3 Must-Have Features of Legal Calendaring Software

Deadlines are an inescapable part of life in the business world. But for lawyers, a missed deadline can have major implications, even resulting in the outright dismissal of a client’s case. This makes it even more important for lawyers to stay on top of the tasks and deadlines assigned to them.

Before online legal calendars were available, lawyers were forced to calculate deadlines manually—a time-consuming process that could lead to costly errors and malpractice. However, with the advent of online calendars, lawyers no longer need to rely on inefficient, paper-based calendaring systems.

Instead, modern law firms can depend on online legal calendaring tools to manage deadlines and provide oversight features and shared calendar access to everyone in their firm. This enables the entire firm to be on the same page and crucial tasks are never forgotten.

Is your firm still using outdated or clunky legal calendaring? If so, you’re missing out on these three key benefits of online legal calendar systems:

Automate Tasks and Never Miss a Deadline

Manually calculating and calendaring important legal deadlines is a tedious and error-prone process. Instead, automating the process of creating and tracking deadlines, will save your firm time, increase efficiency, and provide you with peace of mind. When your deadlines are automatically and accurately calendared, it reduces your mental load and lets you focus on practicing law, rather than administrative tasks.

One of the easiest ways to automate your tasks and deadlines is to use practice management software. The days of using old school paper tickler systems will be long gone, replaced by a convenient and efficient system that makes it easy to track court and statutory deadlines. By calendaring important dates at the start of each matter, you’ll rest easy knowing that you’ll never lose track of tasks and important deadlines.

Increased Insight into Law Firm Activities

Running a law firm is no small feat. You’re tasked with tracking deadlines, overseeing attorney and staff performance, ensuring client satisfaction, and much, much more. An online legal calendaring system streamlines this process by providing visibility into your law firm at a micro level, ensuring your firm is running smoothly at all times.

Gone are the days of trying to figure out who’s handling a particular court appearance or when someone will be back in the office. When your firm’s daily activities are easily accessible via online calendaring tools, you’ll have a better understanding of the daily activities of lawyers in your firm and will always know what to expect each day.

Rules-based Calendaring 

Before the advent of online legal calendaring software, case deadlines were tracked manually on paper, which was a complicated and unreliable process. Fortunately, rules-based calendaring offers an updated, superior way to track court deadlines.

This useful software automatically applies the court rules and statutory deadlines of specific jurisdictions to the due dates of a particular matter at the start of a case. There’s no need for manual entry of each and every deadline for a litigation matter. Instead, rules-based calendaring systems do this for you and will likewise automatically recalculate deadlines if, and when, key due dates change.

Law as a practice doesn’t have much room for human error. Legal calendaring software will help you remove it from the equation and in turn, protect your firm from the risks of malpractice that can result from erroneous or missed deadlines.

If your firm isn’t already using legal calendaring software with these features, look no further. Learn more about different ways to automate your law firm and streamline workflows by downloading this free guide today: “Tips for Automating Your Law Practice.”