Spend less time on administrative tasks with Legodesk

 “Time is money,” the old adage goes, yet businesses waste hours on menial tasks related to administration and management. The same is true when it comes to any law firm management. 

One of the most common reasons cited for lost productivity was the over-reliance on man-led processes (78 percent) and outdated technology (72 percent). As per a recent study conducted by Altman Weil, most of the larger law firms agree that automation and new competition arising from this implementation are an integral part of the profession. Additionally, they agreed that the industry is transitioning from a slow-moving business to a fast-paced environment with overall performance improvement.

However, there is an easy way to ensure improvements to your administrative processes to gain an overall competitive advantage or even maintain a work-life balance. It is possible to make yourself a more productive lawyer with some useful software such as the Legodesk practice management software. This platform is designed to can help you stay organized. With an effective task management system in place, you can handle one-off and recurring tasks with the minimum amount of time and effort. Simply put, you don’t have to worry about managing your schedule, setting meeting reminders, logging account statements, or tracking case files every time.

How Legodesk helps with administrative tasks:

1. Streamlining client intake-

You probably spent a lot of time interviewing clients to get all the essential information about their cases. But, what if you could get that time back? When clients connect with you through Legodesk, they need to fill out certain information. Having this information handy makes it easier for you as a lawyer to gain the required basic information. Legodesk significantly reduces time spent on interviewing the client. Moreover, as the lawyer deals with the client, additional information gets auto-added to the customer profile, building your database for further usage.  

2. Matter Organization and Retrieval-

Any law firm must maintain and organize its files. The process is time-consuming, and there are malpractice claims arising annually from lost files and misplaced documents. Additionally, it is difficult to find something from a pile of documents. However,  Legodesk provides simple tools to maintain client and matter files and all of their associated documents in the cloud; this allows them to be searched by keyword indexing and using the global search feature to find information.  Legodesk uses a smart algorithm to ensure that when you search for a document, it returns results that exactly match your requirements. The feature eliminates the need to dig through folders to find a document.

3. Time management- 

In a law firm, calculating billable hours is one of the fundamental yet mundane tasks for anyone handling administrative duties. It is important to determine how much and when you will get paid by calculating and billing the right amount of time. Keeping time manually can complicate the invoicing process as it is easy to lose handwritten notes. Legodesk practice management software has a built-in timer. It allows you to define different types of tasks and record the time spent on them. By automating billing activities, you can significantly reduce the time spent on those tasks. Naturally, this increases your chance of getting paid more quickly. Moreover, the platform provides real-time or scheduled reports. These can help you identify which areas are your money-makers and where you need to improve. 

4. Finance management-

Legodesk can streamline many internal processes that were previously time-consuming and labor-intensive to complete. Invoice and billing management, for example, requires a great deal of time and attention. With the smart platform, however, you can automate the revenue collection process. You can automate virtually all transactional tasks such as invoice generation, payment submission, and outstanding invoice alerts by setting the duration, defining email templates, and adding conditions to each task. Our automated solution can handle all of these tasks for you without requiring you to spend hours on administrative work. 

Read Also – How to use Legodesk to automate contract management?

The law firms that use Legodesk have significantly cut back on time spent on doing manual administrative tasks. Let’s end by doing the math. For example, there are 30 lawyers in a law firm. By adapting Legodesk, if you are able to save them from an hour of manual work, which can be spent on handling clients, you can bill 30 more hours on a daily basis. Considering 240 workdays (excluding weekends and other holidays), you are able to bill additional 240×30= 7200  hours. Well, more billable hours convert into more revenue. 

 

How law firms are adopting Legodesk?

Globally, technology continues to advance in every industry, including law firms. There was a time where technology meant just using computers and typewriters. 

Technology innovations are often resisted by law firm partners who have their ways of doing things. It has been especially difficult for lawyers who didn’t grow up with digital technologies. However, as clients (both corporates and individuals) start becoming tech-savvy, the law firm management workflow must adapt and progress. 

For the success of your business, you need to understand automation. Firms split their tasks into various departments where synchronization plays a key role. Also, being client-centric, the information synchronization extends even to the clients. Time being a crucial aspect, failing to abide by the schedules because of poor integration with other tasks or miscommunication has become a common problem amongst law firms of all sizes.

Read Also – Legal Management Solutions

A one-tap solution to all these mistakes and misconceptions is to integrate your firm with legal management software. It could automate most of your work and provide real-time updates regarding resources, ROI, and efforts. 

Legodesk offers a cloud-based legal case management platform for lawyers to connect with clients and manage administrative tasks with minimal manual intervention. Due to the centralization, there is no scope for information delays and glitches. 

Why are law firms switching to Legodesk?

What would it be like if everyone at your law firm had better access to legal information, communication, and share knowledge and documents? Sounds impossible. But, it is not.

The truth is, a good legal case management solution can increase the efficiency of your firm and improve collaboration among its employees and clients.

And, that is the reason why more and more lawyers are adopting productivity platforms. And, Legodesk remains a top choice for them. Why? Let’s talk about the holistic features offered by Legodesk- 

1. Periodical updates

When you switch to legal case management software, it’s important to keep in mind that laws and the related rules and procedures frequently change, and information can quickly become outdated. It would be best if you had a trusted resource like Legodesk to help you keep on top of these changes so you can anticipate and address your clients’ needs. It’s critical, therefore, that internal software updates are continually made to ensure you have the information and tools you need to be authoritative and reliable. 

2. Increased efficiency

With cloud-based legal case management platforms like Legodesk, it becomes easy to work remotely and stay updated in real-time. With automation, it becomes easier to track time and generate bills, ultimately increasing a law firm’s efficiency and producing better results.

3. Risk-free

As a law firm, you deal with a lot of sensitive information. Naturally, storing them in your computer or email-provided drive can be risky. That’s why lawyers trust Legodesk, which complies with GDPR compliance to ensure all your documents and information are secured. Moreover, with end-to-end encryption, Legodesk ensures all exchanged information remains elusive to third parties. 

Read Also – How Legal Practice Management Software Help Law Firms

Are you switching for the first time?

If this is the first time your law firm is considering upgrading to legal software, you might have to consider many aspects to work on. To make things easier, here is your Legodesk guide.

A law firm has many available technology options, but this does not mean that it will benefit from every new technology it encounters. Please focus on the quality of benefits and how well they match your business needs. It is best to have a clear understanding of the problem and the solution to be solved. To determine whether a technical solution is the right solution, identify the existing weaknesses in your business. Once you have identified the problem, you will better understand if the technical solution could solve the business problem.

1. Research well

Initially, you can research your chosen software with no knowledge about the software and get your basics about it right. While doing so, you can also correlate it with your law firm’s problems and understand them better. Document your observations and also make sure you include the tips mentioned below.

2. Understand the software

 Not just from the legal perspective, you should also understand how the software works in the background. You can compare it with a simple example of purchasing a smartphone. You not only just look into the device’s features, but also the operating system opted and the technology used. Similarly, it is necessary to look into the security and background support software used in the software.

3. Pros and cons

While pros and cons are also a part of understanding the software, it must be addressed solely for the firm’s development. You should document all the advantages and disadvantages and make sure to finalize the best fit in terms of costing, security, and overall features.

4. Take a demo

Get a free personalized demo from the legal case management platform providers to get all your questions addressed and come to a conclusion. Like many other legal software solutions, Legodesk provides its clients a free demo.

5. SWOT analysis

Screening is the only way you can eliminate the software solutions you listed first. After screening the software you gathered, now you can conduct a strength, weakness, opportunity, and threat (SWOT) analysis to get a better understanding of your screened software. This analysis could now help you to get a wider picture of the software’s risk more than anything else. 

With a simple analytical example, you can understand the analysis even better.

1. Strength:       How time-efficient and cost-efficient is the software?
2. Weakness:    Complications in data migration from old software to new software.
3. Opportunity: How much revenue can this software increase in the firm?
4. Threat:          Any chance to compromise data security?

5. Document all the findings

Once you sort everything as guided, document, all the observations to be presentable to the staff. You can include major observations like summaries and important aspects of the software, SWOT analysis, migration and implementation plan, a financial assessment that includes details about the return on investment.

6. Present your solution

Once all your documentation is ready, it’s time for the presentation. Present to key decision-makers of the law firm. Explain to them your observations and your analysis. Also, stay open to receive questions and feedback. 

7. Get a custom software

If your firm accepts your suggestion, it’s time to get forward with the software consultant. Contact your chosen service provider and customize a solution that suits your workflow. Of course, you might have to change a bit of your plan; stay prepared for that too. 

You can get our Legodesk consultant to implement your plans as per your necessities and get workflow suggestions for better customization of your legal software.

8. Plan for the technology transition and implementation

“Change is inevitable, and also it’s the most difficult task for anyone to change. And considering an entire firm’s working process to change it’s nearly an impossible task. But, with prior planning and implementation, it’s not a difficult task to accomplish. Here are some of the common questions in this regard-

1. How long and what will the migration period look like?

If you have to transfer your law firm’s data to the new legal software, you need a supporting staff and a plan. Legodesk offers the easiest data migration service where your firm has nothing to work and worry about. A dedicated Legodesk consultant would take up the transferred business and get the work done. Considering all these, you must get to a realistic conclusion about the period of the migration.

2. How would you support your employees and clients to use the software?

If your firm has already been using any software and your employees are familiar with the workflows, the adoption period can be less. However, if they are new to the product and workflow automation software, it can be difficult to manage the firm’s task transition. However, with proper training and adoption plans in place, law firms can manage. The key during the transition phase is to stay focus and boost employee morale so that they don’t get discouraged. With this in mind, it’s better to assign an employee as a guide to get everyone used to the software. 

Read Also – Top 5 Features in a Legal Document Management

The modern legal consumer demands a higher form of involvement than even five years ago. That doesn’t mean every law firm is going to make the shift overnight. It takes time, but you can give clients the experience they expect and get back more time in your day with small steps. If you want clients to see you as the expert able to find answers to their legal issues in the least amount of time, it’s time to invest in the new Legodesk services.

 

How to organize your files using Legodesk?

The cornerstone of each law practice is its legal papers, which can range from client documents to operational bills. Good legal filing systems make it easy to discover and retrieve files. As a result, law firms can become more productive, efficient, and effective. 

In this blog, we will answer a few critical questions like how can you build a reliable filing system? Or what makes a law firm filing system effective? And how might a paperless filing system benefit your practice? 

How to manage paper files

Let’s face it, as a legal firm, you have hundreds of important papers which have not been digitized yet. So, before starting the development of your legal filing system, consider the following to save yourself a lot of time and frustration.

1. Do a preliminary inventory of your present legal file system and go through all your data. If you know what kind of documents you are dealing with, it will be  easy to establish a file system. 
2. Have a proper plan in place for old files. Maybe some documents have expired or you can find them easily online. Old files should be discarded properly. Your jurisdiction’s regulations for retaining files can help you determine if there are any old papers or files that you may responsibly get rid of if any. For example, in New York, lawyers must keep closed client files forever, unless the client or third party demands their restoration.
3. After considering these points, it is time to develop a file-retention policy for your company. Prepare a list of what needs to be preserved and for how long, along with instructions on how files will be disposed of when appropriate. If you can, get rid of unneeded files to free up space for what needs to be preserved.

   Read Also – Everything about the Legal Document Management System

Determine your law office filing system

As soon as you’re ready to start organizing your paper files, ask yourself and answer the following questions:

Do you have enough storage space?

Take a look at your workplace space, do you have enough room to store all papers and files? Physical space concerns might rapidly arise. What sort of cabinets or drawers do you need if you require extra furniture? Is it possible to reorganize your existing furnishings? Never forget to plan. A growing legal business will want more storage capacity to accommodate the papers and data that come with it.

How will you name your files?

Consider a file-naming scheme before you begin transferring your data from one location to the other. How you organize your files will affect how easily you can locate them. Not everyone needs to access files, so be aware of that. A file naming scheme should be easy to comprehend, consistent, and logical. Any abbreviations that only make sense to you will be skipped over.

How will you identify files?

Then, decide on a strategy for identifying and labeling your files. Paper files may be organized more simply with clear identifiers (such as color-coded file labels) and growing files.

Could you go digital?

This is the easiest way to have a legal filing system. Not only this option is space-saving, but also allows you to define permissions and safeguard all the documents. 

Moreover, a digital legal filing system could be a good option to consider. Documents on paper will simply take up more and more space, which will cost you a fortune. A lawyer’s ability to work efficiently with paper files is diminishing as time goes on. If a pandemic or natural disaster occurs, papers can be lost. Furthermore, in the parlance of remote work, it is necessary to have a cloud-based document filing system in place.

Why you should consider a cloud-based law office filing system

Cloud-based document management software is a great way to manage your documents. An online document management system like Legodesk allows you to store and organize documents and then view them securely from any location. In addition to limitless document storage (with automated file backup) and quick file retrieval (you can discover the file you need in seconds using a keyword search), adopting the cloud for your legal filing system will increase your firm’s production and efficiency.

Your legal filing system can seem like a lot of effort at first, especially if you’ve never done it before. In the long run, however, a paperless legal office may save you time, money, and a lot of work.

There are several ways to improve the organization of your legal papers, even if your company is still utilizing a paper system. In the end, it’s a short-term fix. Consider going paperless to prepare your law practice for success in today’s legal market. 

Read Also – Importance of Document Management System for Lawyers

Here are some reasons why:

Save time and increase time spent on billable work

Lawyers spend barely 2.5 hours a day on billable work, according to the Legal Trends Report for 2019. Lawyers have to spend a lot of time on administrative chores, such as going through paper files. But, with a cloud-based file system for your legal firm, the requirement to manually handle paper systems is much reduced. Naturally, allowing you and your staff more time to spend on billable work and create valuable relations that bring you, clients. 

Work from anywhere, at any time

We’ve learned through the COVID-19 epidemic that working remotely as an attorney is always useful—and sometimes necessary. With Legodesk, documents can be accessed remotely with your legal office filing system in the cloud. A law firm can work efficiently from home or in the office using this platform. Additionally, a little more flexibility towards technology adoption may go a long way toward enhancing your quality of life and work-life balance.

No space and furniture issues 

An important element of organizing paper files is figuring out where everything will go. Physical file management may be expensive and take up a lot of space. With Legodesk, your computer is all you need to save your legal documents in a cloud-based system, saving you money and space. Moreover, as the entire platform is on the cloud, you don’t have to worry about backups or any physical damage to your device. 

Transfer the benefits to your clients

Embracing a paperless office isn’t only beneficial to you and your law firm. Your clients also benefit when you save time by obtaining legal papers digitally. Using a cloud-based document management solution in a courtroom may save you important time and offer you a competitive edge; which ultimately benefits your clients. It results in a better customer experience, and you have more time to build your business.

Read Also – Advantages of a Cloud-based Legal Document Management Software

Essential tools for organizing your files using Legodesk 

It’s not easy to maintain a law firm’s file system, but the appropriate tools and technology may make the process easier, especially if you’re going towards a paperless approach. Here are two things to keep in mind if you are adopting Legodesk:

• A scanner is a device that scans documents. As a legal firm, you may desire to digitize your business’s files and papers. Using an easy-to-use scanner, you can digitize documents seamlessly. This is essential to convert all your paper-based documents into a cloud-storable format. 
• Searchable PDF software is available for download. You may search through legal documents electronically (instead of wasting time flipping through papers). Acrobat DC or Foxit PhantomPDF enables you to convert numerous files at once into PDFs that are easy to edit and print.

Conclusion 

Your law firm’s productivity and efficiency can be greatly enhanced by using a strong legal filing system. Lawyers that have adopted Legodesk for file and document management have observed a 30% increase in their billable hours. An orderly file system will enhance your legal firm’s organization. It’s your best bet—and sensible investment in your firm’s future—to go digital with a paperless system. As soon as your firm’s files are paperless, you may work from anywhere. It will be easier to find, retrieve and collaborate on legal papers.

 

Difference Between Billing and Invoice

Law firm billing can be a complex process. Many lawyers and clients interchange between  “invoice” and “billing” since both documents contain detailed sales or service information and are integral to the purchase cycle.

Although both of them are more or less identical, some of the main features are different from each other. According to a report, lawyers record only 2.5 billable hours per day on average, while the rest is spent on billing and finance management. Truthfully, law firm billing is time taking; but, it is an integral part of law firm management. 

Let us begin our discussion by clarifying the basics first. 

Definition of an invoice

An invoice is a document that a purchaser delivers to a seller to describe the sales information and often follows a specific invoice template. Invoices are considered to be official legal documents, meaning that lawyers must manage invoices in particular ways. For example, you should neither erase and change a customer’s invoice. All invoices should carry a unique identification number. Only then, they are legal and valid.

If you deal with a larger organization, strict invoicing criteria may apply, from when bills must be transmitted to the formatting of bills. However, you still have to conform to a standard set of invoice criteria while not operating with huge companies. It guarantees your clients consistency and maintains a seamless billing process.

The descriptions of the legal billing should not be either long or too brief. It should be concise to ensure the utmost clarity for the receiver. Remember, explicit descriptions of bills lead to fewer conflicts and save tons of time.

Billing Process

Issuing invoices is a part of the billing process. 

In the Billing process, you need to define the customer types and optional categories of people who need to be charged. Decide on the billing products to be billed as well as the method to calculate the charges. For customer billing, product codes are defined in the billing system setup.

Read Also – How to Choose Best Legal Billing Software

The law firm billing process

How to get paid faster

Law firms frequently discover that payment takes too long. And 14% of all hours billed to customers, based on the Legal Trends Report for 2020, are never paid.

1. Better time management 

The implementation of particular timing and record-keeping practices is among the main methods to optimize cash flow. How could you collect on time if you didn’t keep track of it? Take notes on what you are doing, check outgoing calls and emails, and measure the time you go, as described before.

2. Being on time

Think about your technique of dealing with debts for a minute. You can budget and pay them on time when these bills are coming at a predictable period. It is challenging to keep up with things when bills are unpredictable and inconsistent. Getting out bills on schedule will assist your company collects faster, every month simultaneously.

3. Recall regularly 

Let not invoices fall under the radar. Make it a custom to email customers who have not paid regular reminders. With Legodesk, lawyers can automate this process to send auto-reminder, saving both time and money. 

4. Accept payment by credit card

If you are still asking your customers to pay by check, you request them to use a means of payment that they haven’t used in years. Customers demand comfortable online payment alternatives in the digital world. With online credit card payments, you, as a law firm, can give you this alternative.

More importantly, with the new-age automation techniques, law firms can easily integrate the payment format into their law firm billing process.  

Read Also – How Legal Practice Management Software Help Law Firms

What is legal billing software?

Legal billing software guarantees the payment of time and effort by lawyers and legal firms. These billing systems are geared for the legal industry and include time tracking, billing, and specific accounting skills. Software for legal accounting comes with case management systems and more comprehensive accounting platforms to provide a holistic picture of the law firm. 

Law firm billing policy

Having a clear, standardized law firm billing policy in place can save your firm valuable time and money. It helps keep everyone on the same page by providing a reference document. 

When writing a new policy, you’ll want to consider:

1. What are the billing practices of your firm? 

2. Where do you see the most errors?

3. What are the main bottlenecks of the process? 

How to utilize Legodesk to streamline Law firm billing

Investing in law businesses’ accounting software positively impacts how lawyers spend their time and reduces overall human errors. Legodesk allows you to build branded invoices and receive payments through multiple gateways. With its auto-accounting features, it makes finance management super easy.  

Legodesk integrates with your favorite accounting systems; furthermore, it is perfect for lawyers to conduct legal research, manage cases, work with internal teams, automate accounts and invoices. 

Lawyers can benefit significantly from investing in legal billing software to help your firm run more smoothly. Again, technology shouldn’t come before the process. After all, people matter before any software. Learning curves can help establish this process. An investment in software like Legodesk can yield a lifetime of simplified billing practices for your law firm. However, if you are not sure, you can always try out Legodesk for free for a month.