Using Client Intake and CRM Software to Benefit Your Law Firm

Blog | 17.07.2023

Written by:


Grant Yuill

Head of Marketing & Customer Engagement


It goes without saying that managing a law firm requires adapting to a quickly changing legal environment. This primarily entails developing innovative ways to make your practice more successful, affordable, and client-friendly.

Modern legal software serves as the best evidence of how incorporating new legal technology into your practice can have a significant positive impact on you. Software for practice management or case management, as well as possibly software for legal client intake, is probably something you’ve heard of.

However, it’s possible that you haven’t heard of legal CRM, or legal customer relationship management, software.

In this article, we’ll talk about:

The usage of legal CRM software by firms in your field of practice will then be specifically explored. We’ll focus on how legal CRM, lead management, and client intake tools are used in practices for family law, personal injury, litigation, business & employment law, estate planning, and real estate law.

The main purpose of legal CRM software is to compile all of your firm’s contact information into a single, straightforward database that you and your entire employees can access from anywhere.

This implies that any piece of information you have on a contact—whether they are a new potential client, an existing client, or a non-client—lives within their contact entry in your legal CRM.

Under their contact entry, the following types of information are saved:

  • Names
  • Client’s Contact Data
  • Case or matter history
  • Conversation logs
  • Relevant dates
  • Important documents

This data may all be easily and quickly updated at any time.

Conflict screening during client intake is simple and quick

Law firms often use legal CRM software, which usually comes with lead management and client intake software, to greatly enhance their conflict checking procedures.

Conflict checks may be quickly carried out on any device with access to the CRM system because the legal CRM consolidates all of the firm’s contacts into a single, central database that exists in the cloud.

This prevents lawyers and personnel from wasting time looking over documents in search of conflicts of interest, and there is a far less likelihood of mistakes or missing conflicts of interest than there would be with standard conflict check procedures.

However, a legal CRM’s genuine worth for legal professionals lies not in its standalone features but rather in how well it integrates with case management as well as often legal client intake software, which together have a significant impact on legal practices.

Legal CRM features are frequently found in client intake software programmes like Denovo’s. The firm’s client intake procedures benefit greatly from this CRM and unified legal client intake software solution.

Then, as with Denovo, the client intake and CRM software combines with a law firm’s case management software to create a true end-to-end solution that spans a client’s entire relationship with the firm, from client intake all the way through case or matter management.

Let’s examine each of these uses individually!

By being an essential part of lead management software or client intake software, legal CRM technology enhances many areas of the intake process. For example:

  • The ability of legal CRM technology to quickly sync and store information about clients across all forms of communications enhances client intake software’s communication and email integration tools.
  • Legal CRMs connect a firm’s contact database to all of the firm’s calendars, appointments, and task lists, allowing for real-time updates to contacts and schedules throughout the organisation.
  • Legal CRMs can be integrated with online intake forms, like Denovo‘s, to create a powerful system that quickly collects data submitted by potential clients and integrates it into the firm’s database.
  • Legal CRMs help a firm’s business development and marketing efforts be more successful by organising the information of potential new clients, enabling the firm to track the success of marketing campaigns, and enabling the firm to keep track of how potential clients are progressing through the intake process.

These functions are already provided by CRMs when used in combination with legal client intake software, but merging them with practice management software for a firm raises the bar significantly.

The greatest client intake and legal CRM software also effortlessly integrates with a full-featured case or practice management software solution. Strong legal lead management software or client intake software solutions include legal CRM technology as part of their platform. This is demonstrated through the client intake and case management software from Denovo.

Software companies like Denovo give legal professionals a set of tools, that all communicate with one another, to help the firm run smoothly by developing an end-to-end solution from the beginning of intake through the end of the case or issue management.

Legal CRMs assist case or issue management in addition to what they already do for client intake by:

  • Enabling firms to simply keep track of cases and matters, and access client data wherever they are, whenever they want.
  • Creating an effective document management system that enables businesses to easily store, share, arrange, and locate any client information.
  • Enabling a firm to keep track of the amount of money and new business that various clients generate, the amount of time that is spent on each client’s issues, and other pertinent statistics, will improve a firm’s reporting and data analytics skills.
  • Integrating with various other useful apps for law firms, such as chatbots, time tracking software, legal billing software, and virtual receptionists.

The advantages of CRM Software and client intake for law firms

For law firms like yours, the aforementioned functions generally result in a number of significant advantages.

These consist of:

  • increased efficiency and organisation across the entire firm
  • less need for manual data entry for both you and your staff
  • less lost opportunities as a result of improper or inaccurate client information
  • improved client onboarding processes that are less complicated
  • having more time for important tasks that can be billed

All of these advantages might increase client satisfaction and boost the financial performance of your firm.

The advantages mentioned above are broad statements on how CRM software and legal client intake can affect all law firms. However, you might be asking how this software programme uniquely responds to the demands of your legal practice.

Legal CRM software and client intake can be beneficial in a variety of ways, depending on your field of practice.

Building client relationships is essential for family law practices, and using a legal CRM along with a lead management system and client intake software will help you do it more quickly.

How? For starters, legal CRM software improves communication between you and your clients by organising all client interactions, integrating with email and client intake communication tools like chatbots and virtual receptionists, and making it easy and simple for you to set automated emails that remind clients of upcoming court dates and other essential data.

Additionally, the CRM makes it simple to record and manage all of the sensitive information about your clients that you can quickly gather using online intake forms, such as spouses, kids, grandchildren, executors, guardians, and assets. Family Law-specific intake forms are available from Denovo, ensuring that the information family law practices require is gathered as efficiently as possible.

A legal CRM also allows recording all of the financial data related to family law, such as child support, property division, and alimony, an easy and simplified procedure by integrating with legal billing and payments software.

The ability to quickly enter potential clients’ information into your system allows real estate law firms to focus on what really matters. This is made possible by a legal lead management system and client intake software with CRM capabilities.

Additionally, the CRM may be used to keep and look for documents, saving a tonne of time when compared to conventional methods of document storage. In addition, you may share documents with clients for them to sign online, and then watch as the signed documents are automatically stored in your CRM thanks to the e-signature functionality offered by many client intake software providers like Denovo.

A legal CRM can be used to create contracts, letters, and task lists quickly using pre-stored templates. By doing this, the time spent on these tasks is significantly cut down, data accuracy improves, and your staff is able to concentrate on more important tasks.

In estate planning, it’s essential to pay close attention to the little things and make your clients feel comfortable from the outset of their experiences with your company.

With useful features like estate planning-specific online intake forms that import client’s detailed information right into your CRM system—where you can simply access and change details at any time—legal client intake software makes things simple for you and your clients.

As a result, you have access to every piece of specific information you might possibly need about a client and their estate on all of your devices. The data in your CRM provides an excellent database that you can use in a variety of useful ways by syncing with your case management software.

Furthermore, the document storage, e-signature, and email integration features of client intake and legal CRM software are particularly important to Estate Planning firms since they make clients’ interactions with the firm much easier, less complicated, and more interesting.  

Also, when the software integrates with an estate planning client portal, like Denovo provides, you can sync all of the data in your CRM with everything you do on the client site and vice versa.

No matter if you’re managing business development, contract negotiation, IP, labour compliance, or mergers and acquisitions, the software makes a significant difference in business and employment law.

Thanks to how simple the intake procedure is made with a client intake and legal CRM software system in place, your firm is able to quickly develop new ties with potential clients. The CRM then enables you to easily update client files as needed over time by synchronising with your case management software—and to automatically send clients email reminders if there are important dates or deadlines they need to remember.

You can quickly access a client’s file using the CRM and view all of your transactions with them, including conversations, documents, deals they’ve done, and the amount of money they’ve brought in for your business.

With the expenses and delays associated with printing, mailing, and faxing papers, online document sharing, signing, and storing are particularly efficient in this field of law.

Legal intake and CRM software help personal injury law firms quickly and accurately enter possible potential clients into their database.

This is quite essential, particularly if your practice deals with a lot of clients and cases. Legal CRMs are extremely beneficial to high-volume law companies because they make sure that no files are lost, that everyone in the firm has access to the information they need from any location, and that every client, contact, and potential client is logically arranged in an accessible database.

By connecting with online intake forms and case management software, legal CRMs can make document sharing easier and more efficient. In addition, the CRM can assist in keeping track of settlements, negotiations, expenses, and conversations within each client’s file.

Last but not least, CRMs for litigation law firms make many case-related processes considerably easier, quicker, and less labour-intensive than they would be without the software.

In one single database, legal CRM software, for instance, organises client and case information, deadlines, communications, and documents. This makes it such that everything you need to work on a case is in one location, and whatever you add or edit is immediately updated in the cloud, which is great for firm-wide collaboration.

In addition, legal intake and CRM software allow you to guarantee that your clients are always kept informed of all important deadlines, including court dates, depositions, hearings, and other significant deadlines. The ability to schedule and automatically send email reminders to clients right from your legal software allows you to accomplish this. Integrations with email software make this possible.

The use of Software to make your firm’s practice management operations better

Legal client intake and CRM software, such as Denovo, help you be more structured, effective, and client-focused regardless of the area of law you practice.

You can accomplish this by giving every piece of data your company has on every lead, customer, and contact a home online in the cloud. As a result, you have access to anything you need, whenever or wherever you are.

Legal professionals are also able to understand the sales process, or the process of turning a potential client into a loyal client, with the use of lead management systems like those offered by Denovo. With lead tracking features in their software, law firms may identify the marketing or referral channels from which these incoming cases originated.

Therefore, a lead scoring system is created for the firm when legal teams analyse their “sales pipeline” of cases and determine which lead generation sources are most likely to result in client retention and successful cases. Law firms can now confidently accept or reject cases thanks to data-driven information.

Client intake and CRM software for law firms also produce an end-to-end solution when it integrates easily with legal practice management software like Denovo does. This allows the software to harness the power of the CRM’s data and put it to use in a variety of ways that benefit both you and your clients.

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