Strategic planning. Financial oversight. Industry expertise. Project management. These are just a few of the responsibilities you have as legal operations manager.
Technology has grown tremendously in its ability to support you in your managerial role, rather than replace you. This is essential as your responsibilities are continually growing, yet your bandwidth to handle them stays the same.
Legal operations managers are increasingly turning to legal case management software to better manage processes and gain a big-picture view of their organization. Managers specifically like that legal software offers:
- Big-picture views of team’s activities, tasks and progress
- Ability to control administrative functions
- Template-creation tools for processes and documents
- Single location for secure documents and case information
- Expense tracking and reporting across the entire organization.
You want to help your organization run more efficiently, and too often you run into challenges like backlogs, overtime, lack of reporting and stress. Now, there are software tools to help you eliminate everyday pains and help your legal process run smoother.
Five Ways to Improve Processes Through Case Management Software
Here are five legal software tools you can implement today to help maximize your organization’s time and productivity—and ease some of the daily challenges you face.
- Supervisor View
Whether your organization is large or small, you want to be able to manage your staff in the most efficient way possible. Through legal software, you can oversee the activity of your team through a “supervisor view.” This inside look enables you to view and assign matters and tasks to every team member within your organization. You can review your staff members’ calendars, to-dos, documents, time entries and other action items to stay abreast of the productivity of your team at any given time. A master calendar also lets you see what every team member has planned for each day.
Legal software helps you to know how files are moving along, what tasks are outstanding and learn ahead of time where backlogs may occur. This enables you to easily assign or reassign workloads proactively. Automated notifications can also be set and sent to your team when a matter is changed or re-assigned. Easy, automated reporting can be scheduled to arrive in your inbox daily or weekly so you can stay abreast of all that is happening within the organization.
- Administrative Functions
Legal software admin tools enable managers to have full control over everything that goes in or out of the system. This flexibility allows you to set up the system exactly as you desire to meet your organization’s unique needs. With full administrative control you can:
- Set up case/matter menus
- Establish appropriate user workgroups
- Decide and establish system security
- Create custom windows
- Create workflow wizards
- Create document assembly templates
The best part? You don’t have to be a software expert to do this. The system was designed for non-technical users, so you can easily customize critical aspects of the application.There is no limit to the number of custom menus, windows, prompts or look-up tables you can design.
- Document Template Tools
You have your own unique brand, and it is important for this to be consistently carried throughout your communications. That’s where document and matter-type templates come in. Legal software allows you to customize templates with your organization’s style, terminology, file numbering schemes and other brand elements to ensure consistency across the organization. This not only helps your team easily create and distribute documents they need, but they can also save time by not having to search for the document they need, when they need it.
Special features like “check-in” and “lock-out” for documents ensure that team members are always accessing the correct document and duplicate documents aren’t possible. Lastly, you can have the flexibility to create a template for any type of document, automatically merge file information into your documents as needed and store documents directly in the case or matter.
- Single Platform for Security
Every legal professional wants the peace of mind that their documents and matter information are secure. The last thing you need to be concerned about is unauthorized access or security breaches. Managers have complete control over your legal software’s security. You are responsible for adding users, assigning security rights and adjusting rights based on job status and employment changes. Security groups must be created before users can be added to the system. You also can activate or deactivate passwords at any given time.
Through unique features like “private files” you can create a case which can only be accessed by those who are given permission and a password. This added layer of security is essential today to ensure peace of mind and protection over your organization’s most prized information.
- Budget and Expense Tracking
Overseeing the organization’s budget and spending is one of your most important jobs as a manager. With legal software, this responsibility is made easier through technology that tracks legal spend, accruals and budgets—giving you the ability to easily identify cost savings opportunities as they arise.
Legal software enables you to create desired billing time intervals and apply them system-wide for uniformity among the team. You also have the flexibility to incorporate time and expenses into invoices so that your team can easily bill for work completed.
Simplifying the Legal Process Through Case Management Software
The focus of legal operations is on driving innovation and change through efficient processes—so you and your team can spend more time on important matter-related issues and less time on menial tasks.
Legal Files is the software solution you need to better manage people and processes. With supervisor settings, administrative control, template creation tools and more, you can create a system that’s tailored to your organization, helping you to consistently meet your business processes and requirements.
It’s this tailored approach that sets Legal Files apart from other legal software providers. With a dedication to customer feedback and continuous improvement, Legal Files ensures your legal case management software works the way you want it to—no matter what your needs are.
“Legal Files makes it so much easier to find information.”
Jerry K. Hashimura, Department Manager
Suzuki Motor USA, LLC, a Legal Files Client
With 30 years of experience supporting organizations across a number of industries, Legal Files gives teams the customization and personalization they need so they can focus on accomplishing more activities each day with less resources and time.
Request a demo to learn more about how we help organizations like yours manage what matters most.