How to Build a Legal Software

In today's world, legal software is a game-changer, given the growing volume and complexity of legal information, which 72% of legal industry workers consider the number one trend.

Legal software has many advantages, such as helping to track the entire document flow, process invoices, store necessary client information, and access it at any time, as well as automate certain parts of the workflow. In short, it is a great opportunity for professionals to focus on more important things and simplify their work process.

You will only get features with bespoke legal software that you require. In the long term, it may prove to be more advantageous and better suit your use case.

Case # 2: Limited Functionality

Conversely, there may be circumstances where some functionalities that you want are not provided by legal software suppliers.

These businesses want to reach a broad market, but it's unlikely that they will provide highly specialized features like animated desktop notifications or unique workflow components.

Case # 3: 3rd-Party Integrations

For example, if you already use custom integrations for finance management, CRM, email, IP telephony, or any other function, prepackaged software might hinder integration with such providers or offer a limited range of options.

This makes it more difficult to implement third-party integrations than adding a Google extension, for instance. These companies offer their services via APIs and SDKs, which need to be inserted into the code of your product.

Therefore, a software provider has two options: either to do it on their own or to give you access to the source code, which is the opposite of the practice of such companies.

Personalization is one of the key advantages of custom legal software. You can add new information or make changes at any time. This approach provides greater flexibility and allows you to be more prepared for market changes, as you can freely adjust your solution to accommodate them.

Case # 4: Security

Certainly, legal information should be kept as confidential and secure as possible. However, when using software from providers, the amount of protection is strictly limited to what the manufacturer deems sufficient.

Moreover, it may happen that the rules are followed to a sufficient extent to obtain a certificate, but not enough to meet the requirements of the customer.

Additionally, the server will most likely be used by other clients of the provider, which increases the likelihood of errors, data leaks, and system breaches.

You can also set up email forwarding so that all messages received from a specific email address related to the case are sent directly to the case folder.

To make the case easier to read, you can create multiple tabs to indicate the current status. For example, "in preparation," "in progress," or "closed." Within the tabs, you can create nested tabs, such as "success" or "failure," for closed cases.

All these features are part of other streams that exchange information with the case management board. However, each of them can have broader capabilities, which are described in the following subsections.

# 2: Client Management Flow 😀

Another important stream is customer management. The functionality of this stream is designed so that detailed information about each customer is stored in one place.

The following features are available:

• A list of customers, which can also be grouped. Here, you can divide customers by status in a law firm, by location, by the lawyer assigned to them, etc.
• Customer profiles with detailed personal information (e.g., photo, name, age).
• Contact information, including emergency contact details in case you cannot reach the customer.
• Documentation on the customer in case management.
• Chat with customers.
• Customer history - for example, previous cases.

A good idea could be automatic updates forwarding via email based on
customer requests. You can also send reminders about important tasks that the customer needs to complete.

And last but not least, you can add a data input form for the customer to provide detailed information. Don't forget to include an additional comments section so users can write any information not covered by the input form.

If you’d like to learn more about managing your client flow, we have an article dedicated to Custom Relationship Management system development:

# 3: Task & Team Management Flow 📅

Nowadays, many law firms use services like Trello or Notion for task management. However, if you plan to develop legal software, it might be wise to centralize these processes. Some services provide APIs for task management functions, but if you need your own workflow, you may need to add it:

• Calendars (shared and personal for each client).
• Task board and task lists categorized. The most popular categorization is by status, but you can do it yourself.
• Group chats and calls for discussion, scheduling, etc.
• New task button.
• Ability to assign employees to tasks and change their status (e.g., lead lawyer, assistant lawyer, etc.).
• Ready-made reporting forms
• Attaching files and documents to specific tasks and other assignments.

Each task can contain detailed information: deadline, responsible person, mini-steps for completion, notes panel, etc.

You can create a checklist tool to display current tasks assigned to each employee on one screen. This can be done simply by placing all the tasks that each employee has added to their profile.

Furthermore, such software is suitable for organizing teamwork. The features include:

• Employee lists containing sufficient information such as name, department, and contact details.
• Detailed employee profiles - personal data, working hours, and information can be reproduced from the employee list. If you have remote employees, you can add their location, different time zones, zip codes, etc.
• Communication tools - video/audio calls, chat, file sharing, etc.

# 4: Finance Management Flow 💲

Another important aspect of a law firm's workflow is finances and invoicing. These can include the following functions:

• Variable hourly rates and fixed fees, as fees can vary from lawyer to lawyer.
• Time tracking. When billing clients on an hourly basis, it's important to track time, which can be easily done with a built-in timer.
• Expense management. Include a list of transactions and expenses (separately), including details such as date, time, place, amount, and sender/recipient information.
• Accounting. You can include tax calculations, tax return templates, automatic payments, etc.
• Automatic invoicing, customizable invoice templates.
• Various payment options and credit card processing.
• Invoice history.
• Reporting, etc.

A good idea could be to include various billing options in legal software, such as hourly rates, fixed rates, conditional fees, etc.

You can also include filtering options to easily find the necessary information by date, time, amount, or other data. Additionally, you can use activity codes to represent the various services offered by law firms and label them accordingly.

If you are not familiar with this, I would like to mention that there are two key documents in this area that are worth noting:

• LEDES (Legal Electronic Data Exchange Standard) provides invoice templates for law firms working with digital invoices.
• And UTBMS codes (Uniform Task-Based Management System Codes)contains codes used by law firms for invoicing.

# 5: Document Management Flow 📚

Legal software can help manage documents in various ways, including centralized document storage, easy access to them at any time and from anywhere, and convenient filtering systems. With proper organization, you can significantly reduce the time spent on this activity.

Document management is actually functionally less complex. Two things are important:

• Structured storage. You can create various tabs, folders, tabs, and subfolders, have your own tagging system, and implement your current document storage methods into the program.
• Advanced filtering system. Filtering by client, lawyer, case, date, location, etc.

# 6: Analytics 📊

Legal software also has analytical capabilities. A deep understanding of business effectiveness can really help increase sales and reduce costs. It also helps to identify strengths and weaknesses and analyze customer behavior for marketing purposes.

Therefore, the most common ways to provide remote access are through cloud servers and specialized mobile applications. Access to cloud software can be obtained from anywhere using any device connected to the Internet.

Dedicated applications can have the same functionality as the main software but can be installed on a mobile phone to allow access to the system at any time. They can also cover only specific parts of the workflow, such as task or case management functions.

If you are confident that you and your employees can access your computer or laptop at any time, then a cloud server would be more suitable. However, if you want to access it from mobile devices, consider using a specialized application.

These are the two most common scenarios. If you would like a more detailed overview of a specific use case, please contact our development team.

Integration with a Current Solution

It may happen that you already have a customized product that you would prefer not to discard. There are three possible outcomes for such circumstances.

It wouldn't hurt to encrypt the data as well. One of the best ways to do this is with the Advanced Encryption Protocol (AES) protocol, which is currently being considered. AES is very fast and has three block ciphers, each of which encrypts and decrypts the data once. However, in this model, the sender and receiver use the same key for encryption and decryption.

To encrypt your messages while communicating with a client, for example, you can use end-to-end encryption (E2EE). If you’d like to learn more about it, you can watch this video:

It may happen that hackers are unable to read the data but block access to it and threaten to delete it unless a ransom is paid. In such cases, it is important to remember to always keep a backup of the data from which it can be restored.

You can also enable fingerprinting on the device. This is a process of analyzing the device used to access the database. If the IP address, device type, operating system, screen size, location, time, etc., are different from the norm, you will receive a notification or phone call (your choice).

Multi-Factor Authentication

A multi-factor authentication system is one way to ensure that access to the program itself is well-secured. It suggests many authentication levels.

Some examples of multi-factor authentication are:

• A complicated password.
• Verification by biometrics (facial ID, fingerprints, voice recognition, retina scans, etc.). Although it's not that simple to enable for laptops and PCs, you should discuss it with your development team to see if they can come up with a workaround.
• Creation of one-time passwords.
• Email or phone call authentication.
• Security questions about yourself and others.

Auditing & Monitoring

It is also important to log all logins to the system from new and existing accounts. Additionally, tracking all actions performed with confidential data is possible.

This way, in case of a data breach, it is easy to trace the last user and the action that caused the leak. Thus, weaknesses can be identified and prevented in the future.

Additionally, it might be a good idea to undertake security standards audits on a regular basis to make sure your software protection is current and compliant with any new regulatory standards.

Security Testing

And last but not least, you should do security checks on a regular basis to identify any flaws in your security system or to identify breaches that are particularly inviting for frauds (or to make sure that it's totally good).