Essential Tips for Efficient Task Management with Rocket Matter
Is your law firm making an effort to manage tasks in a smart and sustainable way?
Not having a process for managing tasks is like cooking dinner without looking in your pantry first. Yes, you may still achieve your end goal (eating), but you may end up spending more time and making a bigger mess in the process.
Managing tasks doesn’t have to be an added task, though. By implementing a few best practices, you can use your time wisely and meet your goals. (No messy kitchen required.)
1. Use Kanban boards to visualize all your matters
"What collaborative features does Rocket Matter offer to aid team-based task handling?"
We’re so glad you asked. At Rocket Matter, we’re huge fans of Kanban boards. In fact, we’re such big fans that we built them into our software. But what are they, and what do they do?
For the Kanban novices out there, a Kanban board is a lean project management tool designed to help businesses be more efficient, visualize their workflows, and spot (and address) bottlenecks.
To do this, Kanban boards use cards and columns to categorize the projects and tasks and show the status of each work item at any given time.
The beauty of Kanban boards is that you can tailor them to your law firm’s specific needs and workflows. Let’s say you run a law firm that focuses on family law and estate planning. You can set up Kanban templates that reflect the processes of each practice area.
Once templates are set up, Kanban boards are easy to interact with. In Rocket Matter, simply:
- Adjust columns to represent the statuses set by your law firm
- Drag and drop cases to change the case status on the board
- Identify how many days a case has been in a specific status to avoid delays
With Kanban boards in place, you can track the progress of matters, assign (and reassign) tasks as needed, and resolve problems before they cascade into more problems.
2. Customize templates so they work for you
"How customizable are task management features within Rocket Matter to suit diverse law firm needs?"
It’s a good question and one that law firms should ask of all their software systems. You need systems that work for you.
In Rocket Matter, customizations aren’t limited to kanban boards. We know every law firm is different, and our software is set up to allow workflow customization at multiple levels.
How does customization benefit task management? It allows law firms to reduce the amount of time they spend setting up and managing tasks. Rather than building out unique tasks for each matter or project that comes up, you can build on templates to get started faster.
Within Rocket Matter, you can set billing methods, custom fields, tasks, and events, such as the statute of limitations. You can also:
- Use tags to categorize data for easier searches
- Create custom fields in your templates to collect all valuable case details, which can be used to filter reports or bills and to help with invoice automation
- Create tailored project phases with automation
For project phases, each phase can contain its own calendar calculations, tasks, and custom data. When you move projects from one phase to another, the system automatically updates the project to reflect your progress.
3. Stay on top of task assignments and progress with the matter stream and reporting features
When you have to go digging to find information about important tasks, it can disrupt progress and be more than a little frustrating.
When you’re looking for a practice management system, it’s critical to understand how that system helps you to work more efficiently under pressure. You may ask yourself, "Does Rocket Matter allow for deadline reminders and alerts for pending tasks?"
Yes, it does!
One of the best ways to improve the visibility of task management needs is with Rocket Matter’s Matter Stream. This feature allows users to set deadline reminders and alerts for pending tasks and view all new tasks, events, notes, matter documents, billable entries, and real-time case events.
You can also:
- Post messages in the Matter Stream so that anyone collaborating with you will see your note on the case
- Use the Milestone feature in the Matter Templates to automatically trigger new tasks when you complete others to keep projects moving forward
- Integrate Rocket Matter’s project management software with internal messaging tools to alert users on their mobile devices if the status of a case has changed
4. Integrate tools to connect tasks and information sources
One question we see a lot is, "Can Rocket Matter integrate with other popular task management tools or platforms?"
The short answer? Yes. The long answer? Yes—we integrate with many of the most popular task management platforms for legal teams around the country.
Nothing operates in a vacuum, which is why Rocket Matter’s integrations can significantly boost productivity for your law firm. Rocket Matter integrates with the top applications for law firms to streamline workflows across systems.
Within Rocket Matter, teams can optimize their case management processes with integrated features across project management and billing, including:
- Legal project management
- Document automation and management
- Secure file-sharing and eSignature
- Calendaring
- Task management
- Time tracking
- Online payments
- Trust Accounting
- Billing and invoicing
- Financial reports
Rocket Matter also integrates with the most popular legal tools, so users can switch between systems seamlessly and sync data for increased productivity, including:
- QuickBooks
- Google Calendar
- Office 365 Outlook
- Office 365
- Dropbox
- Box
- Evernote
- LawToolBox
- Tracers
- Ruby
- Lawmakers
- Smith.ai
- Uptime Jurispage
- Chrometa
Learn more about Rocket Matter’s integrations here.
5. Track and report time efficiently with Rocket Matter Track
It’s one thing to recognize the value of time tracking. It’s one of the best ways to understand how much time it takes to manage tasks and improve workflows.
It’s another to make it part of your daily processes without breaking a sweat.
With an automated time tracker like Rocket Matter Track, users can record their work in real time, pause for breaks or interruptions, and use multiple timers to track time across multiple case matters.
To get the most out of Rocket Matter Track, make sure your team understands how to:
- Track billable time and expenses from directly within your Microsoft Outlook account
- Add time and expense entries from a mobile phone with Rocket Matter’s Android and iPhone apps
- Track time directly through documents with Rocket Matter’s Office 365 plugin
- Sync expenses from Rocket Matter with Quickbooks Online
- Use Rocket Matter Track to add LEDES billing codes to your team’s time and expenses
- Generate time and expense reports to review how your team spends its time and resources
Transform your law firm’s productivity with Rocket Matter
To see how Rocket Matter can launch your firm’s profitability and productivity to the next level, start a free trial or schedule a demo today.
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