12 Best Legal Project Management Software Tools for Law Firms & Lawyers in 2024

Lawyers, law firms, and legal practitioners have to work around the clock to get ahead of the competition and stay on top of cases and clients. Their efforts to see every client through are essential to success in the legal business market. 

Since modern times require modern solutions, law firms must turn to advanced technology to stay up-to-date with the latest cases, track time, communicate efficiently, and manage tasks daily. 

They need legal project management software solutions to help them accomplish all these goals and manage team members more efficiently. Legal project management tools help law firms of all sizes and shapes manage multiple cases and clients at once without disturbing their daily workflow processes. 

With that in mind, let’s delve deeper into law firm project management software, its features, and everything you need to know to make an informed purchasing decision.

What is legal project management software?

Project management software for law firms is a solution for lawyers that lets them manage tasks, organize cases, keep their team members updated on events, and track time across ongoing projects.

The importance of legal project management software

Though law firms can benefit from using project management software for lawyers in various ways, let’s first state the obvious. Project management tools for lawyers come with data management and time-tracking features. Both are necessary to keep all of the case data organized. 

In addition to keeping case information straight, legal project management technology allows users to stay up-to-date with the latest industry standards, handle daily activities, manage legal projects, share important case updates with legal teams, etc. 

Legal project management tools help law firms improve security and data privacy practices. Cloud-based law practice management software solutions are also fully scalable, allowing users to mitigate their increasing data storage needs and overcome operational flexibility and scalability challenges. 

Aside from staying on top of legal processes, a legal management software solution provides a centralized platform with user-friendly dashboards to empower lawyers to mitigate data privacy issues, handle customer support services, manage client relationships, upgrade client communication, and more.

The most common challenges in law firm project management software

Some of the most common challenges law firms experience daily include effortless work monitoring, meeting deadlines, delivering time-intensive tasks, team collaboration, and maintaining client communication. 

According to a LinkedIn survey, a legal project manager struggles to manage client relationships, communicate with the legal team, handle resource management, scope cases, etc. However, these are just the tip of the iceberg. 

Here are the top legal project management challenges you should know about:

• Delivering projects on time;

• Enhancing cross-department communication;

• Increasing client satisfaction;

• Managing risk and legal expenses;

• Legal document management.

How project management software for law firms addresses the challenges

Legal practice management software provides an all-encompassing solution with built-in time tracking, auditable workflows, team performance monitoring, dashboard analytics, advanced reporting, invoicing, and compliance processes to help law firms manage everyday tasks and meet client expectations. 

It’s a powerful tool that allows lawyers to scale their legal operations according to their needs and manage all their legal documents, tasks, and projects using a single law firm project management platform.

Let’s see how a law firm project management tool can help you overcome common challenges.

Timely project delivery 

Effective project management tools help you streamline your planning process by providing accurate time predictions based on historical data. You can save time by reducing inefficient manual processes and creating customizable workflows to ensure you meet case deadlines. 

Aside from streamlining project and task management, these tools also help you establish a unified AI knowledge management system to facilitate progress tracking and data sharing. Instead of scheduling meetings to update clients, they can access a shared dashboard to view current events, case status updates, and more.

Improve cross-department communication

Since popular platforms for legal project management come with intelligent dashboards, you can use them as central information repositories to maintain real time communication with your entire team and target audience at the same time. 

Clients also get unlimited dashboards they can use as a single source of truth. Whenever you have a significant update to share with your client, you can make the information available via the external client portal. 

On the other hand, you can also create an internal knowledge base to make all relevant case information available to everyone in your legal firm.

Increase client satisfaction

When working on legal cases with your clients, they’ll want to know how you manage your legal practice and handle legal matters from a legal and operational standpoint. Project management tools for law firms enable you to make your operations transparent to allow your clients to monitor your activities and access relevant case data. 

If a client asks for a status update on a legal matter, you can provide a real time update on demand. These solutions also track expense management and e-billing to help you analyze the cost of ongoing cases and calculate the timeframe required to complete specific projects. Aside from saving time and controlling expenses, lawyers also get an opportunity to make their clients happy.

Risk and expense management

Legal project management tools for lawyer firms come with built-in expense tracking features you can use to create budget dashboards for your legal practice to control your legal spending and tap into AI-powered project cost tracking. 
 

In addition, every legal practitioner must ensure compliance with the industry regulations. Software solutions for lawyers allow law firms to mitigate operational risks through adequate management of outside counsel and vendors.

Legal document management

Effective document management is vital to running a successful law firm. As a lawyer, you must keep track of various legal files, including contract arrangements, alternative client fees, invoices, timesheets, case briefs, etc. 

These documents must be accurate and readily available to you and your legal team to ensure timely case resolution. Top-class legal project management solutions like Ayanza help legal professionals share, update, and organize documents seamlessly to reduce errors, save time, and build more agile legal workflows.

In addition, tools like Ayanza also support AI note taking to help you streamline knowledge management and keep all relevant meeting and project notes under one roof.

Features of legal project management tools

Lawyers use powerful software solutions to manage and upgrade every aspect of their legal operations. A legal project management tool provides an intuitive platform that empowers law firms to create auditable workflows for handling daily operations, increasing productivity, boosting efficiency, and reducing administrative costs. 

Though features may vary from tool to tool, a high-end practice management solution should offer these functionalities:

• Task management – streamline team collaboration on daily tasks between your teammates;

• Case management – centralize case data, including invoices, case files, case-related tasks, etc.;

• Client management – gather all client and team information in one place and make it readily available and easily accessible;

• Invoicing and time tracking – abandon using several timekeeping and billing apps to process and manage payments and improve your efforts to generate invoices and track billable hours accurately;

• Accounting – keep an up-to-date record of your accounting obligations and ensure compliance with the latest law firm accounting regulations;

• Calendar and scheduling – get a unified view of your upcoming cases, client-related events, deadlines, active projects, and more;

• Document management – streamline document management and make all client-related documents easily accessible by bringing all your legal documents to one central location.

In addition, the best legal project management tools, like Ayanza, include automation and AI-powered features for streamlining daily operations and client intake.

Benefits of legal project management software

Unifying and simplifying your legal case management is the most obvious benefit of using project management tools for lawyers. Since these tools come with a project management software option, unlimited storage, customer service features, and time tracking, you can use one solution to manage your relationships with prospective clients, get ahead of your contract workflows, track firm time, and better manage your legal team efforts.

In addition, legal project management software empowers legal firms to:

• Centralize all project-related notifications, timelines, tasks, data, case files, and client information;

• Tap into more effective risk mitigation to protect client data against risks and cybersecurity threats with automated alerts, status reports, and project risk trackers;

• Deliver more cost-effective services by streamlining legal processes and projects;

• Automate manual tasks to reduce errors and save time, effort, and resources;

• Unify information distribution, team collaboration, document management, and client workflows with dashboards, advanced reporting, timely notifications, and task management;

• Gather and process historical matter data to estimate project costs, ascertain timelines for ongoing cases, and forecast necessary resources.

How to choose the best project management software for lawyers

The best project management software for lawyers should be secure, reliable, and user-friendly. Since it represents your focal source of client and case information, you must choose your software wisely. Here are some essentials to look for in this type of project management software to help you make an informed decision.

Up-to-date reports on performance and progress

Working with clients requires you to manage large amounts of data. Storing and processing client and case data is a tedious and time-consuming task. A legal project management tool helps you streamline data analysis to keep your law firm up-to-date with the latest team performance and work progress insights.

Real-time updates

The legal work industry standards and regulations change frequently and evolve continuously. Legal project management software lets lawyers stay ahead of these changes by providing real-time notifications, alerts, and updates.

Clear workflows and a streamlined scheduling

Legal project management tools empower law firms to prioritize case-related tasks, organize case files, manage hearing dates, and stay on top of schedules.

Streamlined communication

Managing clients and legal cases requires daily communication with your teammates, partners, advocates, and clients. Legal project management software streamlines your communication needs and brings all correspondences under one platform.

Effortless client invoicing

Client invoicing is a cumbersome task that exposes your law practices to additional challenges and potential problems. A legal project management tool helps you track billable hours, prepare client invoices, handle your accounting needs, generate payments, send payment reminders, and more.

12 Best legal project management software

Here’s our selection of the best legal project management tools for law firms you should know about in 2024.

1. Ayanza – Best for team collaboration and project management for lawyers and law firms

Ayanza is a team collaboration, project management, task organization, and time orchestration platform for lawyers and all-size law firms. The tool helps lawyers manage workplaces and handle team collaboration and case management via an intuitive interface and collaborative AI-powered features.

Ayanza empowers your legal project management efforts with streamlined information-sharing, direct messaging, AI-enabled brainstorming, and centralized knowledge bases. You can use Ayanza to plan projects, leverage AI as a new team member, share real-time updates with clients, collaborate on multiple projects, and more. 

✨ Features

• Newsfeed with OKRs;

• Tasks with multiple views, notes, priority flags, due dates, and the chat feature;

• Rhythms with project templates, client documents, and case schedules;

• Generative AI for brainstorming ideas, making case-related plans, and generating content for your clients and teammates;

• Workflow visualization for visual representation of all ongoing cases and monitor case-related tasks via Calendar views, Daily kanban boards, Kanban boards, Gantt charts, and more;

• Real-time team communication for empowering your teammates to react to the latest events, answer case-related questions, and leave comments.

💸 Pricing

• Free – $0 for up to 5 users or 200 documents/tasks;

• Pricing starts at $6 per user per month.

2. ClickUp – Best for connecting clients, cases, and teammates in one place

ClickUp empowers law firms to better manage clients and cases with advanced time tracking, intuitive and automated workload management, AI-powered client collaboration, and unlimited data storage.

The tool lets you streamline workflow customization, share daily task-related updates, and keep all your cases, clients, and teammates in one place.

✨ Features

• Visual whiteboard-based team collaboration;

• Project (case) data visualization (timelines, calendars, Gantt charts);

• Real-time reporting;

• Live chat;

• Time tracking;

• Project and task management;

• Secure data storage.

💸 Pricing

• Free – free forever for up to five users;

• Pricing starts at $7 per user per month.

3. Workzone – Best for legal project management and time tracking

Workzone is an ideal legal project management tool for law firms with five or more team members. The software provides a collaborative, centralized project management platform with collaborative dashboards to empower legal teams to get ahead of their everyday tasks. 

Users can effortlessly share activities with other team members, review task updates, generate status reports, and tap into customized to-do lists to ensure timely case delivery.

✨ Features

• Intuitive and customizable project templates;

• Multiple views of recurring projects;

• Legal document management and compliance;

• Task management with Kanban and Gantt;

• Workflow dependencies for streamlined and transparent case management;

• On-time project/case completion with AI-enabled task visualization;

• Critical Path for timely delivery.

💸 Pricing

• Free – no free version or trial (demo available on request);

• Pricing starts at $24 per user.

4. Clio – Best for capturing case data and client invoicing

Clio is an all-in-one platform for legal firms that combines case management and project management. Users get a cloud-based system with project, case, and task management tools, including time tracking, billing, client management, and reporting features.

Track time across ongoing cases, monitor billable hours, send out payment requests, manage legal clients, and keep all relevant data in a safe and secure cloud-based storage system.

✨ Features

• Personalized dashboards with automated law-related insights;

• Collaborative client portal;

• Online billing, invoicing, and payments;

• AI-powered scheduling;

• Template-based calendar;

• Case/document management;

• Legal document preparation and sharing;

• Clio Historical Matter Timelines;

• Data recording with custom fields.

💸 Pricing

• Free – 7-day free trial;

• Pricing starts at $49 per user per month.

5. Monday – Best for seamless legal team collaboration

Monday is an excellent legal project management tool for managing teammates, client collaboration, and seamless task management. The platform empowers legal teams to share status updates, create detailed reports, share data seamlessly, attach messages, add files, and create tasks according to their needs. 

Streamline document management using the tool’s intuitive user interface, arrange your case files in a desired manner, and promote seamless collaboration through enhanced communication and transparency.

✨ Features

• Extensive library of customizable legal box process templates;

• Multiple case views like timelines, Kanban boards, and Gantt charts;

• SOC-2 Type II certification for data security;

• Cloud-based data storage with task infoboxes;

• Dashboards with workflow templates for CRM, sales team, and task management; 

• Time tracking;

• Task analysis;

• Work performance and case progress analytics.

💸 Pricing

• Free – free forever for two users with unlimited documents;

• Pricing starts at $8 per user per month.

6. HighQ – Best for legal business management across multiple sectors

HighQ is the perfect legal business management solution for in-house legal departments, law firms, and public sector agencies. 

The tool helps legal professionals boost productivity and operational efficiency with secure collaboration, document automation, automated legal workflows, and streamlined contract management. 

✨ Features

• Workflow automation;

• Secure document storage;

• AI-enabled document management;

• Service request management;

• Contract management with streamlined client invoicing;

• Track billable hours;

• Mobile-based task progress monitoring and updates.

💸 Pricing

• Free – N/A;

• Pricing information isn’t available on the official website.

7. CosmoLex – Best for law practice management for lawyers

CosmoLex is pay-as-you-go legal project management software for law firms that empowers legal teams to track time, manage clients, handle billing, organize legal documents, and store all case-related data in one central location with 24/7 access. 

The tool lets you manage your operational costs and client information to ensure compliance with the latest industry standards and communicate with clients and team members in real-time. CosmoLex legal management software has built-in legal accounting, credit card processing, and free customer support.

✨ Features

• Calendar and task management;

• Client billing and invoicing;

• Customized legal workflow management;

• Document storage and matter-based file automation;

• Permission-based client communication;

• Automated email management;

• Document templates;

• Client portal with a web-based messaging system.

💸 Pricing

• Free – 10-day free trial;

• Pricing starts at $99 per user per month.

8. ProProfs Project – Best legal software for task prioritization and management

ProProfs Project is one of the best legal project management and task orchestration tools for lawyers and law firms. The tool enables users to automate repetitive tasks, streamline case-related workflows, and scale their legal operations according to their practice-expanding needs. 

With ProProfs Project, you can tap into streamlined task and case management to schedule case hearings seamlessly, monitor case progress, and keep your clients up-to-date with the latest case developments. 

✨ Features

• Streamlined task management;

• Case monitoring;

• Automated scheduling;

• List, Calendar, Kanban, and Gantt schedule visualizations;

• Task prioritization;

• Seamless case management;

• Document storage and task file organization;

• Automate recurring tasks.

💸 Pricing

Free – 15-day free trial;

Pricing starts at $49.97 per month.

9. Nifty – Best for legal case management

Nifty is a collaborative workspace that provides an all-in-one legal project platform with reporting, document-sharing capabilities, discussion, and communication features. 

With Nifty, law firms can track case statuses, manage legal cases in real time, collaborate with teammates, communicate with clients, and measure performance by related milestones, tags, and deadlines. 

Nifty gives you a unified view over all your dedicated projects and lets you share, store, and create case-related communication threads, notes, documents, and files.

✨ Features

• Case management and milestone monitoring;

• Time tracking;

• Client portfolios;

• Advanced reporting (expenses, budgeting, time logs, milestones, case statuses, etc.);

• Customizable legal templates;

• Reminders for recurring tasks;

• Customizable case views;

• Project dashboards;

• My Work filtering system.

💸 Pricing

• Free – free forever;

• Pricing starts at $9 per month.

10. Proofhub – Best for managing legal cases and tracking real-time progress

Proofhub provides a versatile, user-friendly collaborative platform with powerful legal case management features. 

The tool empowers legal teams to delegate tasks, prioritize clients, create case-related workflows efficiently, and plan cases with real-time progress tracking and milestone monitoring.

✨ Features

• Task organization with streamlined to-do lists and Kanban and table views;

• Permission-based access to case-related tasks;

• Task management with document/PDF attachments;

• Activity logs;

• Task dependencies;

• Progress monitoring;

• Case prioritization;

• Milestone workflows.

💸 Pricing

• Free – 14-day free trial

• Pricing starts at $50 per month.

11. Exterro – Best for legal processes and e-discovery

Exterro provides a secure, intuitive, and versatile case management platform for legal firms and law agencies. It allows users to monitor overall case status and track task progress across individual cases and clients.

With Exterro, you can mitigate case-related risks before escalation, ensure industry-standard compliance, share status updates with your clients, track progress across legal tasks, and more.

✨ Features

• Office 365 Explorer;

• Risk management and compliance;

• Client-defined process management;

• Legal case management dashboards;

• Real-time reporting;

• E-discovery project management app;

• Auditable case workflows;

• Request management;

• Matter intake;

• Collection tracking.

💸 Pricing

• Pricing information isn’t available on the official website.

12. Basecamp – Best for client communication and update sharing

Basecamp is an ideal legal project management solution for growing law firms and expanding law practitioners.

It empowers you to take your client and team communication to the next level with streamlined file sharing, automatic check-ins, intuitive task scheduling, group chat, to-dos, and direct messaging.

Whether you manage a remote or in-house legal team, Basecamp empowers your law agency to scale your operations according to your unique needs.

✨ Features

• To-do lists;

• Card table;

• Schedules;

• Documents;

• Automatic check-ins;

• Messaging board;

• Real-time chat;

• Loads of storage;

• Client access;

• Advanced real-time communication tools;

• Calendar view.

💸 Pricing

• Free – 30-day free trial;

• Pricing starts at $15 per user per month.

Top 5 law firm project management software compared

What to ask the provider on a demo call about legal project management software

Since your reputation, time, effort, and resources are on the line here, consider a few things before subscribing to any of these legal project management services. First of all, think about your law practice and case management needs. 

Then, determine realistic law practice requirements and discuss the key software features with the selected provider to ascertain how their solution fits your needs. Set a monthly budget and discuss the software pricing to avoid paying more than you need to. 

Finally, consider your existing tech stack to assess whether the software you opted for can easily integrate with your current systems. Once you have all these points figured out, request a demo to get more information on the software and its features.

Streamline law operations through legal project management tools

As you can see, legal project management software is a vital solution for lawyers and law firms as it empowers users to streamline law operations, align teams and clients, automate processes, and ensure compliance with the latest legal and industry regulations.

The top legal project management tool like Ayanza empowers you with intuitive AI-enabled features to monitor multiple running cases, connect with your clients, keep your team and target audience up-to-date with the latest case developments, and more.

In addition to helping you stay on top of your work, legal project management tools also take care of your client relationships, workflow management needs, and client invoicing.

FAQ

What is the best legal project management software for lawyers?

The best legal project management tool for law firms is the one that can handle all your needs without breaking your budget or requiring extra tech-savvy knowledge. Of all the tools mentioned here, Ayanza is the most functional, user-friendly, and capable solution for individual lawyers and all-size law firms.

What should be on my checklist when searching for project management software tailored to law firms?

The best legal project management tool should come with key features, such as performance tracking, advanced reporting, case progress monitoring, real-time notifications and alerts, risk monitoring and compliance, client invoicing, AI and automation, clear workflows, intuitive scheduling, document management, real-time communication, and unlimited data storage.

Can legal project management software integrate with other software systems commonly used in law firms, such as case management or document management software?

Yes, legal project management solutions like Ayanza support multiple integration options. However, the range of integrations greatly varies from software to software, so check available options before subscribing.

Are there any training or onboarding resources provided when implementing a legal project management tool?

The best legal project management solutions, like Ayanza, offer tutorials and training resources when you book a demo with the provider. You can get more info on onboarding when you book a call.

Is there a mobile app available for law firm project management software that allows lawyers to work remotely?

The best legal project management solutions like Ayanza, ClickUp, and Monday provide intuitive mobile apps for remote, distributed, and hybrid workforces.

What are some real-world examples of law firms that have benefited from implementing legal project management software?

Some law firms using legal project management software include FL Patel Law PLLC, Howard Kennedy, FounderJar, Lawyerist, Real Life Practice, and more.

💡 Get inspired on how to secure proper project management software for teams other than just lawyers