Find the best Family Law Software

Family law deals with legal issues and aspects involving personal and domestic relationships, such as marriages, civil unions, and divorces. Family law often changes as per jurisdiction, making cases tricky to handle. This factor combined with the massive volume of documentation involved makes family law-related matters complex. In such cases, family law software can be of great help. It assists legal firms and professionals in saving the time spent on administrative tasks, such as managing documents and organizing meetings, and allows them to focus on critical tasks that require human intervention.

Choosing family law software with the right features for your legal practice can be challenging. You’ll need to ensure that the software features and benefits align with your business requirements. To help you get started, we’ve created this buyers guide with all the information required to evaluate the options available for your business.

Here's what we'll cover:

Here’s what we’ll cover:

• What is family law software?
• Common features of family law software
• What type of buyer are you?
• Benefits of family law software
• Key considerations for choosing family law software

What is family law software?

Family law software is a cloud-based solution that helps law firms and professionals manage, review, and track legal documents related to family law cases, such as divorces, adoptions, and marriages. It automates the complete documentation process to save time that can be used for handling critical tasks that require human involvement.

Family law software also helps calculate compensation amounts, such as child support and alimony. Since compensation laws differ depending on the jurisdiction, these calculations can be time-consuming. This type of software automates the process of calculating compensation amounts to free up crucial human hours.

Client and case information dashboard in Family Law Software (Source)

 

 

Common features of family law software

The first step towards selecting the right engineering project management system is to understand the features that the software offers. Here's a list of some important features to look into:

Task management	View daily tasks, track their completion status, and manage follow-ups.
Calendar management	Use a centralized calendar to manage court dates and appointments for cases awaiting trial or hearing.
Email management	Segregate and track emails by tagging and saving them in dedicated client folders.
Billing and invoicing	Track funds by recording financial transactions between different parties.
Case notes management	Access and track case notes created during proceedings, such as hearings and briefings.

What type of buyer are you?

Based on business size and the number of employees, there are two broad categories of family law software buyers. Both of these categories are explained below.

Solo practitioners and small legal firms (less than 200 employees): Legal drafting is a crucial task for practitioners, and even a wrongly placed comma can result in malpractice claims and subsequent penalties. For solo practitioners and small firms that lack the employee bandwidth to set up a dedicated legal drafting team, a basic edition of family law software equipped with case notes and email management capabilities can help avoid such penalties. These tools scan legal documents, record data related to cases, and store the data in a centralized database. This data repository is then used for all documentation purposes, thereby reducing the chances of transcription errors. Most of these tools can also calculate child support and alimony amounts.

Midsize and large legal firms (200–500 employees): Midsize and large firms have more clients and consequently larger volumes of documents that need legal review. A basic version of family law software might not be equipped to handle such large documentation volumes. However, when equipped with advanced technologies, such as artificial intelligence (AI), machine learning and data mining, these solutions can be significantly helpful for legal reviews. In an experiment that pitted AI-equipped software against five human lawyers, the software reviewed five non-disclosure agreements (NDAs) in an average time of 26 seconds with 94% accuracy, while the lawyers took an average time of 92 minutes with 85% accuracy. Given AI’s ability to review more documents in less time and with higher accuracy, it could be a good investment for larger firms that need to review large volumes of legal documents.

Benefits of family law software

Knowing the benefits of family law software will help you decide whether this type of software will be able to address the pain points of your legal practice. Listed below are a few key benefits of family law software.

Reduced errors: For creating legal documents, professionals have to go through text-heavy files and manually filter out irrelevant information. The chances of transcription errors are high, as a lot of typing and re-typing is involved. Family law software helps automate this process. It scans case documents, picks up relevant information, and stores it in a centralized database, which is then used by all professionals for drafting legal documents. This reduces the chances of human errors and helps prevent malpractice allegations.

Improved client communication: Family law software’s email and document management features help organize and store client emails and details in separate dedicated client folders. Organized information makes it easier for legal professionals to access client details when needed. Lawyers can also use this information to send timely updates to their clients about case status.

Better resource utilization: The calendar management feature of family law software provides weekly, daily, and monthly views of the tasks assigned to each professional within a law firm. The calendar is centralized, can be accessed by everyone in the team, and helps track employee bandwidth. This leads to improved collaboration and higher transparency.

Key considerations for choosing family law software

Every law firm has different business requirements, and software purchase considerations vary accordingly. Here are a few things that you should take into consideration when choosing family law software for your legal practice.

Integration with the existing email system: Since documentation is an integral task performed by family law software, it’s essential to ensure that the software tool you wish to purchase integrates well with your existing email system. The integration capability will ensure that your software tags and stores emails and email responses in respective client folders. It’ll also ensure that important case details are automatically picked up from the emails and stored in the database.

Legal knowledge repository: Family law, as a legal practice, involves different laws that govern personal relationships, and it’s not possible for professionals to remember the nitty-gritty of each law. A legal knowledge repository containing all the sections and codes governing family law will help your legal practice save time and improve the quality of your legal drafting.

Mobile accessibility: Family law software that can be accessed on mobile devices, such as tablets and smartphones, will allow you to access and review legal records at any time and from any location. Members of your law firm will be able to access case documents and emails from client locations, courts, and even their homes. They’ll also be able to reply to queries on the go, resulting in faster turnaround times.

If you wish to further understand the features and benefits of family law software, you may fill out this form for an obligation-free consultation. Our advisors will understand your requirements and guide you in shortlisting the most suitable options for your business.

Note: The applications selected in this article are examples to show a feature in context and are not intended as endorsements or recommendations. They have been obtained from sources believed to be reliable at the time of publication.