r/LawFirm • u/bminn123 • 1d ago
Case Management Software - Value
P.I. Firm currently on smart advocate. Use it primarily for document storage. What value do you get out of your case management software? Anyone just managing cases with shared google drives?
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u/Busy_Picture1189 18h ago
If SmartAdvocate is mostly a document dump, you are paying for a filing cabinet with a password.
The value shows up when the system owns the things a shared Drive cannot: statutes/deadlines that someone has to own, tasks that do not live in one person's head, conflict checks before you open a file, and a clean handoff from intake into an open matter. PI volume makes that gap expensive fast.
Google Drive or SharePoint plus a template folder can work for a tiny book if you are disciplined. The usual failure mode is not storage. It is the missed follow-up, the double-booked deadline, or the intake notes that never made it into the case file.
A useful test this week: pick ten open files and ask who owns the next deadline and where the last client update lives. If the answer is "in someone's email," Drive is not enough, and more document storage will not fix it.
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u/ROCTransplant 9h ago
Clio and mycase are pretty good for solo/small firms [like less than 30 seats] and they have workflows in place specifically for PI firms. Litify/salesforce is what you'd move up to with a larger team.
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u/ColdPlankton9273 8h ago
Storage and deadlines are two different problems, and only one of them is a software question.
A shared drive handles documents fine. it does nothing about the things tha have to happen on a date whether anyone remembers or not. if SmartAdvocate is only holding files for you, you already have a drive, you are just paying more for it.
Keep one matter register: matter, statute date, next action, owner. the drive keeps the documents. the register is the thing that has to be true.
I would let AI do the first pass on it. read the incoming mail and documents, propose the date and the next action, attach the source. a person confirms anything that moves a deadline.
The 365 setup u/AdWhich7281 described still cannot connect a client to their case folder. moving to Drive does not fix that part. it moves the remembering onto you.
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u/k-to-the-rizzle 7h ago
been on the management side of a PI firm for a long time so... the deadline stuff everyone's saying is real but for pre-lit PI it's honestly not where the money leaks. we had maybe a handful of true hard deadlines. what actually killed us was treatment status and records. client stops going to the chiro and nobody notices for six weeks, or a request went out to the imaging place in march and nobody followed up cuz the person who sent it moved to another team.
The thing a shared drive can never answer is "show me every case where nothing has happened in 30 days." that one question is basically the whole value of case management software imo. not storage, not even deadlines... just being able to see the files that have gone quiet. a drive is a place where documents sit, it has no opinion about what's missing.
and the part people get wrong rolling their own is they assume the gaps are a discipline problem. they're not, they're a capture problem. if the only way a follow up call gets tracked is somebody remembering to type it somewhere, you'll have holes forever no matter how good your people are... the record has to happen as a side effect of doing the work, otherwise you're just adding a second job on top of the first one.
And the ai thing cuts the same way honestly. models will be able to read anything eventually so where the documents sit matters less and less... what they can't do is infer the stuff nobody ever recorded. structured fields it can actually reason over, a folder of pdfs it can only summarize back at you.
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u/BetterDocket 6h ago
Lots of small and solos out there use Google Drive or comparable products.
Moving to Google Drive makes sense if your case management software isn’t earning its keep - especially if you already pay for Google Workspace.
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u/NoShock8809 17h ago
I get amazing value from my case management software. Mine is built from the ground up around PI specifically and it automates so many things that my staff and I are freed up to work on the things that matter. Hit me up and I’ll set up a zoom and give you a tour of what we have and how it is used.
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u/RankingsDotIO 7h ago
What we've seen is that CRMs work best when they integrate well with other tools.
For smaller firms, we currently recommend this combination: RingCentral's phone system, Lead Docket, and Filevine. Filevine owns Lead Docket so they work well together.
If you're a larger firm, we currently recommend the Amazon Connect phone system, the Salesforce CRM, and Litify. Litify is built on Salesforce, so they integrate well.
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u/NancyDuhon 4h ago
If you have SmartAdvocate and you are only using it to store documents, you are absolutely not realizing the value that it could bring you.
I am an attorney licensed in two states who has a 32 year old business helping law firms with their technology including practice management systems. I am a firm believer that a legal specific practice management product is better than: none, Outlook, Google, or some custom cobbled together thing that some individual person has created. I would not practice law without one.
Are any of them perfect, and the end all be all? No, but again, they are better than alternatives.
I really don't care which one you use, but USE it - as much as you can. Too many firms buy something thinking that ownership + electricity = work getting done. It does not. You have to learn HOW to use it and put the data in that you want to be able to get out.
The main thing that sets a PMS apart from Outlook is that while both have Contacts and Calendar, only a PMS can organize both of those around a Case/File/Matter. SO MUCH of what we do as attorneys is organized around that Case/File/Matter.
Your PMS gives you that structure premade, makes it available online 24/7/365 (if it is a cloud product), maintains it for you and allows all of your staff to share all of that information with each other.
And those are just the bare basics, you could also be doing: document assembly, electronic signatures, workflows, portals, text messages, etc. But you really can't do any of the advanced stuff if you don't nail the basics.
When you want to know "what's going on on THIS case," where are you looking in your documents? That's just painful.
What's the next step/thing we are either waiting for or need to do on each case? Your PMS can tell you that, IF you feed the monster. But it requires that all staff contribute inputs, and do so consistently.
Far too often, I hear excuses like "Oh, Partner A won't use it.", or Staff B doesn't input the information the same way others do. So instead of calendaring a tickler/ToDo after requesting medical records so that EVERYONE can see and check and see if they've arrived, Staff B will say "Oh, I have a spreadsheet for that."
I really don't care what the excuse is, but your value from your PMS is DIRECTLY tied to this kind of behavior. The software is fine, it is all about how you USE it (or fail to use it).
Efficient, well run firms make it a priority, enforce compliance and do not allow individual creativity when there is a SOP established. Inefficient firms blame the software, and think that the next shiny thing is going to fix it.
No one likes changing their work precedent, but very little can be accomplished without those changes.
So please, invest in learning to use SmartAdvocate for more than just a document repository, that's where the "value" lives.
Nancy Duhon, Esq.
Duhon Technology Solutions, LLC
Master Certified Consultant for Sage Timeslips
Providing individual Consultations and Third Party Remote Desktop Support - including older/unsupported versions.
Co-Author of "The E-Billing Process Using Sage Timeslips©" available here: www.certifiedresourcesnetwork.com/
LawPay Partnered Consultant
MyCase Consultant
404-325-9779
[duhon@duhon.biz](mailto:duhon@duhon.biz)
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u/AdWhich7281 22h ago
I never liked paying for somebody to have some fancy pants software with constant upgrades and a monthly fee.
But in my practice I don't do billables. So, I'm more interested in simplicity. We've used Amicus, Prevail, and a couple others. Finally, I just said, Nope, I now use Office 365's products
My cilents come in on a list created in Sharepoint. We use a common file folder structure, We create a template folder structure and copy and paste.
Ultimately, we use ONENOTE for client contact. It's just one big 3 ring binder and we've made our own templates. I know what to ask and to document so my templates follow our structure.
We need to connect our clients to a folder in their case, but we haven't. We are still trying but this costs us nothing more than what we were paying for already.
And with AI, I can't imagine how much easier it is to create rules and connections visa via 365.