CRM for law firms

The customer relationship management (CRM) market is expected to reach over $40 billion by 2023, and this growth is no surprise to those who recognize the value of customer service to their digital transformation efforts. A spreadsheet might be adequate if your firm has less than 100 contacts or is tracking only static information like name, email address, phone number, company name, and website. However, a CRM tracks complex, dynamic data like what emails a contact has opened or what pages they’ve visited on the firm’s website, and updates automatically as leads and clients take action, while data in a spreadsheet becomes stale as soon as you stop adding to it - manually.

What is a CRM?

Customer Relationship Management (CRM) is a software system that helps business owners track communications and nurture relationships with prospective and current clients. A CRM takes the place of numerous spreadsheets, databases, and apps that many businesses piece together to track client data.

There are generally three different types of CRM systems:

• Operational CRM streamlines the various processes related to customer relationships and helps integrate them into principal business processes. Operational CRMs help companies generate leads, convert leads into contacts, and provide the infrastructure necessary to convert and retain customers.
• Analytical CRM gives organizations a greater understanding of the data collected on customers and their interactions with the business. Analytical CRM can turn large amounts of data into actionable insights.
• Collaborative CRM bridges the gap between teams and departments so that information can be easily shared and used to create a seamless customer experience.
• Strategic CRM specializes in long term customer relationships, offering feedback on ongoing relationships. If your business depends on repeat customers, a strategic CRM tells you why a customer or client keeps coming back.

When a business utilizes CRM, the results are often immediate and dramatic:  superior organization, greater efficiency, better time management, and impressed clients.

What is a legal CRM?

Legal CRM software helps law firms manage business development functions, including client intake, meeting scheduling, follow-up, revenue tracking, and more, to turn potential leads into retained clients. Because legal CRM software is a specific database for legal client management, it is easily accessed, managed, and updated. Some of the tasks that law firm CRM assists with include:

• Data collection
• Form generation
• Online client intake
• Appointment scheduling
• Automated reminders
• Task assignment 

Based on the size of the firm and role specializations, that might include administrative and support staff, lawyers, and firm owners.

Why does a law firm need a CRM?

In today’s legal landscape, CRM technology is essential for any law firm looking to manage and optimize its interactions with current and potential clients. The main goals of law firms using a CRM are:

• Build stronger client relationships
• Improve client retention
• Attract new prospects

Because a legal CRM can be tailored to the needs of your firm, a customized solution provides features that enable attorneys to manage and nurture key relationships. Legal CRM is also designed to be in compliance with ethics regulations concerning data and security.

An analytical CRM platform can gather, organize, and interpret key client information, including marketing, sales, and business development data. This technology helps law firms maximize data and make informed decisions. It also connects different departments to create a seamless client communication experience, boosting satisfaction and retention.

Keeping clients happy and reassured is critical for most firms. The right CRM tool will ensure that the legal team has access to data when needed, empowering them to deliver the best service to clients and demonstrating your firm’s ability to deliver. Legal CRM platforms also integrate other external information (such as industry news or regulatory changes) into the system to give your firm the speed, flexibility, and agility necessary to excel.

What does a CRM do?

CRM systems assemble all the data collected from leads and customers in one place, consolidating all communications – fillable forms, phone calls, emails, text messages, meetings, documents, quotes, purchases, and tasks – connected to each lead and client. Ergo, a team can access those details to close a sale, answer a question, or deliver outstanding service.

Some CRM systems contain advanced tools to help enhance communication with leads and turn them into customers, including:

• Lead scoring. CRM software uses lead scoring to reveal how hot or cold a lead is. Based on rules set by the user, points are added to a lead record of critical actions a lead takes, such as submitting an inquiry form or downloading content, so the marketing/intake coordinator can pinpoint the most qualified prospects and focus on those. Without CRM, lead scoring is not possible.
• Automation. A CRM absorbs as much information as possible on leads before guiding them through a strategic journey toward conversion. CRM software can customize email marketing efforts to send leads and clients the right messages at the right times, and each lead’s responses will prompt different automated follow-ups. 
• Analytics. CRM doesn’t just collect information; it helps businesses harness that data to unlock insights that will further drive marketing strategy. CRM allows businesses to identify their most qualified prospects, shorten the sales cycle, and monitor, analyze, and improve results.

CRM also allows businesses to automate their workflows so that repetitive tasks will be completed at scheduled times to reduce the risk of delayed responses to prospects or the failure to respond. A CRM automates numerous tasks, including:

• Automatically assigning leads when they reach a specified stage in the sales pipeline
• Sending personalized emails to prospects based on specific triggers like subscribing to a newsletter or watching a webinar
• Logging customer behavior, including visits to a particular web page, purchasing a particular product, or opening an email

By decreasing the manual labor involved in creating, sending, and monitoring customer communications, a CRM allows a company to enhance productivity by focusing more on connecting with customers, maintaining positive relationships, and growing the business.

What are the benefits of using a CRM?

A CRM can dramatically expand your company’s sales and marketing efforts without building large teams or swelling your advertising budget. When combined with sales and marketing automation, a CRM can create a sales and marketing system that will take sales to an entirely new level. CRM software streamlines the entire sales and marketing process in the following ways:

• Visibility. A CRM offers the visibility a sales team needs to be most effective. Easy handoffs between teammates happen when all lead and customer data is in one place and everything about a customer or company is accessible. When sales representatives have visibility into what a prospect has done, they can personalize the conversation and take the appropriate next step. 
• Prioritization. A CRM allows a sales team to prioritize outreach activities by calculating a lead’s interest in a product or service and pushing leads with the highest lead scores to the top of the sales team’s tasks. CRM can also prioritize outreach to customers by flagging upcoming contract renewal dates and customers likely to be interested in a new product or service.
• Follow-Up. CRM automates follow-up with leads and clients, making managing sticky notes and copying and pasting the same email to every new lead a thing of the past. Instead, the system initiates follow-up at the right time, producing a more consistent customer journey that will convert more leads into clients.
• Insight. When data is consolidated in a CRM, companies can analyze patterns and gain an understanding that leads to increased revenue. For example, if you identify common purchase combinations, you can generate packages or bundles to increase sales. In addition, because your data can reveal when customers are most likely to repurchase, you can strategically plan follow-ups and offers timed appropriately.
• Personalization. With CRM, sending the right message to the right person at the right time is simple and creates a distinct advantage. According to a recent McKinsey study, 76 percent of consumers said personalization prompted consideration of a brand, and for 78 percent, personalized content made them more likely to repurchase.
• Testing. A marketing CRM allows users to test activities like promos, text messages, ads, and contact frequency to help improve marketing efforts. Rather than just throwing your messaging at the wall to see what sticks, data from testing proves which technique is most effective.

Is HubSpot CRM a good system for lawyers?

HubSpot CRM is a free, easy-to-use tool designed to help business owners handle marketing, sales, and customer service with features that range from email templates to social media sharing tools. The platform allows business owners to improve efficiency by managing client data, automating marketing communications and other existing processes, and tracking tasks and deadlines. In addition, HubSpot’s all-in-one platform helps entrepreneurs reach their business goals with the following tools: 

• Analytics to track campaign performance and ROI. HubSpot provides critical information about how legal consumers found your website and how they behave once there, along with valuable insights on other digital activities. 
• Social media management tools to promote audience engagement. HubSpot has various features designed for law firms, including keyword planners and social media software. Social media management tools allow firms to share content on the platforms their audience frequents, provide insight into the performance of posts, and help to maximize engagement on platforms like Medium, Twitter, and LinkedIn.
• Convenient meeting tools that work with Google, Outlook, and Office 365. HubSpot’s meeting tools help keep your audience up to date and provide easy ways for them to schedule time with you directly on your calendar. In addition, you can embed calendars right into your website to make scheduling meetings more convenient for clients.
• An SEO engine to help attract prospective clients. HubSpot includes an SEO engine that permits lawyers to rank in Google search results. In addition to its SEO capabilities, HubSpot integrates with platforms like WordPress, and blog posts created on the platform can be automatically shared on social media.
• Email automation. Email automation can help nurture client relationships. HubSpot features a modern-day CRM and legal intake platform packed with marketing automation features that enable automated email drip campaigns to engage prospects. Audience segmentation can be created to deliver personalized and group messages to specific leads and clients.
• An intuitive CMS for website building. HubSpot offers an intuitive CMS for building websites that includes an easy drag-and-drop system to easily customize and optimize pages. Smart content allows you to display different content to different users based on specific criteria, including country, device type, referral source, language, contact list membership, and lifecycle stage.

Though the Hubspot CRM may be a solid choice for general B2C entrepreneurs, it does not offer legal-specific tools essential for conducting client intake, marketing to legal consumers, or converting prospective clients into matters.

Is Clio a legal CRM system?

Clio Manage is a legal practice management software designed to help law firms organize cases, collaborate with clients, manage their documents, and bill clients for services performed. Clio Manage is not a legal CRM, however, it offers:

• Case management. Within Clio Manage, legal teams can organize their matters, get real-time updates on their matters, and get a centralized overview of all matter details.
• Document Management. Clio Manage allows firms to edit, store, and organize documents of any file in the cloud, securely. Users can edit documents, create templates, and send them for electronic signature without printing, downloading, or scanning.
• Billing & Invoicing. Clio Manage includes end-to-end billing and invoice management that make it easy for clients to pay online using a variety of payment methods. To reduce manual payment entry, Clio offers custom payment plans that can be tailored to a firm’s fee structure.

The Clio-Lawmatics integration complies with the EU GDPR regulations and allows European Clio customers to enjoy the benefits of Lawmatics. In addition, this integration makes it possible to automatically create matters and contacts in Clio upon the conversion of a Lawmatics lead, providing law firms with a seamless and automated flow from the moment a lead contacts your firm to the moment they sign the fee agreement.

Lawmatics helps law firms build better relationships with clients

Lawmatics CRM solution for lawyers helps increase efficiency, attract more prospects, build strong client relationships, and accelerate firm growth. The Lawmatics legal CRM enables firms to:

• Track, segment, and engage potential clients
• Manage client activity and communications
• Organize client data records and keep them up to date
• Sort your contacts with criteria tailored to your law firm

The Lawmatics legal CRM will let your team spend more time on billable work while we do the rest. Want to find out more? Request your demo today.