Everything You Need to Know About Legal Calendaring Software

Running a busy yet successful law firm means staying on top of all the moving pieces no matter your firm’s size. And the more attorneys and staff you add to the mix, the more complicated things become. Keeping track of everyone’s daily schedules and assignments can become a task in and of itself. Add to that the stress of never missing a court deadline or neglecting client matters⁠—the information overload can feel quite overwhelming.

Sound familiar? If so, then you’re probably not using the right legal calendaring software. While information overload is a common problem faced by lawyers, the good news is it’s a problem easily solved by law firm calendaring software with built-in tools designed to provide you with the information you need with just the click of a button.

By implementing the right calendaring software for attorneys, tracking the ins and outs of the daily activities occurring at your law firm will become much easier than you’ve imagined. To run an efficient and streamlined law firm, all you need is legal calendaring software with features that are best suited for you and your firm.

Introducing “Legal Calendaring Software”

Before online legal docket software was available, lawyers were forced to calculate deadlines manually using a tickler system in their firm—a time-consuming process that could lead to costly errors and malpractice. However, with the advent of online calendars and docketing software, lawyers no longer need to rely on inefficient, paper-based tickler systems for their firm’s litigation calendar.

21st-century lawyers have better options, and there are steps you can take to streamline law firm calendaring and oversight, thus ensuring all necessary work gets done in a timely fashion. Modern law firms can depend on online tickler software 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 so that crucial tasks are never forgotten.

What Does Legal Calendaring Mean?

Calendar management tools are essential for law firms to have in place. For busy lawyers, it’s important to use docket management software, which makes it possible to access current and potential clients’ information and manage your firm’s calendar no matter where you’re working from. With these functionalities in the cloud, you’re able to ensure that everyone in your firm is on the same page when it comes to managing your current cases and your firm’s relationships with its clients and potential clients.

Because implementing law office calendar software is so critical, it’s no surprise that according to the data from a recent ABA Legal Technology Survey Report, a high percentage of lawyers reported that their firms were using legal calendaring software for their firms. Overall, a vast majority of firms (93%) had calendaring software available for lawyers, with larger firms with 100+ lawyers in the lead at 97%, firms with 2-9 lawyers and 10-49 lawyers, both at 95% each, and solo firm attorneys at 86%.

Is your firm in the minority and still using outdated or clunky law office calendar software? If so, you’re taking on far too much risk and missing out on the many key benefits of legal calendaring software.

Benefits of Legal Calendaring Software

As we all know, deadlines are an inescapable part of life in the business world. But for lawyers, a missed deadline can often have major implications. You wouldn’t want your neglect to cost your client an outright dismissal! This is why it’s all the more important for lawyers to stay abreast of their tasks and calendared court deadlines. This can only be achieved by using a reliable docketing system in your firm.

If the law office calendaring software that your firm uses fails to provide in-depth insight into your firm’s daily activities, then you’re likely wasting a lot of time trying to keep up with the comings and goings of your firm’s attorneys and potentially making uninformed management decisions. In other words, it’s time for an upgrade to modern legal calendar software that provides the tools needed to remain up to date with your law firm’s deadlines and daily activities.

Advantages of Using a Centralized Law Firm Calendar

With a centralized law firm docketing system, it’s easier than ever to keep your clients in the loop. One of the best ways to do so is by using online client portals. Not only are encrypted online portals one of the most secure ways to share confidential information with clients, but they also provide a host of other benefits to your clients.

24/7 access to law firm calendaring information

Legal clients deserve to know what’s going on with their cases, and that’s where legal calendaring software comes in. When your law firm’s legal docketing software makes it easy for you to share calendar dates with your clients using secure client portals, your clients can log in from any internet-enabled device and view whatever you choose to give them access to, including court dates and task deadlines. Instead of playing phone tag or spiraling into an unending email chain, your clients can log in at any time, day or night, and instantly obtain the information they need. No more unanswered questions or missing information. Everything is securely stored and accessible in one convenient, online location.

Of course, centralized legal calendaring software doesn’t just benefit your clients; it makes your entire firm more efficient. When everyone in your firm has streamlined access to all calendaring information, you can ensure that all deadlines are met and all tasks are completed on time.

Legal Calendaring-Related Risks and How to Avoid Them

Manually calculating and calendaring important legal deadlines is a tedious and error-prone process. Instead, automating the workflow of creating and tracking deadlines with tickler software 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 workload and lets you focus on practicing law rather than implementing administrative tasks.

One of the easiest ways to automate your tasks and deadlines is to use calendaring software for law firms. The days of using old school paper tickler systems are 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 task due dates, court appearances, or important deadlines.

Top Features to Look for in Calendaring Software

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

Law firms no longer need to struggle 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.

Automated tasks and due dates

Calendaring software is the best way to track due dates for the work being done in your law firm. Using this software, you can easily be on top of tasks, legal deadlines, and streamline your firm’s processes. When your firm adopts legal calendaring software with built-in workflow automation features, you’ll be able to bid adieu to age-old, manual processes of calendaring. Instead, you’ll be able to create customized, automated workflows at the start of every case. With these workflows, you can then easily assign tasks to your assistants and track their progress.

Workflows can even be created to track statutory and court deadlines by automating client intake so that task templates are automatically created for important dates that relate to specific types of cases or trials. By customizing todos at the start of each matter, you’ll never lose track of important tasks or deadlines.

Built-in reminders

If your firm isn’t already using legal calendaring software with built-in reminder features, you’re at the risk of missing deadlines and appointments, which can result in lost time and money. Law office calendar software with built-in reminder features ensures that everyone is on the same page by allowing lawyers to send task and event reminders to coworkers and clients using a variety of formats.

For example, by using staff tasks and events reminders, missed deadlines and meetings will become a thing of the past. Using this feature, which is built into law firm calendar software, lawyers can easily assign tasks and event reminders to other law firm members as well.

The same applies to clients, helping lawyers obtain timely information from their clients. That’s why legal calendaring is important to paralegals and other administrative staff in law firms.

Finally, SMS invoices and event reminders are also time-saving legal calendaring software functionality. These features expand the client communication methods available to lawyers, making it easier than ever to communicate with clients. Using SMS reminders, lawyers can conveniently send automatic reminders via text message, ensuring that court dates aren’t missed.

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 docketing 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.

The bottom line: law practice doesn’t have much room for human error which is where legal case management software can help with calendaring as well as with financials. Legal calendaring and docketing software will help you remove errors from the equation and, in turn, protect your firm from the risks of malpractice that can result from erroneous or missed deadlines.

FAQ

1. How easy is it to use MyCase legal calendaring software?

MyCase legal calendaring software is intuitive and user-friendly. Its easy-to-use interface ensures that all members of your firm will be able to take full advantage of its many time-saving features.

2. Which privacy and security features does MyCase calendaring software provide?

MyCase is committed to keeping your law firm’s legal calendaring data safe, both when sending and storing your data. MyCase’s 128-bit SSL encryption (the same level of encryption used by banks online) provides a secure connection when sending and receiving data. Additionally, all stored data is encrypted with 256-bit AES encryption.

3. Does MyCase legal calendaring software provide court rules? Which jurisdictions are covered?

Yes, MyCase offers an integration that includes a comprehensive database of over 1,800 court rules across all 50 states. This integration eliminates the tedium of manually entering or updating relevant court dates and deadlines pertaining to your cases. And with human error out of the equation, your firm is protected from risks of malpractice that result from erroneous or missed deadlines.

4. How much does MyCase legal calendaring software cost?

The legal calendaring features are included in your firm’s MyCase subscription. You can learn about MyCase pricing here.

5. Is there a limit to the number of users or law firm matters that MyCase calendaring software can accommodate?

There is no limit to the number of users or firm matters. Your MyCase subscription is available on a per-user basis, so you can include as many firm users in your MyCase subscription as you would like, and you can create as many matters as you would like as well.

Are you ready to take advantage of legal calendaring software today? Start your free trial here.