Thinking about whether your firm’s legal practice management software is serving you as well as it should?
Here are six key categories to evaluate: client portals, payment processing, client signatures, calendaring, and accounting. This article will explore each of these, so you can identify and implement the best legal practice management software setup for your firm.
Legal Client Portal
While email remains the default way most firms communicate with their clients, it has clear drawbacks. Emails can pose security risks and aren’t organized by matter, causing critical client information to get lost in the shuffle of your inbox. Each of these drawbacks can be addressed by having a client portal as part of your practice management software.
With PracticePanther, your clients can log into the portal to:
- Check milestone activities related to their case
- Access shared documents
- Pay invoices
- Send and receive secure messages in one place
Ultimately, PracticePanther’s client portal helps prevent communication mishaps through frequent follow-ups.
Legal Payment Processing
Law firm payment processing is one of the most important practice management platform features. Because it’s so critical for trust accounting compliance, the connection between these applications needs to be reliable and airtight. For a closer look at what IOLTA compliance involves, the ABA’s guide to IOLTA account compliance is a useful reference.
PracticePanther’s built-in online payment processor offers the following next-level features:
- Payments are automatically associated with the correct matter and client
- Automate payment reminders with custom emails
- Trust transactions trigger the right ledger entries without requiring manual effort on your end
- Designate which bank account each client payment goes to and deposit retainer payments into trust accounts
In PracticePanther, there’s no separate subscription required, and credit card, eCheck, and ACH payments are all supported. PracticePanther also offers some of the lowest transaction fees on the market.
Beyond accepting payments, you can generate payment links and place them wherever clients are most likely to see them, whether that’s an invoice, an email, or your firm’s website, making it easier for clients to pay without extra steps on their end. Clients can also view their outstanding balances directly in the client portal, giving them a clear, self-service way to stay on top of what they owe without needing to call or email your office for an update.
Legal E-signature
E-signature software shortens turnaround times and creates a more convenient experience for clients, which means faster payment collection for your firm. Standard e-signature options make it easy to request electronic signatures from a client on any given document. However, PracticePanther goes the extra mile with:
- Built into PracticePanther’s legal practice management software at no additional cost
- Request and send unlimited documents
- Monitor all signature requests in a single dashboard
- Add auto-fill, drop-down menus, and checkboxes to help guide clients through your form
- Create document templates with custom fields
- Include custom payment links
Legal Calendaring
Client experience has never been more important for small and midsize legal firms, and today’s clients have higher expectations than ever before, as the ABA notes. They expect around-the-clock availability (across phone, email, and text), as well as fast response times and personalized, empathetic responses that make them feel heard and understood.
The right legal software makes it easier for you to meet your clients’ expectations, giving you the ability to respond quickly through automated status updates and client portals, keep every interaction personalized with a centralized record of each client’s history, and stay accessible around the clock without adding staff. The result is the type of client experience that builds trust right from the start, and leads to new business through word-of-mouth referrals.
Built In Legal Accounting
PantherAccounting Plus brings your entire legal trust and operating accounting workflow into the same legal practice management system you use to manage cases, track time, send invoices, and get paid. Posting funds to trust and operating accounts, guided three-way reconciliation, and financial reporting all run inside a single, connected space. This means transactions, invoices, and trust activity stay tied to the correct case without switching systems.
General accounting platforms aren’t built for legal-specific needs like trust accounting compliance or matter-level reporting. PracticePanther is designed to handle that layer directly, so your firm’s books, trust activity, and case records all live and update together in one place.
PracticePanther Brings it All Together
The real question isn’t whether your firm needs to pair one or more other applications with your practice management software; it’s whether you’re using the best software possible for how you want your firm to operate.
PracticePanther gives your firm a single, unified place to manage a matter from intake through close. Documents, calendaring, billing, communications, and matter details all live in the same space, so updates in one area reflect automatically everywhere else, without extra steps or duplicate entry.
Ready to see how PracticePanther works as one connected system for your firm? Start your free trial or sign up for a custom demo today!
