San Diego legal non-profit scales rapidly with Lawmatics

Nicholas Moore
Supervising Attorney
Free to Thrive
Firm facts
Practice Area
Civil Law, Criminal Law
Business Size
25 Staff
Location
San Diego, CA
Switched From
Google Sheets
Meet Nicholas Moore
Nicholas Moore is the supervising attorney for civil law at Free to Thrive, a firm that provides pro bono legal services for human trafficking survivors. Funded by grants and donations, Free to Thrive offers empathetic and effective services in both civil and criminal law. Oftentimes, cases entail helping clients navigate an entire legal system and not just a single matter.

With so many needs sprawling across so many areas, Nicholas needs to organize everything that’s already on his plate. Free to Thrive’s commitment to helping more survivors means he also plans to grow. Doing so requires a CRM that can scale with his firm.

I don't think our organization scales at this speed without the organization that Lawmatics provides."

— Nicholas Moore

The mission

Nicholas needs a helping hand in his work to aid victims of sex trafficking in their recovery and reassimilation. His firm, Free to Thrive, offers services beyond the legal realm. The firm’s case workers provide support to clients facing extra-legal challenges such as food or housing insecurity. Since Free to Thrive isn’t a generic firm, they can’t rely on generic tools. With Free to Thrive performing such a vast array of functions, Nicholas turned to Lawmatics — a system that’s as agile as he is.

Challenges

Limitations of time

Nicholas was one of just two attorneys on staff when he started at Free to Thrive. Because of the size of the organization, the attorneys were responsible for matters as well as managing the intake process — and thus found themselves severely time constrained when handling a high volume of matters.

Prompt follow up

Free to Thrive’s unique model of services dictates that staff need to follow up with various organizations and government agencies in addition to their clients. Tracking down each point of contact and manually following-up was neither efficient nor sustainable as the firm scaled.

Organization & documents

Each of Nicholas’s clients have different interactions with the legal system. From restraining orders to post-conviction relief, any given client may need several documents for potentially dozens of matters. Searching for all these documents without a centralized storage location can only cause headaches and waste time.

Lawmatics offered the ease of data capture and future-focused ideas of automation that I was looking for."

— Nicholas Moore

Benefit highlights

Streamlined workflows

Free to Thrive has created more than two dozen automated workflow pipelines for each of its unique needs. “One of the great functions of this pipeline process is it allows us to visualize those steps to get the client from authorizations to their matter being closed.

New demographic data

Having detailed demographic insights on his clients, Nicholas is able to present consistent, precise information about the work his staff does in order to garner funding and further the firm’s initiative. “Lawmatics put us in a position where when it comes time to apply for new grants, we’ve got the information that those grantors want to know.”

More efficient intake

With the help of automations and workflow pipelines, the client intake process is more efficient — and off the attorneys’ plates. Client intake is now overseen by a legal assistant whose expertise and foresight creates a more consistent onboarding process. “Foresight in the onboarding process helped us achieve a level of consistency.”

Clearer organization

Without a CRM, it was hard for Nicholas to follow a contact’s status. Lawmatics organizes client information in one place, with a clear timeline of all the actions taken for a given contact. “The goal we initially set out was organization and visualization. We wanted to have all of our case data, aside from documents, in one place.”

Power features

Workflow pipeline

Nicholas struggled juggling the myriad of pathways any given matter may take. Lawmatics instantly shows him the status of each case and what tasks need action. With workflow pipelines, Nicholas can easily visualize and organize more than two dozen permutations of his intake process.
Legal CRM
Reporting & Insights

Data & insights

Lawmatics can track detailed client demographic data, including race, sex, and zip code. Free to Thrive is able to analyze its client base, and provide valuable insight to grantors about the nature of their work.

Documents

With custom documents in Lawmatics, Free to Thrive can build templates to use time and again. Custom fields seamlessly merge important client information to prepare documents. Clients can use e-signature on Lawmatics documents, completing paperwork without the hassle.
Document Automation

We had too many balls in the air and were dropping balls constantly until we found a truly customizable tech solution."

— Nicholas Moore

Future business goals

Free to Thrive continues to refine its processes to best serve its clients unique needs. Nicholas knows that growth requires some trial and error, so here are some things he wants to work on in the future:

  • Growth of budget, resources, and reach.
  • Optimize processes using automation for maximum efficiency.

Budget growth definitely is a Lawmatics result."

— Nicholas Moore