See How Electronic Matter Management Can Optimize Your Legal Team

Imagine you’re packing for a trip and throwing everything into your suitcase—shoes on top of toiletries, chargers tangled around your clothes, important documents crumpled at the bottom. You technically have everything you need, but good luck finding it when you need it.

Now, imagine opening your suitcase to find everything neatly organized, with compartments for each category, essentials within easy reach, and a checklist ensuring nothing gets left behind.

That’s the difference between manual matter management and electronic matter management.

Most legal teams have everything they need—contracts, case files, emails, approvals—but if it’s scattered across different tools and inboxes, it’s nearly impossible to find what you need, when you need it.  

An electronic matter management system doesn’t just store information—it structures, automates, and streamlines legal operations, ensuring no matter gets lost in the shuffle.

So, if your legal team is tired of unpacking the same messy suitcase every day, it’s time for an upgrade. Let’s dive into what electronic matter management is, why it’s a must-have tool, and how to make the switch.

What Is Electronic Matter Management?

Electronic matter management is one centralized web-based system where every request, document, task, and communication related to a matter is tracked and organized.  

Instead of scrambling through inboxes, spreadsheets, and shared drives to piece together the status of a matter, everything is accessible in a single, structured platform.

The main capabilities of electronic matter management software include:

• Capturing and tracking all legal matters in one place, from intake to resolution.

• Automating workflows to eliminate repetitive tasks and reduce bottlenecks.

• Gaining real-time visibility into legal work, ensuring deadlines and priorities are clear.

• Generating reports and insights to showcase legal’s impact and optimize resources.

Key Benefits for Legal Teams

When all matters, documents, and workflows are managed in a centralized matter management platform, legal teams can work faster, smarter, and with greater impact.

Here’s what that looks like in practice:

✅ Full Visibility, Zero Guesswork – No more chasing updates or wondering who’s handling what. With a clear, real-time view of all legal matters, teams can prioritize effectively and avoid bottlenecks.

✅ Time Saved on Repetitive Tasks – Automate intake, approvals, and workflows so in-house lawyers spend less time on admin and more time on strategic legal work.

✅ Stronger Compliance & Risk Management – Maintain a secure, auditable record of every matter, ensuring that nothing slips through the cracks and regulatory requirements are met.

✅ Data-Driven Decision Making – Track legal’s workload, identify trends, and generate reports on key metrics and legal KPIs that prove the team’s value to leadership.

✅ Better Collaboration Across Teams – Business teams get a seamless way to submit requests and track progress, while legal has everything it needs in one place—no more scattered communication.

Essential Features to Look For

Not all electronic matter management systems are the same. Some promise simplicity but lack the depth legal teams need, while others are so complex they create more work than they solve. The key is finding a platform that balances automation, visibility, and ease of use—without forcing your team to change how they work overnight.

Here are five must-have features to look for:

1. AI-Powered Intake

An intelligent AI-powered intake system collects structured, detailed information upfront, guiding business teams through request submission and ensuring legal gets everything it needs from the start. This means fewer clarification emails, faster processing times, and a smoother experience for everyone involved.

2. Automated Workflows

Matters shouldn’t stall because someone forgot to forward an email. With built-in automation, approvals move through predefined chains, tasks are assigned to the right team members, and urgent issues are escalated automatically. This keeps work flowing without constant manual intervention, reducing bottlenecks and freeing up legal for more strategic work.

3. Real-Time Matter Tracking

Trying to track legal work across emails and spreadsheets is like looking for a missing sock in a laundry pile—frustrating and time-consuming. A real-time tracking system gives legal a single source of truth, so every matter’s status, owner, and next steps are always clear.  

4. Customizable Reporting & Dashboards

Legal teams don’t just need data—they need insights. A strong matter management system automatically aggregates data into visual dashboards and custom reports, allowing teams to track workload distribution, identify bottlenecks, and measure efficiency. Plus, when leadership asks for an update on legal’s performance, you’ll have the numbers ready to go.

5. Seamless Integrations

The right platform should connect effortlessly with your existing tech stack—email, Microsoft Teams, Slack, document management systems, and contract platforms—so legal teams can access everything they need without switching between multiple systems.  

How to Transition from Manual to Electronic Matter Management

Making the shift from spreadsheets and email-driven workflows to a centralized electronic matter management system might seem like a heavy lift, but with the right approach, it can be seamless—and well worth the effort. The key is to focus on progress and implement changes in a way that feels natural to your team. Here are three steps to guide you on how to make it happen:

Step 1: Assess Your Current Challenges

Before diving into a new system, take stock of where your legal team is struggling. Are requests getting lost in email threads? Is tracking matter status a constant headache? Are reporting and visibility non-existent? Identifying these pain points will help you choose a platform that actually solves your problems rather than just adding another tool to the mix.

Step 2: Define Your Must-Have Features

Not all electronic matter management systems offer the same capabilities, so it’s important to prioritize the features that will make the biggest impact. Do you need automated workflows to speed up approvals? AI-powered intake to structure incoming requests? Custom reporting to showcase legal’s value? Knowing what matters most will help you avoid a system that’s either too complex or too basic for your needs.

Step 3: Get Leadership Buy-In

A new system is an investment—not just in software but in legal’s ability to scale and operate more efficiently. To get the green light from leadership, focus on how an electronic matter management system will improve efficiency, reduce risk, and provide the business with clearer insights into legal’s workload.  

Step 4: Implement in Phases

Switching systems overnight is a recipe for frustration. Instead, roll out electronic matter management in stages, starting with high-impact areas like request intake and matter tracking. Once your team is comfortable, you may consider expanding into Legal automated workflows, and reporting dashboards.  

Step 5: Train & Optimize

Even the best system is only as good as its adoption. Make sure your legal team and business stakeholders know how to use the new system and why it benefits them. Provide training if necessary, encourage feedback, and refine processes as needed.  

How Checkbox Can Help

If your legal team is ready to move past the frustration of scattered emails, spreadsheets, and manual tracking, Checkbox makes the transition to electronic matter management seamless. Our AI-powered platform centralizes, automates, and optimizes legal work—giving your team full visibility, efficiency, and control without unnecessary complexity.

With AI-powered intake, Checkbox ensures every legal request is captured with complete and structured information from the start, eliminating back-and-forth emails and reducing intake bottlenecks. Once a matter is in the system, real-time tracking provides full visibility into its status, who’s responsible, and what needs attention.

To further reduce administrative burdens, automated workflows streamline approvals, task assignments, and escalations, ensuring matters move through the right processes without manual follow-ups. And when leadership asks for insights into legal’s workload and impact, customizable reporting and dashboards make it easy to generate real-time data on matter volume, resolution times, and team performance.

Checkbox also integrates seamlessly with existing tools such as Slack, Microsoft Teams, email, and more, so legal can work efficiently without switching between systems. By consolidating all legal matters into a single source of truth, Checkbox empowers legal teams to streamline processes, reduce manual effort, and demonstrate their value to the business.

To learn more, book a call with one of our technology consultants today.