Attorney Resources

Gearing Up for Success

While LegalMatch provides its Member Lawyers the best tools, training, and support for finding and managing cases, there are other external resources that can further maximize your firm’s operations and overall productivity. Most times in any endeavor or profession, choosing the right kind of help or support spells the difference between success and stasis.

Below is a curated list of resources that we have found useful, including those recommended and used by our top performing Member Attorneys. The resources cover a wide range of areas and aspects of a firm’s operations, from virtual assistant services to communication tools and even logo designs.

Virtual Assistant Services

Law offices are replete with minor and repetitive tasks that can really slow down operations if handled by lawyers themselves. This includes scheduling appointments, answering phone calls and emails, transcribing meeting notes, and so on. This is all the more burdensome for solo lawyers, who could find themselves swamped taking care of these jobs and seriously bog down their practice.

Every minute spent on these tasks can cost lawyers money and potential clients. As such, virtual assistants are extremely useful for those who need a cost-effective tool to delegate a practice’s smaller yet essential responsibilities, so they could focus on the major tasks such as handling cases and screening clients.

Utilizing virtual assistants allows you to pay only for your practice’s specific needs. By selectively paying for individual tasks instead of hourly wages for in-office employees, you’ll be able to save money and become much more efficient.

Here are some Virtual Assistant Services with good reviews:

1. Lawfecta (www.lawfecta.com) is a California-based company offering the following services to law firms nationwide:
   1. Virtual Paralegal (legal research, law and motion drafting, and general support)
   2. Virtual Legal Secretary (e-filing, case management, drafting correspondence, other secretarial duties)
   3. Virtual Assistant (scheduling and other administrative tasks)
2. Equivity (www.equivityva.com) is a California-based company offering the following services to law firms nationwide:
   1. Virtual Administrative Assistant (bookkeeping, proofreading, HR administration, and general administrative support)
   2. Virtual Marketing Assistants (blog writing, lead generation, social media marketing, and other digital marketing tasks)
   3. Virtual Marketing Strategist (comprehensive online marketing strategy planning and support)
   4. Virtual Paralegals and Legal Secretaries
3. Virtual Gal Friday (www.virtualgalfriday.com) is a Texas-based company providing Virtual Assistant services to attorneys, business owners, and medical professionals, and also offer Virtual Paralegal services to legal practitioners nationwide.

Although many virtual assistant services include call answering, some law firms and attorneys might need a more focused support in that aspect. Because good client communication is the backbone of any good practice, check out this list of reputable Call Answering Services:

1. Alert Communications (www.alertcommunications.com) is a California-based company specializing in serving the legal industry through call services such as:
   1. Call Services (message-taking, call forwarding, appointment scheduling and more)
   2. Legal Intake Services (screening and verifying of potential new clients)
   3. Retainer & Contract Services (lead tracking, follow-ups, and retrieval of unsigned contracts)
   4. Mass Tort / Class Action Services (responding to and capturing high-volume leads)
2. Lex Reception (www.lexreception.com) is a Legal Reception company offering the following services:
   1. Legal Intake Services
   2. Legal Answering Services (answer client calls, call transferring, information gathering)
   3. Virtual Receptionists for Attorneys (message-taking, outbound calling, appointment scheduling, CRM integration, 24/7 call answering)
   4. Legal Outbound Calling (timely voicemail, email, web form submission responses)
3. RingSavvy (www.ringsavvy.com) is a nationwide phone answering service covering multiple industries including legal practices, and offers the following services:
   1. Answering Services
   2. Virtual Receptionists

Paralegal Services Job Posting

For lawyers and law firms who are in need an in-office paralegal, there are various websites you can use to post job openings for your firm or practice:

1. Bar Association Career Center (jobs.americanbar.org) is the American Bar Association’s (ABA) job board utilized by almost 400,000 ABA members. This job search online platform features the greatest number of available legal jobs from all around the country.
2. National Federation of Paralegal Associations (NFPA) Career Center (p.nat.fed.associationcareernetwork.com) is the job posting domain of the NFPA which allows lawyers and law firms to post job openings for paralegals. It offers a resume review, where site visitors may upload their resumes and get tips on how to improve them.
3. Get Paralegal Jobs (www.getparalegaljobs.com) is a job site for law firms and lawyers who are looking to paralegals to post job postings. Functioning like a search tool, it allows users to input keywords and their location to get a list of paralegal job ads.

Online Legal Billing

Billing and collections are among the most essential administrative tasks in a private firm/practice. The following tools are geared towards make billing for legal services simpler and more convenient for both clients and the firm:

1. LawPay (www.lawpay.com) offers its decade-long experience in processing online payments via a secure and user-friendly application. This has been the most recommended by LegalMatch’s Member Attorneys for both solo practitioners and large firms alike.
2. TimeSolv Legal Billing (www.timesolv.com) is a legal billing and management service that has received high praise and good reviews. Aside from software that take care of time tracking, invoicing, payments among others, it also offers outsourced billing services.
3. Clio (www.clio.com) is an award-winning legal software that also includes an invoicing, billing, and payment feature on top of its case management, document management, contact management, and accounting features.

Video Conferencing

For online legal consultations, it’s imperative to have a simple, convenient, and reliable video conferencing tool. This can go a long way towards attracting new clients and keeping old ones, as the majority of population spends more time online and use it as the main channel for communication. As such, your firm may want to consider checking the following video conferencing software/platforms:

1. Legaler (www.legaler.com) is a video conferencing platform specifically designed for legal practice. It allows lawyers and law firms to schedule, host, and even archive their online meetings. It features audio and video encryption to ensure that video meetings with clients or partners are safe, and offers military-grade protected servers for storing archived videos.
2. Teleport Video (www.lexreception.com/services/teleport) prides itself on its user-friendly one-click browser-based video meeting platform specifically for attorneys and their clients. A free demo is available for prospective customers.
3. Zoom (www.zoom.us) is one of the most popular video conferencing apps today across various industries and users around the world.

Legal Research and Analytics Tools

Legal research is a crucial and indispensable tool for attorneys and law firms, regardless of their practice areas. Legal research is a requisite for checking and verifying legal precedents as well finding answers to various legal questions.

1. Casetext (www.casetext.com) is an online tool for legal professionals that make legal research and writing quick and easy. What makes Casetext different from the others on this list is its Compose feature, which helps users in the actual drafting of legal briefs.
2. Fastcase (www.fastcase.com) offers a wide range of legal technology that aim to attract more clients and win cases. The software products provide information on expert treatises, legal news, docket analytics, and more. While they do offer a 7-day trial option, pricing for multi-user accounts range from $65 to $95 on their appellate and premium monthly plans.
3. CourtListener (www.courtlistener.com) by nonprofit Free Law Project is a free legal research site that contains millions of legal opinions from federal and state courts. It functions much like a search engine where visitors are able to input case names, topics or citations covering 406 jurisdictions. In response to keywords, a list of links to opinions is displayed, showing the filing dates, status, docket numbers and citations.
4. Context by LexisNexis (www.lexisnexis.com/en-us/products/context.page) is a litigation analytics tool that gives lawyers insight into how judges have ruled cases, their track records and patterns. It also features attorney analytics, court analytics, expert witness analytics to help you strategically plan and build your case to get the most favorable outcome. It offers a 7-day free trial as well as free access to law school faculty and students.

These are some of the best tools that could build up and support your practice. We will update the list from time to time when we discover new resources so feel free to bookmark this page for easy reference.