While working as a legal assistant or paralegal, you must have noticed that most of your jobs now involve technology. More than ever before, smartphones, computer systems, and legal tools are increasingly becoming essential for you these days to deliver excellent paralegal services.
There are software tools for everything you do, and you need not master all of them or become a techie paralegal. However, you need to be familiar with some of the legal tech tools most commonly used across the industry to enhance your expertise, skills and increase your value in the field.
The following are various software tools relevant to your day-to-day work. Let’s read about them in brief.
1.Legal Research Software
- LexisNexis
LexisNexis is not like many other conventional applications that you need to install on your computer. In contrast, it is cloud-based research software, helping you mine case law and additional relevant information. If you learn enough about utilizing this tool, you can speed up your work searching terms and tracking citations through the massive legal database it offers.
- Westlaw Edge
Westlaw Edge is one of the most intelligent legal research platforms. Its new version offers a complete suite, including AI-driven research tools, attorney-edited annotations from more than 100 previous years. It providers legal professionals with the power to deliver outstanding results to clients more accurately and in a timely manner.
- Fastcase
Fastcase is one of the leading, next-generation legal research services, offering a detailed national law library and robust searching, sorting, and data visualization tools. It is considered best for; Attorneys, Paralegals, Legal clerical staff.
- UniCourt
UniCourt is a Legal Data as a Service (LDaaS) software offering a single platform for case management, research, tracking, and analytics. It integrates both state and federal court data into one cloud-based application while automating data entry to improve docket management and workflow.
2.Electronic Discovery Software
- Sightline
Consoilio’s eDiscovery solution – Sightline offers advanced data exploration, complete document review, and analytics-powered investigation tools, assisting legal teams in finding the most appropriate case data and document.
Its easy-to-navigate interface helps legal professionals remove unnecessary documents, search for essential case information, and effortlessly faster the document review process.
- Relativity
Relativity is a secure and comprehensive SaaS platform offering users to discover the truth, organize the information, and act on it. The software is used to manage large-size data sets, identify crucial information during investigations, litigation, and compliance operations.It is best for litigation support providers, counsel (both in-house and outside), infosec professionals, etc.
- Concordance
Concordance, by LexisNexis, helps users to identify case-critical information, which can further be easily organized and thoroughly analyzed using this excellent software. It also allows you to collaborate and share information across your organization or around the world.
- Logikcull
Logikcull, a cloud-based software, is an easy-to-use platform that automates the electronic discovery process from end to end. It offers unlimited users, data storage, processing, and production. Once you upload documents to Logikcull, all files get scanned, filtered, and organized automatically, enabling you to build a database with just a few clicks.
- Casepoint
Casepoint allows lawyers, law firms, and corporate legal departments to track, organize, and manage their discovery data systematically, helping them significantly reduce the time and costs they usually spend for eDiscovery.
3.Legal Practice & Case Management Software
- PracticePanther
PracticePanther is an intuitive and user-friendly online law practice management software, offering several features such as;
- Calendering
- Time tracking
- Billing
- Payment processing
- Expense management
Using this tool, you can bill hourly, fixed-rate, track account balances, and integrate it with other necessary case management software.
- Clio
Clio offers everything a lawyer needs to run a legal practice effectively. It comes with excellent tools for keeping records of and managing clients, documents, cases, data, bills, schedules, reports, and financial accounts. Considered as the end-to-end management tool, it assists legal professionals through its efficient features.
- Rocket Matter
Rocket Matter, introduced in 2007, is one of the pioneering, cloud-based law practice management software. It is best for law firms that are planning to go digital and increase transparency in workflow and accounting. It can be easily integrated with third-party apps and services, including cloud storage platforms such as Box and Dropbox.
- MyCase
MyCase is another excellent cloud-based legal practice management software specially built for small to medium-sized law firms. It enables users to manage cases, track time, communicate with clients, and automate billing. It is an all-in-one software offering various impressive features.
4. Time Management Software
- TimeSolv
TimeSolv is a user-friendly application that allows legal professionals to streamline their workflow by keeping accurate track of processes. Users can track time and work-associated costs using this highly-customizable platform. Being a comprehensive legal tool, it can be integrated with both traditional and the latest software tools in Windows, macOS, Andriod, and iOS.
- Evernote
Evernote allows you to create unlimited to-do lists, take pictures of documents, and clip blogs and articles to read later. You can access these notes whenever you want and from wherever you are. You can also easily search for texts, documents, and images and, in fact, collaborate with co-workers and clients seamlessly using group notebooks.
- Trello
Trello provides legal professionals with everything they require to organize their projects and meet deadlines associated with the same. You can simply create lists from individual cards; for instance, you can open a card, add comments, attach files, create checklists, add helpful labels and due dates, and much more. It also allows you to create groups to collaborate and keep your entire team on the same page.
- Westlaw Legal Calendaring
Westlaw Legal Calendaring is one of the best software tools for docketing on the market today. Based on the latest court rules, it can automatically update your schedule, deadlines, and important dates to your Outlook calendar. It is one of the most popular features of this fantastic time management software.
5. Document Management Software
- Microsoft Office
Most lawyers and almost all legal professionals across the world must have used Microsoft Office, especially Word and Excell, for various purposes. Even today also, paralegals spend a lot of their time using these tools for document and records management.
- Slack
Although Slack is not a must-know tool for legal professionals, it can play an important role when it comes to sharing and managing documents. You can collaborate with your team members and share information in real-time using Slack. Law firms are increasingly adopting it for internal as well as external communication and file sharing.
- Adobe Acrobat
Producing, editing, and protecting PDF format documents is a common part of document management in law firms and other legal practices. Thus, having the skills to utilize Acrobat efficiently can help make your work easier and bring professionalism.
- JurisDOC
JurisDOC is among the most popular software used for document management. It makes it easier for legal professionals to build, organize, and share documents, forms, and other files in different formats. It specializes in automatically creating and organizing legal documents.
The Bottom Line
The marketplace for legal tech offers many other software tools for everyone working in the legal sector. However, you might want to take your time to determine the best suitable for your practice. Yes, it is crucial; you need to compare their features in order to assess their value for your law firm or office. Using such tools (especially the ones best for your work) can help you save time and costs while improving your work efficiency, performance, and productivity, leading to your legal business growth.
