The practice of law is a business. Like all enterprises, no matter their size, law firms face daily commercial pressures, from staying competitive in their marketplace to avoiding unforced fiscal errors.

 Today we'll discuss how smart investment in legal technology can help firms run a tight ship and stay ahead of the competition.

Gaining and Maintaining a Competitive Edge

The market for legal services is not a monolith. As you well know, it comprises a multitude of smaller, niche practice areas in which firms fight tooth-and-nail to attract and retain profitable clients. To out-compete their peers in today's legal marketplace, firms need to execute well-targeted strategies, deliver consistently excellent client service, and set a price point that neither over-values nor under-values the firms' work. That is no small task.

Fortunately, today's legal technology puts tools in the hands of law firm managers that can give them, and help them hold onto, a competitive edge. Solutions like LawMaster collect and report valuable commercial data for firms of all sizes across a wide range of metrics. Consider the following examples of how an investment in legal tech helps firms compete:

• Lawyers can automate and monitor interactions with clients to ensure issues never "fall through the cracks" and that calls, emails, and texts get answered quickly and accurately.
• Senior management can collect data and run reports that help them analyse client price sensitivity and the value of legal services delivered for each dollar of fees collected.

By delivering these (and many other) competitive advantages, investments in legal technology routinely pay healthy dividends in the form of new clients and client-matters.

Minding and Measuring Financial Performance

Of course, attracting clients and earning their continued loyalty is only half the commercial equation in any successful law practice. It is also critically important to execute on fundamental financial management tasks, from invoicing and collecting fees, to tracking time and expenses, and eliminating waste. In these areas, too, legal tech solutions like LawMaster's give firm management powerful tools to succeed.

• Quality practice management solutions give lawyers flexible, intuitive means to capture and record their billed time on a daily, matter-by-matter basis, so that firms don't "leak" revenue by failing to charge for legal services performed.
• Intelligent invoicing functions can automate the task preparing, reviewing, and distributing bills to clients, tracking and reporting receivables, and following up with delinquent accounts.
• Firm managers can leverage detailed reporting that measures performance along a wide range of metrics. By integrating time-keeping and billing, legal tech can give insight into the efficiency of individual lawyers and the profitability of specific legal practice areas.
• Managers can conduct granular assessments of the types of tasks with the highest (and lowest) profit margins, helping them to deploy the firm's financial resources and employee effort in the most commercially beneficial way.

In short, legal tech promotes savings and efficiencies in every facet of a firm's financial life. For most of our clients, these economies, alone, pay for the up-front cost of investing in our solutions.

Manage Commercial Pressures With LawMaster

In this day-and-age, the firms that invest wisely in smart, firm-wide, integrated legal tech solutions will routinely out-compete those who choose patchwork, penny wise approaches to firm management software. To learn more about how LawMaster's products will keep your firm's clients happy and improve your bottom line, contact us today.