At Conti Moore Law, we constantly strive for more efficiency while helping our clients save money. We are also always looking for ways to spend time on our cases, not just on all the paperwork involved. We use a variety of software platforms to serve our clients better, and these are the top five I recommend.
My first suggestion is Calendly’s automated scheduling software. Does it seem like your receptionist is spending way too much time on the phone scheduling appointments for you and your staff? We suggest checking out Calendly to help automate this process. You can send a link to your calendar right to your clients and let them take care of setting up their appointments. You can keep better control of your calendar and set more parameters. It enables you to be more intentional with how you spend your time.
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When you think about law firms, cutting-edge technology might not be something you think of right off the bat. Some firms are stuck in the past, still relying on outdated methods daily. The pandemic was a reminder that we can’t stay rooted in the past. We need to develop more innovative ways to run our firms and better help our clients.
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It isn’t just for client appointments, either. It’s a very robust, customizable program that will enable you to send and schedule text and email reminders about scheduling appointments. You can send the link to new clients, opposing counsel, and even lunch dates. It’s so easy to customize and allows your team members to spend time on more important things. It’s not that expensive, and you’ll see your return on investment.
Lawmatics is my second suggestion for a software platform. We use this specifically for our client onboarding process. Before Lawmatics, our manual onboarding process took valuable time out of our schedules and kept us from focusing on our client work. We couldn’t keep up with leads on time, which was costing us in the long run. We wanted an automated solution that allowed our team to put the focus back on clients.
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Using Lawmatics to automate more of the onboarding process radically increased the efficiency of my team. It’s important to note that automation is not a replacement for quality personal interactions. We can still assign tasks, like phone calls and text messages, so the personalized experience is not lost. Instead of spending time creating to-do lists and double-checking that all tasks are completed, our staff members can rely on Lawmatics to keep everything streamlined and organized. This allows us to spend more time on legal strategy and analysis. Incorporating this process helped lead to an increase in business and more profitability for the firm.
My third software suggestion is Legalboards. It basically allows you to visualize how your firm operates. You can set up tasks and automations and see everything laid out in front of you. In family law, our cases happen in stages. For example, tasks can be broken out and assigned according to what stage they are in, like intake, discovery, mediation, and trial prep. It’s easy to see how long a case takes to move through these stages and where the bottlenecks might be located. It helps us see where we can improve our processes throughout each case.
Legalboards use a card system to automate your tasks. So, if you move a card, it goes to the next stage and assigns the next card to someone else, and keeps the process flowing. It has been so beneficial to us in our case meetings because we can see right away where a case stands, and what we need to do next. It is just an amazing way for us to visualize what has been done and what still needs to be done. It doesn’t leave you guessing on where your team stands on each case. It clearly displays what you need to know and leaves the guesswork out of it.
Invoice Sherpa is my fourth suggestion and is geared towards accounts receivable. It allows you to automate how you collect money from clients, and it has helped us get paid much faster. You can create custom schedules for each account, which allows you to send out email and text message reminders. You can also customize the language to make it more casual or more serious, depending on what is needed.
Invoice Sherpa has reduced the time my billing department has to spend calling people to inquire about outstanding payments. If a client doesn’t respond and ignores our emails, we know it might be time to let that case go. We can also create custom schedules if a client needs to work out a payment plan. The cost is worth the investment on this one because it saves us so much time. It has drastically cut down on our outstanding accounts receivable and we would pay someone much more to keep track of everything as seamlessly as this software.
My final suggestion is Trainual. This one is a little different because it is all about onboarding and employee training. As a busy law firm owner, I don’t always have the time to train new team members during the day. Trainual allows me to record training videos and create documents about the office’s standard operating procedures. It does take a little time to set up, but it’s worth the investment. You can easily create a business playbook for your firm with Trainual’s templates and training library.
It has forced me to look at our procedures and now we have a written, as well as recorded version of our onboarding procedures. You can set up quizzes or tests to make sure each new team member understands everything and is on the same page. It’s a more engaging way to train people and teach them about your policies.
As you can see, these software platforms have been game-changers for my firm. They have helped us streamline and automate many of our processes, so then we can free up valuable time for our clients and the things that really matter. It has helped us reduce time spent on administrative tasks and allowed us to double the amount of business we handle.Conti Moore Smith, Esq. ('07)
Managing Partner
Conti Moore Law, PLLC
www.contimoorelaw.com
Conti Moore practices primarily in Family Law, including Dissolution of Marriage, Time Sharing, Custody, Paternity, Modification for Time-Sharing, and Injunctions in Central Florida.
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RECAP: Virtual Lunch with Desmond Meade
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Thank you to everyone who attended our virtual chat with Desmond Meade. It was a huge success. If you missed it, you can catch the replay below. Just click on the button to watch now.
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