Kickstart Your Enterprise Legal Management with 8 Crucial Features

“The best way to become essential for the companies that buy your products is to help them grow their business (i.e., to produce meaningful ROI) in unique ways. That is what solving customer problems is all about, and it’s as neat an encapsulation of the difference between enterprise and consumer software as we can offer.”
― Blair Reeves

When shopping around for an enterprise legal management solution, you need to ensure that the prospective system can be built around the way your teams work. After all, you’re trying to streamline your operations and avoid the old standards of relying on email and spreadsheets to get the job done. In today’s fast-paced legal settings, lawyers need to be able to work faster, smarter and more efficiently, and the best way to do it is by automating legal department processes.

Traditionally, enterprise legal management vendors have taken a database-centric approach in designing their solutions. However, and this cannot be over-emphasized, your competitive legal department needs a system of engagement – a system that supports the highly collaborative nature of your legal work. This in turn reinforces your business goals and ultimately, your bottom line.

There are quite a few benefits of a cutting-edge enterprise legal management solution, such as cost savings, flexibility, robust reporting capability, etc. But equally as important are the numerous crucial processes that enterprise legal management can help your team with. After all, you’re trying to find ways to improve your processes. At this point you’re probably wondering, “Okay, we know the basic stuff. What are the features we should be looking for?” We’re glad you asked, and here are eight of our favorite fundamental features:

1. Highly configurable to your legal department’s needs, and seamless integration with systems such as accounts payable, document management, IP management and other back-end systems
2. Comprehensive visibility into all invoices at every stage — including submission, review, and approval
3. Reporting and dashboard views to analyze invoices, evaluate performance against budget, and see trends across your matter portfolio
4. Workflow capabilities match your business requirements and are simple to change, alter or adjust. Different work types, such as matters related to employment, litigation, or mergers, can have their own unique workflows
5. A single platform for collaboration that captures notes, documents, attachments and email communications in one secure location
6. A complete audit trail of all matter activity
7. The ability to keep track of all your authorized timekeepers and rates in one location. Adjustments can be made quickly and easily with a few clicks
8. Industry standard security and bank-grade encryption ensures your data remains confidential

The very best enterprise legal management solution represents a new paradigm that is transforming the e-billing and matter management landscape and drastically improving delivery of legal services. Process-driven solutions integrate workflow and collaboration unlike other legacy providers. The best solutions allow you to dig in and define the legal business processes that are critical to your organization and deliver more bang for the buck; as well as your bottom line.