5 Best Document Management Software for Law Firms & Solo Attorneys

Inefficient document management is very costly.

For instance, without proper paper filing organization measures, law firms & solo attorneys can easily misplace case documents.

Thereafter, you’ll waste a lot of time manually searching for the file or recreating it. A problem that you can avoid if you use the best document management software to make your documents searchable.

Ultimately, with poor file management, there are constant distractions from billable work and this lowers your profit margins.

In fact, lawyers lose up to 6 hours weekly to inefficient document management as per a study by Thomson Reuters. This translates to over $9,071 in annual revenue loss.

If you are to streamline document management, and channel focus toward more revenue-driving tasks, you need a good document management system.

In this article, I’ll take you through the best legal document management software for law firms & solo attorneys that will help you elevate your efficiency, productivity, and profits.

Quick summary:

1. FileCenter – Best for legal workflows that run on Windows.

2. LexWorkplace – Best for document and email management.

3. NetDocuments – Best for managing case files remotely.

4. Clio – Best for niche-specific law firms & solo attorneys.

5. PracticePanther – Best for keeping clients in the loop.

Let’s get started.

How to Choose a Legal Document Management Software

a) Consider cloud integration features

For solo attorneys, I highly recommend software that can integrate with popular cloud services to give you cloud access to data from any location.

In fact, cloud document storage features are non-negotiable factors of how to choose a legal document management software. That’s because they will help eliminate productivity gaps you experience when running out-of-office errands.

b) Prioritize PDF conversion capabilities

PDF conversion and editing is a common feature with the best legal document management software as they help you to work seamlessly with different file formats.

For legal workflows, this PDF conversion feature will help you secure your documents via password protection, making it a vital criterion when selecting a legal document management software for preserving case integrity.

c) Examine software search filters

Additionally, one of the top tips for choosing a legal document management software is to consider comprehensive search abilities that further ease case data retrieval

In particular, you’ll learn how to search for documents faster with content search functionalities that consider both the file name and its content as well. Overall, this will help lower your case preparation times.

d) Assess ease of use

Another important consideration to keep in mind is whether the tool is easy to install, learn, and use. This will prevent you from switching platforms midway.

When it comes to choosing a legal document management software, ease of learning and use are critical as they will lower your workflow’s downtime during onboarding while realizing excellent ROI.

e) Consider cost factors

Finally, when figuring out how to choose a software for managing your legal documents, I also highly recommend that you prioritize those that offer one-time payment plans.

That’s because the best legal document management software should offer affordability for the long haul, which you may not get with a tool that solely offers monthly subscription plans.

1. FileCenter

FileCenter helps you build a digital filing system with ease.

Via OCR scanning technology, you can digitize all your paper-based documents into electronic filing cabinets, where you group case files by client name, document year, and other criteria.

This eases data probing, which makes you more productive and efficient as a law firm or solo attorney.

Moreover, by reducing your dependence on paper, FileCenter achieves huge cost-saving benefits of at least $7,508 annually.

Be sure to take a look at the paper savings calculator to learn how much you stand to save.

Essentially, these massive savings arise from fewer paper, labor, and storage expenses.

It gets even better as you can also use FileCenter as a PDF converter, enabling you to create PDF files and add comments, annotations, and e-signatures. So you can get clients to sign documents remotely and redact sensitive data to protect your cases.

Best features:

In-depth content searching to help you probe case files quickly, thereby ensuring you spend more time on billable work to improve your profit margins.
Integration options with popular cloud services and Windows Remote Access to help you juggle multiple case files and become productive on the go.
Digital fax and email services help you avoid mailing physical documents, thereby making your law firm even more cost-efficient.

Pricing:

Pricing starts at $5/user per month.

However, FileCenter doesn’t support Mac and therefore locks out legal workflows that run on this operating system. That said, it’s great for Windows-based workflows as it offers interoperability with Windows apps to turbocharge your productivity.

2. LexWorkplace

LexWorkplace offers both document and email management.

As a document management tool, you can use LexWorkplace to implement matter-centric organization for your digital case files, including documents, videos, audio, and more. This improves efficiency and speeds up case progress.

Consequently, this makes it the best legal document management software for law firms & solo attorneys struggling with both aspects.

By allowing you to manage and retrieve data better, LexiWorkplace enables you to channel more focus on critical aspects of building a winning case.

The tool is also a big help as an email attachment management software as well.

In particular, you can use it to efficiently organize and search email attachments by matter, without having to download the actual files themselves.

Thanks to this feature, you don’t have to store bulky email attachments on your local servers. Therefore, you’ll spend less on enterprise storage fees while you also reduce business risk.

Best features:

Simple yet powerful drag-and-drop document management interface that’s easy to learn and therefore helps you hit the ground running.
Matter-centric email organization that helps you to avoid save deduplication while making email attachments searchable to boost your productivity.
Microsoft Office integration options with Excel, Word, PowerPoint, and Outlook, which minimizes manual data entry to further elevate your output.

Pricing:

Pricing starts at $395 per month.

Ultimately, I recommend LexWorkplace if you’re a law firm or solo attorney who’s keen to shore up document and email management. However, LexWorkplace offers higher subscription fees than other solutions, making it quite expensive to maintain.

3. NetDocuments

NetDocuments offers intelligent document management.

Its standout feature is the AI-driven document management automation. This allows you to create custom templates that ease document creation so that you don’t have to start from scratch each time you want to create a new electronic file.

With data tables, you can even edit and file drafting frameworks.

In doing so, NetDocuments frees up your time to enable you to serve even more clients simultaneously and tackle higher-value work.

Moreover, just like FileCenter, you get cloud-based document management with popular cloud services.

This gives you 24/7 access to up-to-date document versions regardless of your location.

Besides the freedom to work on cases in court, at home, or on the move, this feature also enables you to easily log the time you spend working on documents to ease your billing and invoicing processes and raise revenue.

Best features:

More than 150 API integrations to avoid switching between different applications, thereby improving your focus and, by extension, case turnaround times.
Advanced security and classification features, which help you to lower the risk of both malicious and accidental case data leaks and breaches.
No code document management automation which delivers faster document creation & organization without you needing to learn new skills.

Pricing:

Contact NetDocuments for pricing.

While I find that this is the best legal document management software if you’re a law firm or solo attorney keen on streamlining multitasking, the implementation can be challenging due to the lack of preprogrammed workspaces.

4. Clio

Clio offers niche-specific software solutions for law firms.

This makes Clio the best legal document management software if you desire a niche-specific tool that matches the specific needs of your particular area of practice, be that administrative law, civil litigation, family law, or criminal law, among others.

Overall, with slightly different feature iterations, you can configure Clio to fit your specialty and accelerate specific firm functions.

Thanks to these niche-specific modules, you can shed features that you don’t need, which smoothens the learning curve.

What’s more, Clio offers a full-text search feature with advanced sort and filter features, which place data at your fingertips so you can meet your case deadlines with ease.

Additionally, Clio also provides auto-fill capabilities.

These functionalities allow you to automatically fill out court forms to reduce the time you spend on routine legal drafting and other iterative tasks.

Best features:

Electronic document signatures which save you from having to physically mail and scan documents, thereby making your workflow more efficient.
Clio Drive that connects your file management system to the cloud, thereby improving the accessibility of your data and enhancing collaboration.
Physical document scanning that enables you to transition to a completely paperless workflow that’s more eco-friendly and cost-effective.

Pricing:

Pricing starts at $39/user per month.

Clio offers great value for money since you get an overall legal case management tool. While the document management features are great, some of the other features of practice management like invoicing and billing can be a bit faulty sometimes.

5. PracticePanther

PracticePanther helps you to get more done in less time.

This is made possible by the software’s extensive tracking functionalities, which allow you to comprehensively monitor case documents and client details.

Consequently, you can easily ensure important documents are filed accurately and on time to eliminate delays from missed submissions, and therefore speed up your case progress.

As with FileCenter, PracticePanther also offers a secure client portal that allows you to securely and remotely exchange files with clients to increase productivity.

Due to these features, I find that PracticePanther is the best legal document management software for law firms & solo attorneys keen on improving client interactions.

And there’s more still.

With PracticePanther’s robust reporting and tracking features, you can quickly generate retainer agreements, contracts, and other documents to reduce the possibility of human error and the size of your workload.

Best features:

Custom tags for document organization to help you to quickly locate documents, thereby lowering the time that you spend performing data retrieval.
Centralized data and client portal which allows you to securely and quickly exchange information with clients and other important case parties.
Bulk sending and tracking of documents for e-signatures, so you can precisely identify and sort out sources of delays across a document’s journey.

Pricing:

Pricing starts at $49/user per month.

Notably, PracticePather is always rolling out new features. While that means even more ROI for you, I find that it also increases the complexity of the software over time, necessitating the need for constant re-learning.

Conclusion

For law firms & solo attorneys, time is money.

If you spend too much of it handling administrative tasks like document management other aspects of running your law firm, such as client onboarding, suffer.

When that happens, this leads to productivity and revenue drops.

In fact, lawyers spend 48% of their time on document management and other administrative tasks, according to Clio’s Legal Trends Report. This is a lot of time wasted on tasks that don’t directly drive your revenue.

But there’s a silver lining.

You can make every second count by leveraging the best legal document management software to ease the burden of administrative tasks.

In particular, I recommend FileCenter for Windows users. Meanwhile, LexWorkplace is ideal for both document and email management while NetDocuments will help you manage multiple clients better.

For a closer perspective, schedule your free FileCenter trial to find out just how much productivity and cost savings you stand to gain.

FAQ Section

What is a legal document management software?

It refers to technology that helps legal professionals digitally manage their documents. Some of them further enable version control and restricted access to improve security.

Additionally, with OCR document scanning capabilities, a few of these tools enable you to even digitize all your physical documents into easily searchable & editable digital files like PDFs.

What are the benefits of legal document management software?

With these tools, you can implement document management on the go to facilitate remote access. This ensures your work doesn’t stall during out-of-office errands.

Moreover, some other document scanning advantages that you get with the best legal document management software include significantly fewer expenses on resources like paper and labor.

How much is a legal document management system?

In terms of the costs of your legal document management software, pricing plans typically begin at just $5/user per month.

However, there are other custom pricing plans available as well, which also include the possibility of paying a one-time fee, although this is only available with a few select vendors like FileCenter.

Why is FileCenter the best legal document management software?

For one, unlike most others, FileCenter offers you a one-time payment plan to bolster your practice’s profitability by eliminating annual recurring costs.

But there are other reasons for choosing FileCenter, such as its ease of use and installation, its excellent compatibility with Windows and Cloud apps, and its reliable software support.

Will I need to buy any additional hardware for the software?

Most of the time, no. After you install your legal document management software, you can manage your case files via an application on your computer.

However, in case you need to properly digitize documents, you may need to purchase an OCR scanner. Fortunately, most vendors already have these devices available on their websites.