Benefits of a Bespoke CRM for Law Firms

Below are five ways law firms can benefit from a tailored solution: 

1. Improved relationship management

One of the main goals of using a CRM for law firms is to build stronger client relationships, in turn improving client retention and attracting new prospects. Tailored to the needs of your business, a bespoke solution provides features that enable you to manage and nurture key relationships. A few of these are as follows: 

• Contact database: Store all prospects, clients, referrers and any other relevant contacts
• Lead status tracking: Identify top prospects and what clients need to be prioritised. Attorneys can quickly track which leads are in the pipeline and clients that require follow-up 
• Matter tracking: When a client has a legal matter to be solved, storing information and files relating to that specific matter is essential 
• Notes: Add notes about contacts, cases, recent interactions against a specific record to make sure that everyone in the organisation is up-to-date 
• Reminders: Automatic reminders alert you to follow-up with a particular client, or on an overdue task 
• Email sync: Keep all conversations in one place by integrating Dynamics 365 + Outlook. Correspondence with clients can be managed against their record to save time searching through email threads 

2. Improve client communication

Communication is a crucial part of the job, ensuring that legal rights, responsibilities and other information can be clearly conveyed to your clients. If data is held in multiple disparate systems or Excel spreadsheets, this can be incredibly challenging to manage, especially alongside a demanding workload. Time is wasted gathering relevant information from different sources, increasing the chances of miscommunication.

With a bespoke CRM solution, your law firm can easily communicate with clients from wherever they are. A centralised database provides a single view of the customer and all relevant information such as cases, referrers, appointments, notes, etc, can be linked to the record. So when it comes to communicating with the client, the information required is easy to access and there is no need to chase another department for the latest update. 

3. Work on cases simultaneously

A common requirement across law firms is the ability for multiple partners/lawyers to work on cases simultaneously. Without a CRM solution, challenges arise with duplicate data entry, information getting hidden within email threads, and confusion around the latest conversation with a client. To overcome this, Dynamics 365 allows various departments across the firm to access real-time client data, so the most up-to-date information is displayed when working on cases. This also saves confusion around who will follow-up with a client, as the latest interactions are synced to the record.

4. Track overall performance of your law firms’ activity

Another benefit of a CRM for law firms is the ability to track the performance of your organisation; how many clients have engaged your services, how many cases were closed this month, where are most of your opportunities being identified, what leads are in the pipeline, etc. By gaining clear insights into this information, your firm can identify areas that need further development and make informed business decisions.   With a CRM solution, your business can quickly visualise key performance indicators (KPIs) without needing to gather information from various systems and spreadsheets. Some basic areas for reporting within your law firm are: 

• Client-focused: Kind of work performed for clients, how many leads have become paying clients, the share of the firm’s revenue they represent 
• Productivity: Monitor key metrics across attorneys, gaining an understanding of where the resource is most productive, what cases are individuals assigned to, etc
• Billing: track budgets in real-time, billable hours on a case, individual and team, how much profit has been generated in the last 3 months, etc.  

5. Workflow Automation

The legal sales cycle can be lengthy, so having the right tools to support this process is essential. A CRM solution should be more than just a place to store customer information, it should enhance the way your firm does business and assist you to nurture client relationships. Workflow automation makes the day-to-day jobs of lawyers simpler, ensuring key tasks are actioned and more time can be spent with clients. Some processes that can be automated are: 

• Follow-up reminders: Add reminders to follow-up with clients and access the notes within the system from the last conversion before doing so.  This ensures that you get the most out of the meeting and don’t spend time tracking down previous interactions. The Dynamics 365 + Outlook integration recognises tasks that need following-up on directly from e–mails 
• Document generation: Law firms are often required to generate and send multiple documents, such as contracts, NDAs, new client matter intake, etc. The process of manually creating and sending these contracts can be repetitive and time-consuming, as well as many of the documents being similar with just a few variations.  With a CRM, you can streamline the documentation process and reduce the admin time spent on manually drafting. Our bespoke solution allows you to configure templates and map fields to data stored within the CRM (for example you could automate a contract with fields that can be auto-populated) 
• 3rd party integrations: Manage billing and invoicing from the same solution using a 3rd party integration into your financial system. This allows you to automate processes between the connected applications

Get in touch

This is just an overview of how a bespoke CRM solution can benefit your law firm, however, there are many more ways in which your business can grow with the help of Pragmatiq. If you have any questions, please get in touch. You can fill out the contact form below and a member of our team will be in touch shortly, or call us on 01908 038110.