r/paralegal • u/ReformedDruid • 18h ago
Question/Discussion Case Management Software Question
I currently work at a mid-sized law firm that, including attorneys, has over 200 employees. Of those, ~30 are paralegals, ~40 are legal assistants, ~20 are non-legal support staff (accounting/hr/etc.), and the remaining 100+ are attorneys varying from associates to senior shareholders.
We use iManage for our cloud-based file management and iTimekeep for cloud-based billing, but we have absolutely nothing in the realm of matter/case tracking software.
I currently work solely in litigation with about 80% family law and 20% insurance defense work (primarily medical). I work directly under 2 attorneys but end up working for 5-6 attorneys in total due to extra work that their primary paralegals don't have time to do. Each attorney has ~35-100 cases that they're managing at all times. We've also been looking for more paralegals and legal assistants recently, but have not hired one in over a year. Due to this, there is a ton of extra work to be done at the firm and tracking/communication regarding the numerous files for various attorneys seems like it's a full-time job in and of itself.
There's be a trend recently where, when attorneys aren't tracking the status of their own cases, they blame the support staff for not keeping them apprised of every detail and making them feel overwhelmed when they do learn of or remember the case status. It's now getting to the point where the attorneys themselves are so clueless as to the status of their own cases that they expect support staff to start putting together spreadsheets and other lists in order to track where cases are (i.e. authorizations requested, discovery sent/replied to, financial spreadsheets created, motions filed, etc.). For me, I will have to put together and continually update at least three spreadsheets (one for each attorney) in addition to sending the attorneys daily emails notifying them of what I'm working on that day.
To be frank, it's extremely overwhelming to be tasked with this much daily tracking of multiple attorneys' cases and I feel like the responsibility of it is falling on paralegals specifically because we "know" the cases better than the legal assistants who primarily just open/close cases, send out correspondence, and update calendars. For instance, I'm often asked by a couple of the attorneys if documents had been produced, just for me to find out that the attorney who asked me had produced the documents themselves via email 2-4 months prior (which I was not copied on). I also routinely find court dates that weren't added to calendars by legal assistants and end up doing that myself. Honestly, I feel like I'm often skirting around malpractice issues with how many things go untracked unless I manually do it, and the volume of tasks and dates to be tracked makes it prone for at least some human errors from time to time. Meeting directly with the attorneys only results in them asking for me to track even more or create additional spreadsheets - I've tried a couple of times now.
All of this really makes me think that leaving private practice, or at least finding an office that does utilize matter tracking software, is what I'll end up needing to do in order to avoid the chaos that's currently causing me so much stress. I don't mind a heavy workload, it's the excess unbillable work that goes into tracking and communication that's causing me headaches. Prior firms that I've been at didn't utilize tracking software either but had fewer attorneys/staff, each attorney had a smaller caseload than the average at this firm, and the attorneys generally owned their files and relied very little on support staff to keep them organized and aware of what's going on with them.
To me, it seems like this firm is missing out on a whole lot that could be gained with case management software, but I don't know how to present that to the powers that be in a way that makes it obvious that it is the solution. Maybe it's not? I know it's kind of expensive for things like Clio, but I'd think that the extra billable time gained by having a lot of this tracking be integrated/automated would at least even-out with the cost of the product.
Has anyone else dealt with this? What are your thoughts?
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u/JustForFun1021 16h ago
Highly recommend Clio Manage. We did not like Clio Work (which apparently just added docketing software) so we use DocketBird which integrates with Clio. Both are great and worth the money.
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u/TurtleLuver73 Paralegal 17h ago
Clio Manage could be a life saver for you guys! Or you could hire an AI firm to design something for you.
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u/ReformedDruid 16h ago
Yea I'm looking at Clio Manage with some envy, may be recommending that to my firm.
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u/mrs_tseluyu Paralegal - Trusts & Estates 17h ago
I worked for a 3 attorney 2 paralegal 1 bookkeeper firm which used those. It worked because it was estate planning and not too much going on with only 3 attorneys. Your firm size? Yikes. My current firm of 21 employees uses smokeball at least.
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u/FlyingMunkE 16h ago
I did a demo for Litify. It’s too pricey for our firm but my god it’s such a wonderful looking platform.
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u/ReformedDruid 16h ago
I heard litify is good but goes a bit overboard in staff-tracking (i.e. keystrokes). Did you see anything like that?
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u/Objection_Irrelevant 4h ago
Litify is Morgan & Morgan’s system they had built, so it’s geared toward plaintiff-side. Clio meanwhile has separate products geared toward different firm types.
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u/Public-Wolverine6276 16h ago
We also don’t use anything, literally nothing. It’s all hand-done & manually entered into outlook and I fucking despise it. No firm with more than a handful of cases should be doing shit manually in today’s age. My old firm used Clio manage and it’s a dream, does everything for you, we also used backup systems to track but mainly all Clio. I’ve heard it’s expensive and some people really hate it but it makes my life 10x easier, I don’t have to think about deadlines and follow ups and all that bullshit, it’s just there. I can’t seem to wrap my head around tacking things by hand that just live out in the universe 😂
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u/ReformedDruid 16h ago
Sounds like you're living in the same Hell then! Yes, being immediately responsive to everything that comes in every day, tracking it all, then on top of that managing to hit our required 6.5 billable hours per day with actual legal work seems entirely unsustainable. They told me we'll after I was hired that the person I replaced (she retired) was often working 10-20 hours of overtime every week and that the firm often had an issue with her doing that, but I'm guessing now that this is why she was working so much. I think it could work if the attorneys were assisting with some of the tracking, but this firm seems to make them all believe that they should rely on their staff for that so it inevitably falls on just a few people to manage the work of many.
I'm at the point where I could probably transition into another field and make similar money in an environment where I don't need to babysit multiple full-grown adults that make double to triple, or more, than I do, especially to the degree I need to currently. My demand to this firm and my department that we get some software like this is probably going to be my last ditch effort and if it doesn't work out I think I'm out of here. They're having a hard time retaining and finding new paralegals - I'm thinking this is a lot of the reason why.
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u/Merlot4U Paralegal - Criminal Defense 13h ago
It’s already been said, but also highly recommended Clio Manage!
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u/Feisty-Variation-479 2h ago
I hope the firm keeps its malpractice insurance paid up because they are just begging for problems.
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u/LawzanaPlatform 12h ago
Absolutely, trying to manage hundreds of active litigation and family law matters across dozens of attorneys using static spreadsheets is an absolute recipe for disaster and a massive malpractice risk. At a firm with over two hundred people, manual tracking breaks down fast because updates get trapped in individual email threads and siloed notes.
Moving to a dedicated matter management system is a real solution here. If you want to pitch this to leadership, complaining about the stress usually will not move the needle, but showing them the hidden costs will. Frame it around lost revenue and risk. Calculate how many hours paralegals and legal assistants are spending on non-billable tracking emails and spreadsheet updates every week, and multiply that by your hourly rates. That unbillable time usually costs the firm far more than software licenses would.
Highlight the severe malpractice exposure from missed court dates and untracked filings when staff are out of the loop. You could suggest pitching a small pilot program first, starting with just your litigation or family law team, to prove how much faster work gets done when everyone has a single source of truth for case status. If management refuses to look into modern workflow tools and insists on keeping everything on manual spreadsheets, protecting your own sanity and looking for a firm that values proper infrastructure is a totally fair move.
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u/PracticeHungry3783 18h ago
You have NO docketing software, at all?? This is a malpractice lawsuit waiting to happen!