What are Legal Apps?
Apps are everywhere in modern life, but as increasingly crucial technologies in the legal sphere, legal apps have only recently begun to take off. Legal apps are defined as those that have legal information or assistance as their primary purpose.
Lawyers use legal apps to help with everything from research to managing client information. Legal apps can come in a number of forms, from purely informational apps, to those that allow lawyers to store, access and share data with clients, to apps that provide the lawyer with information and services on the go. With the proliferation of increasingly powerful mobile devices, lawyers can now carry around the information and tools they need to assist clients at a moment’s notice. These apps can include anything from note taking and document storage, to contact management, appointment management, accounting, legal research, billable hour tracking and even GPS supported driving directions.
There are numerous types of apps presently available for use by lawyers. While they are still somewhat niche , there are some that are available for Android, iPhone and BlackBerry devices. There are even some free legal apps, many of which are informational in nature rather than functional. It’s estimated that the number of legal apps will continue to grow significantly over the next several years, as demand among lawyers continues to increase.
As individuals increasingly perform tasks previously done by attorneys, such as drafting of legal documents, attorneys must be prepared to prove their true value to clients. Legal apps such as those that allow clients to easily store and access information regarding their cases (perhaps by scanning documents and sending them from their mobile phone directly to their lawyer), make lawyers’ services more valuable, by freeing up their time to focus on more complex issues, while still providing their clients with timely updates and information.
Case Management Apps
Case Management Apps are basically digital filing cabinets that organize and process all activities related to your case. From client meetings to scheduling phone calls with witnesses to filing pleadings, these apps can manage major aspects of your case. They will track the time you and your staff spend on a case, the expenses incurred and allow you to bill your clients directly from the app. They can provide a list of tasks and set reminders for those infrequent tasks that need to be performed on specific dates and times, such as attending court, filing a motion or sending the client a reminder letter. They can also help you review and organize the documents relating to your case.
Below are some examples of Case Management Apps: Clio is a full-featured Case Management App that has a nice user interface. Clio organizes your cases by type, date and time. It can provide you with a schedule of upcoming tasks, allow you to search for cases, pleadings and notes, search case files by name, date and document type and provide billing reports. Clio also has a good mobile interface.
My Case is another good Case Management App that can manage your cases, track your time, bill your clients and email invoices.
Practice Real Time provides a team calendaring solution to Law Firms. It syncs with Outlook to create calendar dates for all your deadlines that have been noted in your Outlook calendar. It gives you a picture of your busy schedule and allows you to print out all the deadlines in one place.
Document Management Apps
Document management apps are a form of cloud computing software and offer lawyers the capability to create, edit and store legal documents in a protected environment. There are two types of document management systems: server-based and cloud-based. A server-based system is the on-premises computer network-based system that is utilized by many law practices today. A cloud-based system are web-based document management systems such as NetDocuments and iManage.
The leading document management apps include:
· Contracts – offers contract lifecycle management features and certain apps are integrated with Salesforce.com, NetSuite, SAP and MS Dynamics;
· E-signatures – allows the electronic signing of any kind of documents from any browser;
· Billing – enables clients to approve invoices that are emailed or faxed to them. The billing app produces cost-effective customized invoices that are easy for clients to understand, review and approve;
· Automation – allows you to create a "smart" template that auto-fills and process documents from use of a data-entry form that is web-based or hyperlinked within your desktop document;
· Scanning – enables you to upload a scanned image of documents from multiple witness sources;
· Archiving – provides an online storage library with document management tools allowing you to archive, store, find and share documents;
· Filtering – contains a feature that allows you to easily filter, sort and view your client files, search for case information and create or export lists to Microsoft Excel;
· Auditing – allows you to view a log of actions performed on documents; and
· Tracking and reminders – enables you to record important dates and reminders associated with any document for all contexts.
Document management apps can help a law practice with compliance with the varying elements of confidentiality, privacy, trust and evidentiary privilege that need to be addressed when managing a document. Document management applications can help to ensure that a lawyer’s documents are not only secure but that ongoing compliance with evidentiary privilege and confidentiality requirements are able to be met well into the future.
Time and Billing Apps
Leading practices know that time tracking and billing are vital to a firm’s financial well-being, because the proper documentation of billable activity drives revenue. Invoicing is a critical function in this process.
Lawyers use a range of methods to log their billable time: struggle to remember tasks at the end of the day (or week, or month), or to keep a hand-written time journal, or to hope for the best by relying on paper-based processes.
Now, there’s an app for that – several, in fact. Over the past few years, we have watched as a plethora of apps supporting time tracking and billing in the law have hit the app stores. In many cases these were standalone apps that offered an entry point to legal practice management applications supporting time tracking and billing. But there are well-known time and billing apps that were not developed as a gateway to full-blown legal practice management software. For example, Time59, a leading time and billing application for lawyers, is by Leapfile, maker of cloud storage and file-sharing solutions.
So whether you want to support the lawyers in your firm in the ways their practice management software supports them, or to allow them to work with a standalone app, there is a time-to-billing app to meet your needs.
Legal Research Apps
Apps that make legal research more efficient and accessible are also having a large impact on the practice of law. Legal research is a vital part of any legal case, and in the past, accessing case law databases was limited to people who could afford to pay the often high monthly fees to access them. Nowadays, apps have taken the legal research world by storm, allowing legal practitioners to search through various databases of case law, statutes, and legal commentary/law journals all for the price of a cheap subscription to one app.
Hats off to iPhone users, you’ve been the first to get access to what are known commonly as "legal research apps" which simplify access to legal research for a flat fee and allow access to several databases. This app will allow a legal practitioner to access caselaw, legal journals, court rules for courts across the county and other state resources such as the state bar for as little as $20/month.
The big name in legal research apps was the Fastcase app if you owned an iPhone or Android tablet. Fastcase is a database of global and federal caselaw, statutes, and legal articles that can be combined with other apps like CaseText and Westlaw Next to get a full subscription. Although a recent lawsuit was filed against Fastcase concerning its subscribers not getting results it should have turned up, the cross-platform program is still widely used and praised among many users. In light of that lawsuit, newer legal research apps such as Casemaker have flourished (and in many ways outpaced Fastcase) and become a leading legal research app for all types of mobile devices.
The Casemaker app allows you to access your firm’s entire Casemaker account and allows you to access caselaw, statutes, rules of court, and secondary sources. Casemaker gives you two options: Casemaker 2 Go (for simplicity and type of cases,) and Casemaker Bar Association (to use if you have a subscription through your state’s Bar association). Cases are tagged and highlighted helpful snippets of text to make finding the source you need much faster.
Legal professionals around the country have long been reliant on programs like Lexis Nexis and Westlaw plus to provide them access to legal resources. But the problem with these programs is that they require long term subscriptions. Legal Research Apps eliminate those long term commitments and still allow you to access the information when you need it. If you do not find what you need on one app, no problem- simply look up your query on the other.
Communication and Collaboration Apps
Communication and collaboration apps provide an easy and effective means for attorneys to stay connected with clients and colleagues, and well as staying organized. In the past, many attorneys would find it difficult to stay on the same page with all players involved in particular cases, but with the advent of communication and collaboration applications, information and data sharing have become a lot easier and faster, which helps legal teams streamline their efforts, increase productivity, and improve client satisfaction. For instance, DocuSign is a widely used document signing app that many people are familiar with, allowing attorneys to obtain signatures remotely on important contracts sent to clients. This helps save a lot of time by eliminating the need for people to travel to sign different documents or attorneys to mail contracts . Another popular example is Evernote. Evernote is a note taking app that lets attorneys to take notes on the fly, keep shareable records of numerous clients, and organize them into different folders accessible from anywhere on any smart phone. This way, attorneys can sort and track all the information they need to do their jobs anytime, anywhere. There are many other examples of effective communication and collaboration apps used by legal teams, such as Slack, Beekeeper and Quip. These apps all help drive better communication and more organization. For instance, Slack provides instant messaging services for real-time communication among team members, and Beekeeper lets teams know the latest updates regarding all current projects, while Quip offers integrated document review systems for faster document review.
Security and Compliance for Legal Apps
Ensuring data protection and compliance is essential for all businesses, but most of all for law firms. The sheer volume of private client information and the multitude of legal matters that involve significant public consequence require adequate security measures. Naturally, there are various laws and regulations that govern how firms should protect sensitive information and what safeguards should be in place. Many countries have established a data protection authority responsible for overseeing how personal data is handled. Compliance with such regulations is critically important, and failing to adhere to them can result in significant fines or penalties. But how do you know if your new productivity app protects client data? Here are a few things that your app vendors should confirm for you:
Compliance is a serious topic that you as a law firm should cover with third-party app vendors. Be sure to ask your vendors some tough questions about their legal compliance and data protection practices, so you can avoid security breaches and comply with regulations.
Emerging Trends in Legal Apps
With the rapid advancement of technology, future trends will very likely include the use of artificial intelligence and blockchain technologies. In data compilation activities like contract review, legal research, e-discovery and due diligence, large amounts of financial data from mergers and acquisitions could easily be processed by machine-learning algorithms. Within the legal field, there are software products that use natural language processing to understand common law case precedents, ruling systems and legal terminology. Using intelligent contract review software, a legal practitioner can be guided quickly from one potential problem to another, assisting in the review process. Blockchain technology is also likely to continue being applied within the legal sector. Lawyers and law firms can record and validate transactions within an immutable ledger, allowing for greater transparency and efficiency. Encryption aspects of distributed ledger technology may also be recommended to keep confidential information within blockchain-based apps and public networks private. Smart contracts are also likely to gain traction. Within a smart contract, contractual clauses are written out as executable lines of code; the contract is downloaded, and once all conditions are met, the contract is fulfilled. The technology also means that, unlike traditional contracts, payments are not made until all terms are satisfied. With further adoption of these concepts and technologies, law practitioners are sure to benefit from long-term cost and resource savings.
Conclusion
The proliferation of legal apps has been nothing short of transformational for the practice of law. The apps outline above offer a glimpse into how technology is revolutionizing the way legal professionals work and interact with their clients . From the advancement of research tools to cloud-based time-and-billing software, our everyday tasks have become simpler and more efficient through the use of apps.
What’s more, the rapid pace of innovation in technology means that there will likely be more transformative law practice apps on the horizon. Keeping current with these technological trends will allow you to stay ahead of the curve.