperforming leaders.
• The global CRM market is poised to reach about $113.46 billion by the end of 2027.
• Approximately 62% of marketers use CRM software for marketing reporting.

What is HubSpot best used for?

HubSpot CRM solves many challenges of business growth by automating contact management, company, and sales opportunity information and consolidating customer interactions through email, phone calls, social media, and the company’s website. HubSpot’s CRM also offers numerous free features, including:

• Reporting dashboard. HubSpot’s dashboard provides a single source of truth to connect a company’s contact, company, and deal data alongside its marketing, sales, and service information. In addition, users can build up to 300 dashboards to help team members customize their layout and track progress.
• Company insights. HubSpot’s CRM automatically populates details from its database of over 20 million businesses – all you need is a prospect’s corporate email address. Filters help users find whatever they’re looking for, whether contained in a sales call, email, note, or social media activity. Multiple users can access the information.
• Deal tracking. HubSpot's deal tracking software clarifies how much revenue is tied up in each step of the sales cycle, how much sales reps are responsible for, and details regarding new or incoming deals as they move through the pipeline.
• Pipeline management. HubSpot’s deal pipeline software is part of Sales Hub, and you can get started for free. However, for teams looking for more advanced CRM features, HubSpot's Sales Hub also offers premium features with its Starter, Professional, and Enterprise editions.

Given all these notable features, you might be wondering, “is Hubspot really free?” While HubSpot does boast a freemium version, the features and functionality necessary to adequately manage marketing, intake, and case management processes in a law firm are beyond what the business-agnostic software provides.

Is there a better CRM than HubSpot?

Although HubSpot can be a useful generic CRM for startups and small businesses, there is a better CRM than HubSpot. Law firms should consider seeking out a legal-specific CRM like Lawmatics, which is tailored to the law firm business model with bespoke features and functionality such as:

• Custom workflows. With Lawmatics’ all-in-one legal CRM, you can seamlessly move leads through the client intake process with custom marketing automation workflows. Our technology is designed to simplify the process and eliminate chaos while making a positive impression on your future clients.
• Swift, seamless intake. Lawmatics makes it easy to create your own intake process and efficiently capture the client information you need with a custom client intake form template for law firms. By establishing a clear and consistent process for client intake, your firm will save time, eliminate errors, and keep everyone in your practice on the same page.
• Instant appointment scheduling. No more asking, “What time works for you?” Instead, allow your leads and clients to book time on your calendar hassle-free with Lawmatics legal calendaring software that syncs with the cloud to manage your calendar in real-time and provides access to notes, data, and phone reminders. Clients can easily schedule and cancel meetings themselves, keeping everyone on the same page and on time.
• Targeted communications. With Lawmatics audience segmentation software, you can send personalized messaging and email drip marketing campaigns to specific groups of prospects and clients. Client list segmentation allows firms to target distinct groups of people and deliver personalized content based on their actual needs and challenges.
• Granular insights. Lawmatics visual legal data analytics allows firms to examine their data and make smarter decisions. Lawmatics law firm financial dashboard and visual analytics save you time by displaying your law firm's trends with clear visuals at both macro and micro levels. In addition, visual analytics provide greater insight into your internal processes so that you can motivate your staff in the right ways.

With these and other powerful tools, Lawmatics leverages the power of data to help law firms become more efficient and productive.

What CRM do lawyers use? Lawmatics is the #1 legal software for growing firms

Is your law firm looking to drive efficiency, attract more high-quality prospects, increase client engagement, and accelerate growth? Lawmatics is the attorney-client relationship management platform for law firms. If steady revenue growth is your goal, request a demo today.

Law firms need a customer relationship management (legal CRM) to improve relationships with customers and drive sales growth. Businesses of all sizes are reaping the benefits of a CRM that helps them onboard new clients, build engaging relationships, and consistently deliver polished client experiences.

What is CRM?

Customer relationship management (CRM) is technology businesses use to manage their interactions with current and potential customers. Some CRMs are generic while others cater to certain business verticals or even specific sizes of businesses, such as Small Law Firm CRM (Lawmatics). The most effective CRMs include powerful tools to help companies:

• Expedite growth. Once a business begins to grow, friction may result, allowing valuable leads to fall through the cracks. But all-in-one CRM platforms enable organizations to track everything in one centralized space, so nobody drops the ball on lead follow-up.
• Keep everyone on the same page. With various natively-built tools and integrations, CRMs help businesses align their sales, marketing, and service teams to centralize daily workflows and business goals around clients.
• Share information. No matter who speaks with a potential client – sales, service, or marketing professionals – information is automatically synced and updated in the CRM system, giving a team access to accurate records that can be shared within the platform.
• Gain insight. CRM platforms do more than tell a business where a lead originated. They provide actionable insight into precisely what a potential client clicks on when they receive an email marketing message, how many times a prospect opened an email, how often a lead interacted with a sales team, and more.
• Make better decisions. The data a CRM allows businesses to effectively communicate with their current audience and reach out to those who have shown interest in the past. In doing so they seize the opportunity to provide valuable guidance during the decision-making process.

With CRM in place, marketing departments can focus on creating campaigns that resonate with an audience, sales teams can offer more in-demand products and services, and efficient companies can better serve customers.

What are the benefits of CRM?

CRM software provides numerous benefits to businesses, including law firms, that want to increase efficiency and provide stellar customer service. Five of the main benefits are custom dashboards, personalized outreach, automation potential, enhanced collaboration, and reliable data and metrics.

5 benefits of CRM for law firms:

1. Custom dashboards. When a business uses a spreadsheet, data must be inputted manually, an error-prone and labor-intensive process. However, a CRM does most of the work, and customized dashboards can be set up for every user with login credentials. Intuitive dashboards allow users to see the data that is most important to their unique workflows without having to sift through data or run a report.
2. Personalized client outreach. A CRM continually gathers data regarding the audience, market, and industry relevant to a particular business. As a result, users can create more relevant, personalized messaging via a drip campaign – a series of automated emails triggered by specific actions directed to a particular audience.
3. Automation potential. CRM platforms offer automation, which reduces the time spent nurturing leads, prioritizes which marketing qualified leads (MQL) will most likely transition into sales qualified leads (SQL), and handles routine customer questions with chatbots or other automated messaging.
4. Enhanced collaboration. A cloud-based CRM platform provides an up-to-date, shared record of all customers’ conversations, interactions, and contact information. Some systems also offer built-in collaboration tools that enable multiple users to work on one file simultaneously and follow the progress of individual matters to create a seamless workflow.
5. Reliable data and metrics. Data is a valuable resource for businesses; however, it’s not usable until it is organized and converted into an actionable format. A CRM system helps companies see who interacts with the organization and through what channels. It enables the team to run reports to see where opportunities exist, how they communicate with prospective and current customers, and review sales and customer service trends.

Finding clients is challenging, and once you find them, you must establish and maintain strong relationships to keep them. CRM allows businesses such as law firms to offer high-quality, consistent, and timely customer interactions at all stages within the sales pipeline.

What is the purpose of CRM at a law firm?

Strong client relationships are at the foundation of a successful law practice. According to The Client-Centered Law Firm, to thrive in today’s competitive legal environment, law firms need to be client-centered. This means they must provide a positive client experience by building trust, forming a solid working relationship, and leaving clients willing to refer others once their matter has resolved. Legal CRM platforms help lawyers attract and retain clients, grow the firm, and support continued business expansion. Lawmatics law office CRM elevates the client experience with automated processes, customizable digital intake forms, email workflows, advanced custom fields, document request templates, e-signature capability, and more. To learn more about how the Lawmatics system will help your firm’s process run smoothly, request a demo today.

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.