Time is money. And for lawyers, that can mean a lot of time put into their work. As the Bureau of Labor Statistics notes, many lawyers are logging more than 40 hours per week. Knowing where and how you spend your time is essential to growing your law firm, and calendar software can help you stay on top of it all.
Beyond knowing where your time goes to limit overwork and grow your law firm's profitability, deadline management is also vital for lawyers. As a busy attorney, you can't afford to let even one deadline or case issue slip through the cracks. That's why legal calendar software keeps you on track and ensures you deliver the same great experience to all clients.
In this guide, you'll discover what to think about before buying legal calendar software and a few of the best options on the market to maximize your billable hours.
The Importance of Legal Calendar Software for Lawyers
Managing your deadlines, court dates, and upcoming meetings can be challenging for any lawyer. Too many attorneys are buried with incoming and outgoing communication and the need to jump from one case to another frequently. This greatly increases the chances of making a mistake or leaving a bad taste in a client's mouth because you appeared unprofessional.
Beyond that, most lawyers work in various jurisdictions and court systems, each of which has their own filing deadlines and requests (such as filing in person or electronically.) Keeping all of this information in one place is crucial for staying organized.
Legal calendar software makes this simple so you never miss a beat and can provide prompt updates to your clients on their cases, too. You'll always know what's ahead of you and what you need to work on next with the right calendar program at your side.
Choosing the Right Legal Calendar Software
To choose the perfect for your law firm, you need to know the features that will make the biggest impact. To stay on top of all the moving parts of a busy law firm, you must have one place to track all the important details and fail-safes to help ensure you meet every deadline and keep cases moving forward.
Some of the most important aspects of legal calendar tools include features like:
- Rules-based backdating systems help you calculate all deadlines for a case based on individual court calendars and rules specific to jurisdictions.
- Deadline notifications associated with upcoming appointments and filing requirements.
- Collaboration tools to help team members add updates and information from anywhere so everyone's on the same page.
- Cloud-based access so you can log in anywhere
- Automated due dates associated with calendar events
Beyond the features noted in any tool you select, you need to verify it will play nice with any other software you already use. Whether that's a legal case management software or an external calendar system, tools that integrate well make your life easier and automate things.
Navigating the Best Legal Calendar Software for Efficient Case Management
Thankfully, there are plenty of great options on the market for lawyers to use, and plenty of them integrate with existing tools you might already have in place. Here are five of the best options for legal calendar software.
1. Clio: Streamlining Legal Calendars for Optimal Case Management
Clio is a full-suite solution for most law firms, which makes it an easy place to turn if you also need help with billing, document management, and practice management software. If you already have solutions in place, like for those aspects of running a law firm, However, you'd have to consider whether Clio Manage is worth the cost or if you want to jump through the hoops of moving over to Clio.
Here are some of the best features of the calendar aspect of Clio:
- Simple to integrate with tasks and cases for comprehensive scheduling
- Time tracking for precise billing and a regular productivity analysis
- Syncs with Google and Office365
- Track court deadlines with court rules
- Include firm events and client tasks in one place
- See upcoming tasks
Alex C. says it's a great fit for his practice, noting, "Clio has a great UI, being very easy to use, which removes some of the pain of docketing. It is convenient to use on a daily basis in any internet browser tab or on my phone on the go. I also like the dashboard, which shows how you are doing on your daily/weekly/monthly/yearly billing goals. Customer support has always been great, and they helped us implement Clio to make it a quick and easy integration into our law firm's system."
2. MyCase: Advanced Scheduling and Court Calendaring for Legal Professionals
MyCase is a strong competitor to Clio since it's also a law firm's case management program. You likely don't need both Clio and MyCase, so if you need comprehensive practice management software, choose one or the other.
Some of the most important calendar functions with MyCase include:
- A user-friendly interface for appointment scheduling and case linkage
- Automated court calendaring to prevent missed deadlines.
- Collaboration tools for team scheduling and client communication
- Ability to match various court rules to assign deadlines for you
One user says it's a fairly good solution for practice management, but there are some missing integrations that mean it's not a full home run. They shared, "MyCase is a complete practice management system. From lead tracking to document management, everything you need to run your practice successfully is at your fingertips. As a solo attorney, MyCase saves me an incredible amount of time and allows me to leverage technology to handle more cases easily. The integrations with Gmail and Google are very efficient. The only real dislike I have is that I wish there was better integration with Apple's ecosystem in terms of Calendar, Reminders, Mail, etc."
3. PracticePanther: Simplifying Legal Scheduling with Smart Calendar Solutions
PracticePanther is another popular software that includes multiple features beyond just calendaring. It's very highly reviewed because it's easy to learn and train your entire team on and has many of the same features offered in other tools.
Some of their features include:
- Rule-based calendaring features for automatic deadline tracking
- Integration with Google Calendar and Outlook for centralized scheduling
- Delegate and reassign tasks to others to clear up your calendar
- Build workflows from your client meetings to ensure tasks transfer over
User Gaurav B. shares, "PracticePanther is an all-in-one solution that offers a wide range of features that can automate and simplify the management of a law firm. I appreciate how easy it is to navigate the interface and track time spent on different tasks. The software has been designed to cater to the needs of lawyers, which is evident in the comprehensive case management tools that help to keep track of client cases and related documents. There are some things I dislike about PracticePanther. The documentation could be written more clearly and user-friendly for new customers. There have also been some issues with the timekeeper reporting, as it only reflects real-time and not original or markdown amounts."
4. Microsoft Outlook with LawToolBox: A Powerful Duo for Legal Deadline Management
If you don't need a new plan for law practice management software, you might not want to overwhelm yourself or your team by taking on that learning curve. Instead, you may be able to use Microsoft Outlook with LawToolBox to keep track of deadlines.
Some of the best features available with this combination include:
- View and download reports
- Add, update, or delete case-specific deadlines
- Calculate custom deadlines with rule sets or use general matters
- Update other staff member calendars as users or deadlines change
- Track the history of changes
- Auto-docket deadlines as each PACER email arrives
If you're already using Outlook, this is a power-up that works well for streamlining and keeping track of workloads.
Some users note that it malfunctioned more often than expected, leaving for a frustrating experience that didn't actually save time.
As one person said, "For lawyers who are involved in litigation, a deadline calculator does more than help you sleep at night. It also helps you avoid malpractice and, in many cases, save on the cost of your malpractice premium…. With its per-case pricing, cloud accessibility, and tight integration with Outlook, LawToolBox is worth investigating. The company offers a free trial, or you can view some of its video tutorials to get a better sense of how it works. Not as user-friendly or intuitive as some other case management applications."
5. Legal Files: Comprehensive Calendaring for Law Firms and Legal Departments
LegalFiles is another tool on the market that might work for keeping track of deadlines. Some of the best features include:
- File organization
- Create efficient workflows for similar projects
- Integrates easily with Outlook and Gmail
- Ability to see calendars by user, matter, department, practice area, or event
This could be a good solution for you, but be aware that users report that it's not Mac-compatible.
As one person shared, "The ease of organizing documents, phone calls, and notes in Legal Files makes this an excellent case management program. It's also highly customizable, so you can add different document types and case statuses unique to your organization. Being able to drag and drop documents into using a convenient desktop app is also nice. As a supervisor, it's easy to keep tabs on what the attorneys and advocates I supervise are doing by going into their files to see their most recent case updates through the chronologically organized "communications and activities" function. It's not Mac compatible, so I have to drag my work laptop home when it would be nice to connect to the remote server and use my home computer for quick projects. If you've got voluminous discovery in a case, it's not the best to use for discovery management-- for complex cases, we actually use a different program so that we can search/sort voluminous discovery easier."
Best Practices in Legal Calendaring
The tool is just the beginning: you also need a plan for your entire team to get on the same page about why you're using the tool and how best to do that. To get the most out of whatever tool you use, follow these tips:
- Offer training to the whole team so everyone uses it the same way
- Assign roles so everyone understands their own tasks.
- Connect automation software immediately to reduce the chance of human error
- Double-check every so often that the program is working
- Build in workflows to reduce repetitive work
- Look at reports to ensure everyone is using the tool properly and saving time
Making an Informed Decision
To take on more cases and grow your firm without fear of missing client communication or key deadlines, you need a legal calendar tool. Make an informed decision by first considering whether you need a full suite program that offers other things like document automation or case management or whether you just need something that connects easily to Google or Outlook.
Take into account your firm size, specific needs, and willingness/ability of your team to learn something new. Don't forget to read reviews as this can be telling about how it worked for other firms and their experience with customer service. You might have to invest time upfront to get a lot out of legal calendaring down the road, but it will be well worth it.