Keeping clients up to date: What tools can law firms use to improve client communication?

I recently completed an internship at Momentum Business Law, a firm that strives to constantly improve its workflow and client services through innovation. To ensure they keep moving forward, the firm has implemented a firm-wide quarterly innovation project schedule. The start of my internship coincided with the Q1 innovation project. The project focuses on how to improve client communication and visibility on file progress, without creating more work and email threads. Within this focus exist several pain points that affect small and large law firms alike: 

1. Leaving clients in the dark: Despite using tools like Clio Grow and engaging clients over email or conference call frequently, Momentum found many clients are still left in the dark as their files progress. While legal processes are long and may go over a client’s head, good communication should keep the client informed and provide peace of mind that their matters are being worked on.
2. Communicating file progress is not time-effective: This second pain point is directly tied to the first. Currently, informing a client of their file’s progress requires a lawyer to draft a clear and concise email that often turns into a longer email thread than necessary. Without a tool to keep your clients automatically up to date, lawyers can lose precious time explaining where their files are along the project pipeline.  
3. Collecting client feedback and work requests is complicated: The difficulty of keeping clients up to date and the time it takes to correspond effectively, leads to complications when clients try to give feedback or request new work on a file. As it stands, clients have no means through which to request the completion of a specific task without having to connect directly with a lawyer over email, phone or in person.

 With these pain points in mind, I researched what tools Momentum could use to improve its communication with clients. I turned to professions like software development and project management to see how they integrated clients into the process itself. From seeing how these industries keep their clients informed and integrated, it became apparent a client portal or dashboard would be the best tool for Momentum.

 While a new client portal software represents some duplication from programs already in use like Clio Grow and Clio Manage, the benefits seem to outweigh the cons. A portal gives clients a central point of connection with their law firm. If built properly, clients can view the progress on their files, action items for them to complete, create work requests and communicate directly with their lawyer all in one place. Here are the top five client portal services I found that can be applied to a legal setting:

SuiteDash: The SuiteDash team has devoted their whole product line to creating highly customizable client portals. Their Client Progress Report, Work Requests, and Trigger Action tools all stood out as direct solutions to Momentum’s pain points. The Client Progress Reports allows users to create different project templates which clients see in real time. This means lawyers can create reports that are available 24/7 and only show the most relevant tasks to the client. The Work Request tools allow clients to create work tickets for ongoing or new files, assign them to specific lawyers, and get updates when the ticket has been started. The work requests do away with the email chains or phone calls created to address a small client concern. Finally, the Trigger Actions tool allows users to pre-set when clients get notifications or auto-generated emails to inform them of certain file progress. By doing so, clients are instantly kept up to date without lengthy email drafting.

OneDesk: OneDesk has a specific Customer Project Management product which integrates the customer into the whole project lifecycle. It allows users to build project dashboards for clients in Kanban, Waterfall and other styles. OneDesk also provides a Client Facing App and a HelpDesk tool that allows clients to submit work tickets, open chats and find answers to small questions. While OneDesk seems to offer the same functionalities and benefits as SuiteDash, it offers each product separately which has its own pros and cons to weigh.

Easyprojects: Easyproject's Client Portal solution is focused on integrating clients into any project lifecycle. Their client portal allows users to share documents, chat, collect feedback and accept ticket/work requests from clients. Their project dashboard seems to be very customizable and focused on more visual representations of tasks and workflow. Beyond communicating file progress, the portal allows users to request client approval, comments and deeper client integration tools to encourage collaboration; this high level of integration must be balanced with efficiency when firms manage a high volume of files.

ProductBoard: The services ProductBoard offers seem to generally be targeted at software and product development teams, but there is still a high level of transferability into law. Their product is built on Agile product development methodology which may help firms like Momentum who assist tech startups and SME’s. The project dashboards ProductBoard creates are 100% client centric. They are built with client feedback, reporting and communication in mind. ProductBoard’s tools allow users to create short feedback loops which could integrate the client throughout a whole file, enabling input at every stage.

Zendesk: Zendesk provides a complete suite of customer service products that can be sold separately. A firm could use their Ticketing System or Help Desk tool to complement Clio Grow. The level of integration, however, is not very clear other than they both work with Zappier. Zendesk’s tools can provide a more robust client support system that allows clients to issue tickets and request help directly from a specific lawyer. The Zendesk Support products include a Self-Service Help Desk tool that can help clients find preliminary answers to their questions before requesting a call or emailing a lawyer.

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