When you run a law firm, you are responsible for far more than just winning cases or representing your clients—you also need to manage your law firm’s day-to-day operations.

Legal practice management is a complex but necessary part of your business. Unfortunately, law firms often struggle with it. While you may know your area of the law like the back of your hand, perhaps you’re less enthused about the administrative aspects of managing your practice.

If you struggle to keep up with client communication or fall behind with billing, keep reading for a refresher on the basics of legal practice management and the tools you need to save time and money.

What Is Legal Practice Management?

It’s as straightforward as it sounds. Legal practice management is the management of a law practice, whether you’re a solo attorney or part of a large firm.

Legal practice management activities can be divided into two categories: front office and back office.

Front Office

Front office activities include the most visible aspects of the work at your legal practice. These are typically the tasks that directly involve or impact your clients. Examples include scheduling and attending appointments and meetings, maintaining client relationships, and completing your day-to-day legal tasks, such as performing due diligence, drafting contracts, preparing for trial, and other billable hour tasks.

Back Office

Back office activities are typically seen as operational tasks that don’t directly involve your clients, but do impact your firm as a business. Some examples include billing and payments, trust accounting, and law firm marketing.

Together, these two categories of front and back office comprise the operations critical to legal practice management. Yet keeping them all on track can be challenging for busy legal professionals—and that’s where legal practice management software comes in.

5 Ways to Manage Your Law Firm Better

Effective law firm management requires you to balance client satisfaction and the need for efficiency, all while maximizing billable hours. Developing a holistic law firm management structure will help your firm grow while setting the stage for better client outcomes. Here are five ways to improve your legal practice management capabilities. 

1. Time Tracking and Billing

Time is money for law firms—and to be both productive and profitable, your law firm needs to have clear processes for tracking time and invoicing clients. A streamlined approach to timekeeping ensures all of your billable and non-billable hours are accurately logged without bogging your team down with redundant manual tasks. But just as importantly, time tracking shouldn’t be a burden to timekeepers.

Look for a software that allows attorneys to:

• Track time on the go with mobile-friendly features
• Automate timekeeping with a one-click timer
• Scan client matters for unbilled time
• Contextualize time records for compliant (and client-friendly) billing
• Your time-keeping features should also support invoicing practices, allowing you to transform time tracked into invoices that can be sent to clients with just a few clicks.

Here are some key time-tracking strategies that will promote better law firm management:

• Get Mobile-Friendly: Your attorneys should have the flexibility to log hours on the go
• Simplify Timekeeping with Automation: Use tools that let your team start and stop timers with a single click 
• Review and Reconcile Unbilled Hours: Periodically review client matters to ensure no billable hours slip through the cracks 
• Ensure Invoice Clarity: Create transparent and easy-to-understand client-friendly documents

Prioritize law office management solutions that automate key tracking processes while also reducing the administrative burden on your team. 

2. Calendaring

Scheduling meetings and events for yourself, your staff, and your clients can take up valuable billable time. A well-organized calendar system keeps your firm running smoothly while reducing scheduling conflicts. Here are some strategies to streamline your calendering processes to promote better law firm management: 

• Use Tools That Update in Real-Time: Stay informed of changes or conflicts with a system that updates instantly 
• Collaborate with Shared Calendars: Allow your team members to view and manage appoints via shared calendars
• Link Appointments to Matters: Connect events directly to client cases 
• Send Automated Reminders: Reduce no-shows with notifications for upcoming appointments 
• Simplify Scheduling: Provide clients with public calendar links to make booking meetings quick and easy

Effective calendaring keeps your attorneys, clients, and support staff on the same page. 

3. Task Management

When you don’t have task management tools, legal professionals can quickly lose track of projects, struggle to meet deadlines, and face barriers to collaboration. Streamlining task management helps your firm meet deadlines and collaborate more efficiently. 

To better manage tasks, focus on these strategies:

• Centralize Tasks: Track all assignments in a single, unified system to eliminate confusion
• Standardize Processes: Use customizable checklists for recurring tasks
• Assign Roles and Due Dates: Clearly define task ownership and timelines to keep projects moving 
• Foster Collaboration: Use tools that allow multi-way commenting and easy communication on specific tasks 

You’ve built a great team. With the right law firm management software and task management tools, you can empower that team to work more efficiently. 

4. Document Management

As a law firm, you work with a lot of documents—and many of them contain sensitive client information. As a result, it’s critical to keep your documents organized and secure. A thoughtful approach to handling documents ensures confidentiality, accessibility, and efficiency. 

• • Streamline Drafting with Automation: Use tools that quickly generate standardized templates and documents 
  • Enable Secure Access: Use cloud-based solutions so your team can enjoy better flexibility 
  • Organize Matters in a Centralized Database: Group documents by matter to create a clear, accessible paper trail 
  • Share Files Securely: Adopt a solution that facilitates encrypted file-sharing with no size limitations 
• Facilitate Digital Signatures: Accept eSignatures to move matters along quickly

5. Communication

Lawyers must communicate with other attorneys, clients, staff, and court officials, so communication can get messy. Whether you use email, chat, or video for your internal and external communication, you should implement the following strategies to promote better law firm management.

• Log Matter-Specific Conversations: Attach all communication to the appropriate matter for better visibility and conflict resolution.
• Integrate Existing Email Tools: You don’t have to give up your favorite email system when software offers browser extensions and integrations with tools like Outlook and Gmail.
• Modernize Internal Communications: Replace endless face-to-face meetings with in-app comments and virtual meetings for faster responses 
• Embrace Virtual Meetings: Invest in video solutions to promote better interactions between team members and clients. 

In-person meetings are still incredibly valuable to your law firm management strategy. However, providing your team with options when collaborating with peers or connecting with clients can cut down on unnecessary travel while promoting better efficiency. 

Learn How CosmoLex Can Serve As an All-inclusive Solution for Legal Practice Management

While most firms use a variety of software, tools, and strategies to manage their firms, many lack a cohesive law firm management approach that can support their entire legal practice. But with the features of an all-in-one legal practice software solution, your practice can improve efficiency for everyone on your team, from managing partners to legal assistants.

To see for yourself how this all-inclusive solution can help with your front-end tasks, sign up for a free trial today.