Boost Your Law Firm’s Productivity Throughout the Client Lifecycle with Legal Automation

If you’re like most lawyers at small or mid-sized firms, you spend a significant portion of your days feeling torn between the billable tasks that pay your salary and the administrative work that makes your billable hours possible. 

Administrative tasks—such as communicating with clients, sharing documents, and collecting payments—are critical to running a successful practice, but they can also be repetitive and time-consuming. It can sometimes feel like a lose-lose situation: doing those tasks cuts into your productivity, but not doing them also interrupts your workflows and can ruin the client experience. 

But with automation, you can turn the situation into a win-win in record time.

What is automation?  

Legal automation is a process in which a software program manages the execution of many administrative processes, including: 

• Designing workflows 
• Communicating with clients 
• Tracking billables 
• Generating documents 

Long story short: if you have a repeatable process, it can most likely be automated. Legal billing. Document assembly. Marketing. These are just a few areas in which you can incorporate automation. And when these processes run in the background as you do the billable work, your firm can better focus on delivering a superior customer experience across the entire client lifecycle. 

What is the client lifecycle? 

Frequently used in traditional business settings, the client lifecycle concept can help law firms understand how they find and build loyal client relationships.

here are five steps in a client lifecycle: 

• Lead identification and conversion 
• Client intake 
• Matter management 
• Billing and collections 
• Matter conclusion 

Each step in the client lifecycle represents a key touchpoint in your client’s journey. If you maximize your performance at each touchpoint, you’re more likely to end up with a happy client and a healthy relationship. 

You’ll also end up with a more productive law firm, capitalizing on opportunities and developing efficient workflows tailored to each stage.  

How to use automation at each stage of the client lifecycle 

The legal sector has been slower to automate its delivery chain than other industries. 

There are some valid concerns around trusting software to handle the nuances of a legal case, but most legal professionals who use automation programs like Rocket Matter become converts when they realize how much time and effort it can save them. 

Here are some ways to improve productivity and efficiency by automating tasks for each step in the client lifecycle. 

1. Lead engagement 

Law school isn’t exactly known for its top-notch marketing classes—and when time is money, it can be hard to spend those precious minutes and hours on people who may or may not choose to work with you. Automation—specifically, marketing automation tools found in your legal client relationship management software—can save you time while staying top of mind with leads.  

While a personal touch is always the best type of outreach, you can use automation to engage leads and help move them further down your sales funnel. 

For example, drip campaigns are an impactful way to implement marketing automation. If a lead fills out an interest form on your website but has yet to make an initial appointment, you can implement a lead nurture sequence to educate them on the services you provide and encourage them to schedule a consultation.  

And if your automation software has reporting dashboards (it should!), it can help you identify the niche markets where you’re most likely to convert potential clients into clients. 

All these automations prevent good leads from falling through the cracks while freeing up your time for more valuable tasks.