Your practice is busy. Staffing is lean. Clients expect speed. How does an overworked law office keep all the plates spinning? The right legal practice management software could make all the difference. Finding your fit could mean less administrative work—and better results.
This guide covers four reasons criminal defense firms can benefit from legal practice management software.
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What is law practice management software?
Legal practice management software helps you run your law firm. Unlike general-purpose business software, legal practice management software is designed just for law firms. For instance, it includes built-in tools to manage your trust accounts ethically and find potential conflicts before ethical issues arise.
Features vary among platforms, but legal practice management software usually offers some or all of the following:
- Time and billing (timers, time entries, invoicing, vendor payments)
- Financial management (bookkeeping and advanced financial tasks)
- Contact management for conflict checking and case management
- Case management (calendars, digital files, digital documents, workflow automations)
- Reporting and analytics to help you track your success
Some vendors combine features into a single product, while others create separate modules. Modular software allows you to choose the features you need based on your firm’s current needs and scale as you grow.
1. Stay compliant (and in the black)
Practice management software with robust financial features can reduce the time you spend managing the biggest keep-the-lights-on task: time and billing. The platform you choose should be simple and efficient, with strong guardrails around trust accounting and other compliance issues.
Criminal defense firms can get the following benefits.
Track your time effortlessly (even for flat-rate cases)
If your firm uses hourly rates, tracking time is crucial.
Even on flat fee matters, however, including time entries on account statements can help you manage your clients by showing the value of your work. And with accurate time data, you can check your flat rates against the actual time spent on cases and adjust future rates accordingly.
Look for time tracking products that fit your workstyle and caseload. For instance, you might appreciate a platform with a mobile app that allows you to track time when you are moving from depositions to court and back again. Apps allow you to write time entries on the go too, when your memory is freshest.
Some tools can flag common narrative mistakes as you write your entries, and have digital options for revising time entries during the billing statement approval process.
Get control of your cash flow
Staying on top of billing and collections can mean better collections rates. When generating statements is fast and easy, you are more likely to do it every month. Thus, good financial management software can help you collect more money in less time.
The best software for your practice is one that matches your firm’s unique needs. Consider your current statement approval workflow and how the software could speed up, automate, or otherwise improve that process, like:
- Accepting payments the way your clients want to pay (usually electronically).
- Reducing the number of steps it takes to generate, modify, and finalize invoices.
- Preventing unauthorized modification of time entries and invoices.
- Sending invoices by email or secure sharing link (if the client desires).
- Preventing trust/operating account mix-ups.
- Reporting on your collections rates so you can take action early.
If you use retainers or flat fees, look for software that can track retainer usage, make it simple for your clients to top up evergreen retainers, and send regular statements showing the work you have done on the client’s behalf.
Keep the bills paid and the books balanced
Your firm also has bills to pay, and financial software can save a great deal of time in accounts receivable. For example, you can automate recurring payments, pay electronically, see which invoices need to be paid, and manage 1099s.
If you handle bookkeeping in-house, a fully-featured financial management package can include general ledger as well trust accounting.
Once a process tied to printers and postal mail, digital tools now enable law firms to implement efficient, cost-effective paperless invoicing. Ready to make the switch? Take the first step toward a more organized and productive invoicing workflow. Download the guide today.
2. Build better relationships and avoid case conflicts
From intake to case resolution, managing client relationships (and finding conflicts early) is the name of the game.
Key wins for criminal defense practices include the following.
Find conflicts of interest faster
Even if you are a solo practitioner, your memory or a past client spreadsheet may not catch every potential conflict. Since any individual you come into contact with during a case could be a source of a conflict, the number of names you must record or remember is overwhelming.
Digital conflict checking can take the burden off you while increasing the accuracy of your conflict checks. A fully integrated practice management system can automatically search all your files, your emails, and your contact database. You can still do a memory-based cross-check, and you will make representation decisions with more confidence.
Put client information where the team can reach it
If your client and contact information is stored in multiple locations, a single synchronization error can become a headache. Centralized contact management allows everyone in the firm to see client contact details (as appropriate to their role) and ensures anyone who needs to contact a client has up-to-date information at their fingertips.
Speed up client communications
Sharing documents, getting signatures, and reminding clients about court dates and appointments can take up a lot of time. Many of those tasks can be automated with the right software.
For example, you may be able to:
- Send clients automatic text or email reminders about important events.
- Share documents quickly and securely without the risk of traditional email attachments.
- Gather legally binding eSignatures for engagement letters and other documents.
It is also important to retain client emails, both for your own case work and for future conflict checking efforts. Many contact management modules can integrate with your email.
Find your best-fit clients
Some contact management modules help you grow your firm by improving your marketing and intake processes. You might use the software to share intake data, automate potential client follow-up and reminders, and even collect pre-screening data to reduce the time spent doing intake for cases you cannot accept.
3. Get more organized and productive
If you are wasting hours every week managing paper files, disconnected calendars, and workflows full of repetitive manual tasks, practice management software can reduce your workload significantly. Many practice management systems include a case management module, which simplifies day-to-day client work.
Criminal defense firms often prioritize the following capabilities.
Never miss a deadline
When you are juggling filing deadlines, motion hearings, client conferences, and other court appearances, it can be difficult to keep the team in sync. Practice management platforms often include shared calendars to make coordination easier.
You can typically limit sharing to smaller groups. For instance, if a paralegal supports multiple attorneys, they can see both attorneys’ calendars, but neither attorney can see the other’s calendar. This keeps cluttered calendars cleaner and reduces mix-ups.
Eliminate repetitive manual tasks
In many criminal defense practices, everyone wears many hats. Any time you save on often-repeated tasks eases the workload. Reducing the need for double data entry is a common automation target.
That can take the form of data mapping, like a tool that moves potential client data from a CRM and into a case management module after the engagement letter is signed. Or it might mean digitizing the statement review process, so revisions are typed in instead of handwritten and then transcribed.
Instant access to the information you need
Centralizing and digitizing data storage keeps your team in sync and reduces the time spent looking for documents. Storing documents electronically minimizes the need for costly on-site document storage.
Digital access is even more powerful when you are away from the office. Software with a mobile app empowers you to review a file at home, look up a client’s address on the go, and search case documents while you are in court.
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4. Keep your eyes on the big picture
When workloads are intense, it is tempting to focus only on the work in front of you. That said, strong reporting and analytics tools can help keep your firm healthy—now and in the future. Practice management platforms usually come with built-in reporting capacity for most modules, and some offer advanced business intelligence and analytics.
Criminal defense firms can use reporting and analytics in the following ways:
Stay on top of short-term goals
Virtually every practice management platform comes with bread-and-butter reports like aging WIP (for time tracking and billing) and lead tracking (for CRMs). Regularly reviewing and taking action on reports is essential for every firm.
It is important to evaluate whether a platform’s built-in reporting meets your needs. Many law firms find they need at least a few custom reports, so you may wish to consider the availability of custom reporting (and what technical knowledge is needed to create reports).
Position for a successful future
Many firms can benefit from monthly, quarterly, or annual reviews of the firm’s progress towards long-term goals. That might include:
- Checking utilization and progress towards billing targets for each timekeeper.
- Analyzing the time spent on flat fee cases to determine whether rates need adjustment.
- Evaluating the progress of marketing efforts and then iterating with new ideas.
- Tracking financials to see where your dollars are going.
By choosing a practice management system that includes reports like this, you can spend less time reinventing the wheel. In some cases, you can get dynamic dashboards that visually represent close to real-time data.
Build a more prosperous criminal defense practice with Tabs3
Tabs3’s suite of legal practice management products was designed with you in mind. The platform is modular, so you can choose the features you need now and scale up as your practice grows. For example, you can:
- Make time tracking, billing, and retainer management effortless with Tabs3 Billing.
- Accept electronic payments with Tabs3Pay.
- Work wherever you choose with Tabs3Cloud.
- Manage bookkeeping, trust accounting, and pay bills with Tabs3 Financials.
- Get your team in sync and centralize document/client data storage with Tabs3 PracticeMaster.
- Get more clients in less time with Tabs3 CRM.
Want to learn more? Our legal practice management software experts are ready to listen to your needs and show you how Tabs3 can help. Schedule your demo today.
👉 Set up a personalized demonstration with our experienced trainers today.
Ready to transform your law firm’s billing process? Schedule a personalized demo and discover how Tabs3 Cloud can transform your firm in one complete practice management solution.
