A small practice choosing case management software faces a market built for two other customers: large firms with IT departments, and solo practitioners who mostly need billing. The list of features that matter for a firm of two to ten lawyers is shorter than the vendors' comparison tables and different from both.
What matters
1. The matter as the unit of everything
Every document, email, date, task, contact and note attached to a matter, visible on one screen, with a timeline of what happened when. If the system makes you go to "Documents" to find the documents, it is a set of modules, not a matter system. The idea is spelled out in what is a case, anyway?.
2. Email filed as received
Most of a matter happens in email. The system must file messages with their original headers and timestamps, from the mailbox you already use, without forwarding to a magic address. Replies from the matter should file themselves.
3. Matter types with their own shape
Conveyancing, litigation, probate, commercial — each has different fields, dates, documents and steps. Templates per matter type, editable by you, without a consultant.
4. Documents generated from the matter
Engagement letters, standard correspondence, court forms: designed once, filled from the matter's fields, produced as PDF, filed back. Retyping client names into Word is where the wrong-client-name letter comes from.
5. Dates that drive the calendar
Limitation dates, hearing dates, filing deadlines, tracked from the matter into a calendar that syncs to the phone. A missed limitation date is the claim every insurer fears; the system should make it structurally hard.
6. Client sharing that is not email
A portal where the client sees their matter — the documents you chose, the updates you posted — with verified access and a log. And e-signature from the matter for engagement letters and consents. See privacy-compliant file sharing.
7. Confidentiality by matter
Ethical walls for a firm of six are still walls. Access per matter, per person, with the ability to hide a matter entirely — including from administrators — for the ones that need it.
8. An audit trail you did not write
Who did what, when, recorded by the system and not editable by users. It is the chronology when a matter is questioned and the evidence when a client disputes what they were told. See the case timeline as evidence.
9. Export
Everything, in full, in a form you could hand to a successor practice or a regulator. If the vendor cannot show you the export, assume there is not one.
What matters less than the brochure says
- Time recording and billing — important, but a good accounting package does it better than a case system's bolt-on, and the two should integrate rather than compete.
- Built-in document editing — you have Word. What you need is documents generated and filed, not another editor.
- "AI" features — useful when they read only your matter's data and propose rather than act; a liability when they do anything else. Ask precisely what data the feature can see.
- Hundreds of integrations — you will use four: email, calendar, accounting, e-signature.
The demo script
Bring a real (anonymised) matter. Ask them to set up its type, file three emails to it, generate the engagement letter, share it with a "client", and export the lot. Time each step. The system that makes those five things fast is the one that will get used.
