What is Matter Management Software?
A matter management system, also called matter management software, is a central platform where a legal team records, tracks, and reports on each legal matter from first request to close. It keeps matter details, documents, deadlines, owners, and status in one place so the team can see its workload at any time.
Matter management software is used by both law firms and in-house legal departments. A typical matter management solution manages case files, documents, contacts, deadlines, time tracking, and billing.
The software centralizes and automates key tasks, including collaboration, document sharing, and tracking of case progress. As a single matter management platform, legal matter management software improves productivity, transparency, and compliance while reducing administrative work.
BoardsReportingJordan KeimerWhat Can Matter Management Software Do?
Most matter management tools cover some combination of the following capabilities.
Matters and Intake
- Case and matter management
- Matter intake and case evaluation
- Matter prioritization and resource allocation
- Task and deadline management
Documents and Knowledge
- Document management
- Document automation and assembly
- Contract and client management
- Knowledge management and research
Time, Billing, and Scheduling
- Time and expense tracking
- Timekeeping and billing rate management
- Billing and invoicing
- Calendar management
Collaboration and Reporting
- Collaboration and communication
- Client portal for secure file sharing
- Lightweight workflow automation
- Reporting and analytics
How Matter Management is Commonly Used for In-House Legal Teams
- Legal operations management: Legal operations management involves optimizing the administrative and operational functions within a legal department. It focuses on enhancing efficiency, cost-effectiveness, and strategic alignment.
- Cross-department collaboration: Collaboration between legal departments and other business units is essential for effective legal operations.
- Regulatory compliance: Legal departments are responsible for ensuring compliance with relevant laws, regulations and industry standards.
- Risk management and claims: Legal departments play a vital role in identifying, assessing and managing legal risks and claims.
- Source of truth for legal ops: Matter management systems provide analytics information on matters such as their status and number of requests.
How Matter Management is Commonly Used for Law Firms
Matter management plays a crucial role in the operations of law firms, enabling efficient management of client matters, collaboration among legal professionals, and effective client communication. Here are some common use cases for matter management in law firms:
- Client management: Law firms use matter management systems to effectively manage their clients’ cases and matters. This includes maintaining client contact information, tracking client-related documents and communications and managing client relationships throughout the legal engagement.
- Billing and time tracking: Matter management platforms facilitate accurate and efficient billing and time tracking processes. Lawyers and legal professionals can record their billable hours, track expenses and generate invoices based on the work performed for each matter. This streamlines the billing process and ensures accurate client invoicing.
- Matter collaborations: Matter management systems enable collaboration among lawyers, paralegals, and support staff working on the same matter. It provides a centralized platform for sharing documents, assigning tasks and tracking progress. Collaboration features such as discussion forums, document versioning and real-time updates enhance teamwork and streamline communication.
- Conflict checking: Law firms need to conduct conflict checks to ensure they don’t have any conflicts of interest when taking on new clients or matters. Matter management systems help automate conflict checking processes by maintaining a centralized database of client information, parties involved and related matters. This ensures compliance with ethical and professional obligations.
Pros and Cons of Matter Management Software
Pros of MMS
The main benefits of matter management software are better organization, faster collaboration, and clearer reporting for law firms and legal departments. Firstly, it enhances organization and efficiency by centralizing all case-related information in one accessible location. This allows users to easily track and manage documents, contacts, deadlines, and other important details, resulting in improved productivity and reduced chances of errors or missed deadlines.
Additionally, matter management software often includes task management and workflow features, enabling streamlined collaboration and coordination among team members, which can enhance communication and overall case handling.
Another significant advantage is the ability to generate reports and legal analytics. Matter management software for legal departments can provide valuable insights into case metrics, resource allocation, and financial performance, allowing for data-driven decision-making and better resource planning. It also facilitates accurate and transparent billing by automating time tracking and generating invoices based on predefined billing structures.
Cons of MMS
However, there are also potential drawbacks to consider. The implementation and adoption of a legal matter management system can be time-consuming and require a learning curve for users, especially if they are accustomed to traditional manual processes. Additionally, the cost of acquiring and maintaining the software, including licensing fees, support, and training, can be a significant investment for smaller firms or departments with limited budgets.
Another factor to consider about matter management systems is that while they include intake, they lack an efficient triage system. As a result, the matter needing to be solved cannot be resolved through self-service or FAQs, requiring legal involvement. Due to a lack of a triage system, all matter intake is usually a standard form that asks generic questions to make a request.
The issue, however, is that there are different types of teams focusing on various areas of legal like marketing or procurement. So, when matters are received by lawyers via a matter management system, the information they need to complete the matter might not be captured so there’s extra steps for the lawyer now to chase up that information, taking them more time to manually resolve the initial request.
There might be challenges in integrating matter management software with existing systems and workflows. Compatibility issues or resistance to change from users can hinder the successful implementation of the software. When evaluating matter management software, legal teams should check that it fits their existing tools, request types, and ways of working.
| Pros | Cons | |
|---|---|---|
| Setup | Faster workflows once the system is in place | Time-consuming setup and a steep learning curve |
| Data | Case data, documents, and deadlines in one place | Integration with existing systems can be difficult |
| Workflow | Task and deadline tracking for every matter | Generic intake forms and manual triage |
| Resourcing | Real-time insights for smarter resource allocation | Extra lawyer follow-up to chase missing details |
| Team | Smoother collaboration and better communication | Users may resist moving away from manual processes |
| Cost | Automated time tracking and billing | High upfront cost for licensing, support, and training |
How Matter Management Works with Intake & Triage
Matter management systems provide a system to assess and manage new matters and their details, with some systems being able to perform legal intake and triage for in-house legal teams. MMS can make it easier to store important matter information, saving legal teams time and providing them with a secure platform to access vital documents. This software can also store information and create a repository for intake and triage, retrieving information whenever a business user brings up a matter.
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Globex Legal AssistantTeamsMicrosoft TeamsBoardsReportingAlthough MMS helps with intake and triage that it streamlines collaboration and communication, it lacks an adequate triage system. MMS lacks a triage engine and intake conditional capability to direct requests to the appropriate. Matter management systems do not do efficient intake and triage, as it creates more administrative work to assign the right legal requests to lawyers.
The complexity of matter intake is also limited in matter management as opposed to an intake and triage software. Often with matter management systems, human intervention and expertise is often required to handle unique or exceptional cases where intake and triage software is better suited to resolve a request.
This is where an AI legal front door fits. It sits in front of matter management and orchestrates intake, capturing each request wherever it is raised, asking for the details lawyers need, and triaging it by legal’s own rules. Matter management then becomes the house behind the front door, where routing, approvals, status, and the record of each matter stay in one place.
How Matter Management and Workflow Automation Can Work Together
Legal matter management systems and legal workflow automation can work together to form a powerful symbiotic relationship to enhance efficiency and productivity for legal teams. Integrating workflow automation and MMS ensures that processes follow predefined sequences through automating routine tasks.
As an example, when a new legal matter is added to the system, workflow automation can trigger a series of actions, such as notifying relevant team members, setting deadlines, and assigning tasks based on predefined rules. Additionally, workflow automation tools help fill in the gap of an effective intake and triage system given the bespoke nature of intake channels, request routing rules, lawyer assignment, collaboration and more. Behind the front door, workflows and matter management work side by side, so routine steps run automatically while the matter keeps the record.
How Checkbox Can Help
While the goal of a matter management system is to ultimately make it easier for legal teams to get their work done and make them more efficient, MMS cannot be implemented on its own.
Checkbox brings an AI Legal Front Door to the start of legal work, at intake. Legal teams can capture requests from anywhere, such as Slack, Teams, email, an intranet portal, and more. AI captures and clarifies requests where it helps, while legal’s own rules decide how each one is triaged and whether it goes to a self-service tool, a team, or a lawyer. The front door then connects to the rest of the house, creating, updating, and closing matters automatically in Checkbox Matter Management or the matter management solutions you already use. The result is AI-powered matter management from the first request, with all legal work flowing through the same front door into one central place that holds every matter’s details, data, tracking, reporting, and insights.
Every request becomes a matter that records its routing, approvals, status, and history. The front door, the house behind it, and the rules that run through both stay in legal’s hands.
By facilitating the intake and resolution of work, Checkbox empowers the legal team with the much-needed visibility over request volume, type and status, and more importantly, enabling legal to report on service performance through activating data on cycle times, SLAs and lawyer capacity.
Want to know more about how our platform can transform your service delivery and matter management processes? Book a call with one of our legal technology consultants today.
