What's the best CRM for law firms and solicitors?

The one that gets used. That's not a joke.

If you think of your CRM system like owning a car... my family car may not suit you if you prefer sitting in the back, rolling into it, or stepping up into it and seeing over hedges.

If it was "X software is the best" or "X car is the best", we'd all have the same one.

The best CRM depends on what you want to achieve, your in-house CRM expertise, how much you want to pay, and your specific requirements and preferences.

The 'best' system in the world is useless if it doesn't get used.

If you are wanting to send newsletters and event invites, you are looking for a very different solution to one that helps your firm collaborate, cross-sell, manage referral networks, understand relationships, and see who-know-who. From there, you have different solutions to look at, from "we are all happy and keen to use a big database" to "nobody is saying they want to use a database and we don't want to lift a finger of effort".

What a CRM for law firms and solicitors actually is

CRM’s do cannot do everything and 'a database' isn't always the answer to everything. So, what issues do law firm CRMs solve? It boils down to this - they store data and show it to back to you in a way you can easily understand and utilise. No matter where the data comes from (Outlook emails, Outlook meetings, users, your website, social media, contacts).

The CRM options available to law firms and solicitors

1. You can choose big legal / mass-market CRMs. They do roughly the same things, just in different colours, the buttons are in different places and with slightly different ways of doing it. They compete with each other to do more than the others, but you have to manage them and chase for usage and adoption.
2. You can choose a fully managed CRM service, which gives you Outlook based CRM software, with support, data updating and training in an all-in-one service. This is a simple to use option, but won't suit you if you want to your users to all sorts of things with your database.
3. You can choose CRM alerts, which give your lawyers 95% of the benefits of a CRM database, with about 5% of the cost and support issues. They bolt onto the side of Outlook and report on activity with your best contacts / all your contacts. Great because you don't need to worry about your users doing anything other than their day job, not so good if you want your users to use a big database.

What's the best type of CRM for your law firm?

1. If all you need to achieve is one single list of your contacts your easiest option is an Excel spreadsheet. Have one list with different tags and columns so you can see one version of a contact and if they are on the golf AND/OR Christmas card list.
2. If you want to send newsletters and mailshots, try Mailchimp, or any mass market email tool. There are loads, they are cheap, you don't need to worry about being law firm specific.
3. If you want to systemise your bid and pitching, a purpose built pitch tool like EasyPPQ, PipeDrive, Hubspot, or Popcorn (Hubspot for SMEs) will suit you better than CRM.
4. If you want to understand your law firm's complex relationships, see ‘who knows whom’, or track who is referring to whom, that’s where solicitors can benefit from CRM systems. Here’s an alphabetical list of CRM software the legal market is using: ClientSense, DeadCloud (was OnePlace), Dynamics (numerous suppliers resell it), Elite, InterAction, Introhive, Nexl, Peppermint (uses Dynamics), Practice Evolve, Promptr CRM (think Introhive's baby sister), SalesForce (numerous suppliers resell it), Tikit (although I think it's phasing out).
5. If you want CRM, but don't have the headcount, time or skills to support it and want the training and data updating done for you, look at Promptr CRM. But I would say that, it's ours.
6. If you want the benefits of CRM, but zero database usage needs, look at something like our Promptr CRM alerts (I don't know of any others) which look at Outlook activity. No lawyer, Solicitor, or Accountant gets up in the morning and says "I want to use a database today", so don't bother wasting your time asking them to, and leapfrog the headache.

Law firm CRM features to look out for

I'd suggest going with invisible CRM alerts as step one to your CRM journey - because using a database makes life harder, and nobody ever votes for that. It doesn't matter which CRM you already have, of at all.

But if you must make your users use a database, this is what to look out for.

1. Ease of use: By far the most important 'feature'. Without this, your CRM adoption will fail. See how close you can you get to 'not lifting a finger of effort' as you can.
2. Automation: Skip on past anything that looks like it makes your users press buttons and do things (e.g. input contacts and activity) that a computer can now do. Manual work is very 1990s.
3. Inbox activity alerts: Don't buy anything that makes users hunt through a database for information that may or may not be there. Users live in Outlook, so mirror them.
4. Integration with your PMS: A nice idea, but automatic linking of CRM and PMS is a total nightmare because of the data quality issues in either, or both systems.
5. Cost: Does the purchase price include training, onboarding users, user support and data updating?
6. Industry specific features: Law firm CRMs solve a very different headache to ones designed to help widget sellers sell their commodities and widgets.
7. Security, risk & compliance: It’s usually humans that cause hiccups. All tech is complaint.
8. Customisation: Don’t go overboard like you're 10 years old and it's your first day in a sweet shop.
9. Reporting and analytics: Your central database team should be able to track key performance indicators like features used / usage / data quality / activity with contacts.
10. Support: When you buy a CRM, you usually only buy the IT kit. Budget for training, implementation, onboarding, user queries, and data updating. Your support options are:

• Do it all yourself in-house (if you have spare headcount and the skills)
• Use your CRM database supplier's consulting team (unlikely to support data updating)
• Use a freelance trainer and/or freelance data updater who knows your system
• Buy an all-in-one CRM service of software, support and data updating
• Use CRM Alerts with zero admin and support needed by anyone

And if I can leave you with this...

The best CRM for lawyers and solicitors is the one that gets utilised.

Which, these days with improving tech, might not even be a database in the old fashioned sense of the word.

If you suspect your colleagues won't use a database, or your IT can't handle another project, or your budget is a bit tight, the best CRM database for you probably isn't a database at all, but CRM alerts that report on Outlook activity - because they work invisibly, and their output will actually be used.

Hope this helps and was a good use of your time,

Simon

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