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The business development and marketing solutions used in legal overlap substantially with those commonly used in other industries. However, there are specific aspects to legal business development that require specialized solutions. Tracking responses to pitches and proposals to easily create new RFP responses is a critical aspect of legal business development. Qorus is one of the solutions in this space. Many firms also use Foundation for pitches and proposals.

Business Development

Business of Law solutions support all of the aspects of running a law firm other than the substantive practice of law. This is therefore a broad category, covering processes from client intake and management to timekeeping and billing, matter management, budgeting and pricing of matter work, email management, records management, information governeance and so on. Many of these processes are administrative and repetitive, lending themselves well to automation. The range of solutions in this category means a large number of vendors are represented, with certain behemoths such as Intapp and Aderant straddling many capabilities. In small and mid-sized law firms, practice management systems act as platform solutions that enable all aspects of the business of law. Clio is the leading practice management system for mid-sized law, incorporating many integrated products that extend its native capabilities.

Business of Law

Legal billing solutions assist law firms to improve and streamline the processes around billing, including tracking time and expenses, creating invoices and bills, reviewing bills, dealing with collections, payments and trust accounting. Elite 3E and Clio are two of the key providers in this category.

Billing

Budgeting

Client portal solutions provide a two-way interface between a law firm and a client, allowing for some combination of capabilities such as collaboration, joint project management on legal matters, the sharing of select thought leadership, access to matter documents, financials and WIP, and access to data-driven insights related to the engagement. While some firms create custom client portals with tools like SharePoint, solutions that offer many of these attributes, such as LUPL, have become effective one-stop shops, rolling together the types of capabilities that used to be spread across multiple technology tools. Other solutions in the space include HighQ and Moxtra. See also, Extranets.

Client Portal

Outside counsel guidelines, or client terms, can be difficult to navigate and track, especially for larger firms with many clients who all prepare lengthy terms in relation to their panel engagements. Client terms management solutions enable firms to track their obligations and ensure compliance. The leading application in this space is Intapp Terms.

Client Terms Management

Any time a new client engages with a law firm, a conflict check must be conducted to ensure that the firms' lawyers are not conflicted out of working with the client due to their obligations to previous or existing clients, or, if there are some minor conflicts, to make sure that processes are put in place that allow for the new client work to be conducted while maintaining ethical obligations of privilege and confidentiality. The conflicts checking process for large law firms can be onerous, with many people having to respond to questions about conflicts around a new client, and careful records needing to be kept of the firm's processes. Solutions have therefore been developed to help firms automate and track the conflicts checking and response process. Intapp is a leader in conflict-checking software for large law, while Clio offers a leading solution for mid-sized law.

Conflicts

CRM (Customer Relationship Management) solutions allow for the full management and administration of an organization’s customer relations, including the ability to keep and track information about customers (or clients), providing a searchable database that stores customer information and related documents and records interactions with customers. In law firms, the information stored will often include not just the contact details for a client but also the relationship partner, any additional connections between the firm and the client, and notes on events, meetings or calls with the client. More sophisticated systems will provide data analysis capabilities and predictive qualities that support business development. In legal, InterAction (LexisNexis) has been a common system, however many firms are now switching to leading inter-industry solutions such as Salesforce.

Traditional billing involves paper or PDF based bills that are hard for the client to analyze. When an invoice is sent through eBilling software it is sent in a digital format which enables the client to analyze the invoice in line with its own billing codes. Leading applications include eBilling Hub (Thomson Reuters), Bilr and LegalBill.

eBilling

Email remains the prominent mode of communication between lawyers and their clients, but the magnitude of emails sent and received each day is often overwhelming, making it difficult for lawyers to regularly file relevant emails to client-matter files. Email management solutions provide automated filing capabilities, often using machine learning to predict which matter an email should be filed to based on the subject or recipients. Solutions include ZERO and Hushmail.

Email Management

Identity and access management technology provides the means for organizations to define roles and manage individal user access to critical information in a variety of cloud and on-premises systems. Generally speaking, IAM systems will define one digital identity per individual or item. After establishing these identities, they are managed and maintained throughout the user or device lifecycle. IAM forms a core part of organizational cybersecurity and is integral to managing risk within an organization. In legal, core players include Amiqus and Sailpoint.

Information governance is a set of rules, policies and procedures that govern the way information and data within an organization is stored and managed. Within a law firm, information governance is typically related to the Office of the General Counsel, a function that prescribes and develops the policies for a firm around legal work product management and manages risk related to compliance and litigation. Information governance software helps organizations to manage their information effectively, informed by all relevant data and in compliance with content data regulations. These solutions also enable organizations to effectively manage privacy, compliance, investigation and litigation risks. Mitratech and Exterro are prominent solutions for legal.

Information Governance

Matter Management

Both law firms and legal departments need to track the work that they undertake, for a variety of reasons including the necessity of being able to locate past work product easily. In law firms, matter management is of particular value because it allows lawyers to easily find representative work that can be referenced in pitches for new work, to use historical matter information in budgeting for future matters, and to track budget and WIP on current matters. Leading solutions for law firms, such as Foundation, provide the capability to track all of these aspects of law firm matters - from matter financials to nuanced matter metadata. Solutions such as Xakia provide matter and work tracking capabilitis for corporate legal departments.

Metadata Scrubbing

The onboarding of a new client or matter by a law firm requires a complex set of administrative processes including the capture of key information about the prospective work. A New Business Intake system is generally the first place that details about a new matter are recorded, including which client it is for, in which industry, in which practice area, what type of matter it is, the name of the originating partner and so on. Intapp Intake and Clio Grow are two of the leading solutions in this area.

New Business Intake

Managing pitches and proposals is a time-consuming task, from both the law firm and the legal department perspective. Responding to pitches and putting together proposals requires the compilation of data about legal matters from multiple systems and departments. Software supporting these workflows typically manage incoming requests for proposals, store prior information about historical matters and responses to previous pitches, pull data from multiple integrated systems, and make it easy for teams to generate proposals. Qorus is one of the leading such platforms commonly used in the legal industry.

Pitches and Proposals

Strategic pricing of legal work is faciliated by data, and the leading solutions in this space collect all of the data that feeds into pricing decisions in one place, leveraging analytics to deliver insights that allow firms to develop data-driven pricing arrangements and improve profitability. Litera's Clocktimizer and Digitory legal are effective solutions in this category.

Pricing

Practice management solutions generally pull together multiple capabilities to support the operational functions of a law firm. This type of technology is one of the best established in legal, with law firms of every size requiring some degree of practice management support. Solutions frequently include capabilities around document and matter management as well as billing, client management and new business intake. Clio is a leading practice management solution for small-to-midsized firms that allows users to integrate specialized apps developed especially for the Clio environment. Intapp provides practice management software for larger firms, and OneDocx offers a solution for solo practitioners and small firms that sits on top of SharePoint Online.

Practice Management