Attorneys work in a very high-stress environment and oftentimes feel they must always be the expert in the room. Embracing organization can not only make repetitive tasks more efficient, but also reduce stress. Well-organized attorneys will take advantage of the ability to automate many daily tasks. Being organized is not “set it and forget it.” It is an ongoing process. Being organized should be a firm initiative and everyone in the law firm needs to embrace increased organization.

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.

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.

With payments trending as such a buzz-worthy topic in the legal industry, we were excited to sit down with Ari Kaplan, attorney, author and leading legal industry analyst, to hear all about the evolution of payment options for law firms on Ari’s podcast Reinventing Professionals. Our very own General Manager of Payments, Kevin Gallagher, sat down with Ari to talk about these trends along with the benefits of a practice management system with built-in payment options, and how firms can manage costs and maintain advanced security standards.

Let’s be honest: Billing and invoicing are no one’s favorite tasks. Manual processes have long made these tasks time-consuming and tedious. Nonetheless, they’re still critical to the success of any firm. Thankfully, there’s a better way, and many firms are starting to realize it. Manual processes are slowly giving way to automated online payments that result in faster and more secure payments. Abacus Payment Exchange (APX) is the automated, integrated, secure way to handle business payments that offers your clients the convenience they need while seamlessly working with the realities of a post-pandemic, virtual world.

Purchasing a new practice management system is a major step in moving towards increased productivity, efficiency and collaboration. However, when it comes to purchasing a legal practice management system (LPM), it is not a one-and-done deal. Your law firm will come to see that there are many LPMs to choose from, with varying degrees of transparency among the brands. Whether you work in a small practice or a larger one, firms of all sizes can benefit from understanding the costs associated with choosing a legal practice management software.