Legal Practice Management Software. What Does That Even mean?

Case Management Software. Matter Management Software. Legal Practice Management Software. All of these terms and more are frequently used to describe law firm software which, most people agree, does a bunch of stuff.

The problem is, most lawyers I talk to don’t know what that stuff is. In fact, many of them never even heard of the category whatsoever. There seems to be a disconnect between the legal software industry, which certainly thinks it knows what legal practice management software is, and the legal consumer, who hasn’t the foggiest idea what we’re talking about.

I had this conversation recently with a prominent legal technology consultant recently, one who gives talks all over the country. When I told him that slightly less than half of firms used case management software (according to surveys I’ve examined), he said those numbers were misleading. The percentage, from his perspective, was way too high.

Typically, when he asks a room of fifty attorneys “Who is using case management software?”, three people raise their hands. When he asks what do they use it for, often the attorney is using it for little more than calendaring or contact management.

So there it is peeps, a disconnect. Which is why, when I wear my Rocket Matter hat and tell people I create “legal practice management software“, they raise an eyebrow and I follow up with “invoicing, calendaring, task tracking, trust accounting, that kind of stuff.” But when I say “legal productivity software“, they get it right away.