Billing is an integral part of running the business that is your law practice. That’s why having legal practice management software with robust billing and accounting features is so important to day-to-day operations of your law firm, and for staying competitive in an ever-evolving legal industry.

Let’s face it: remote work is here to stay. It doesn’t matter if you’re going into an office every day or meeting in-person with colleagues a few days a week; remote work will always be a fallback for many industries, especially the legal industry. With this thought in mind, optimizing your law firm for the new year is integral to the overall health of your business, and it’s never too early to start planning. That’s why it’s more important than ever to have a cloud-based legal practice management (LPM) system at your disposal.

In poker, table stakes are the money or chips a player needs to lay on the table to be part of the game. Similarly, in a law practice, your ability to compete in legal services increasingly depends on the tools you have available to deliver excellent service to clients. In recent years, the shift to remote work and the increasingly sophisticated demands of clients have upped the ante on practice management software. Standard practice management software features have shifted from nice to have to must-have.

Automation can be defined in many ways by many industries; however, it doesn’t always have to apply to complex procedures like robotic process automation (RPA) or “advanced tasks.” In law firms, automation is frequently defined as using software to automate tedious and repetitive tasks to get work done faster and more efficiently. Law firms can automate a substantial portion of their work with technology. For example, most firms repurpose their pleadings, templates, form letters, and other documents completed for past clients – why reinvent the wheel? Yet, according to a recent Statista survey, 75 percent of the lawyers who responded said they spent more than 20 hours per week on non-billable work like legal research, court filings, and administrative tasks.

For attorneys, missing a deadline is no laughing matter. Depending on the jurisdiction, rules and the judge, sanctions might be a stern admonishment by the judge, an order to pay some or all the attorneys' fees incurred by the opposing party or, worst case, dismissal of a party’s lawsuit. If you practice in more than one jurisdiction, the rules may differ, making date tracking even more complex.

Now that most mask mandates and mandatory quarantines have been lifted, law firms are increasingly being faced with decisions regarding employee flexibility. Those that adapt and change to thrive in the new environment will likely reap the benefits of engaged flexible employees, while those that go back to the old ways might be left with a less productive and engaged workforce.

A siege mentality has long pervaded attempts to secure IT networks, encrypt data, and control access to a law firm’s sensitive information. That thinking tracked along medieval concepts of securing a fortress using thicker walls, stronger gates, and deeper moats. If you remained inside the walls, then you were protected, but if you ventured out then risks spiked, and all protection was lost.

One of the most important and many times the most overlooked aspects of a law firm is the technology and applications that it owns. While sufficient cybersecurity measures will be beneficial to your firm in the long run, ultimately, it is having the proper tools in place for your employees that will help guide your firm to success and profit.

We, as professionals, have been working remotely for years, long before the pandemic. Attorneys and paralegals have been emailing work home to themselves forever – despite IT’s pleas to not do that (you know who you are). The hybrid work environment is not new. What is new, however, is the normalization of it.