We understand that shopping for legal workflow automation software can be an overwhelming experience. There are way too many options out there! So we’ve put together a checklist of the features immigration law firms should look out for during their software search.
Whether you decide to use our checklist or not, the number one question to always ask yourself is, will this product significantly help to raise my firms profit margins? If yes then it should definitely be a contender.
Client Intake
Most products that claim to be workflow automation solutions, often don’t include client intake automation features. This happens because most of these companies focus solely on the case management part of your workflow. If you're going to buy software to make your workflow efficient then, why wouldn’t you also improve your client intake processes? Of course you would want to. So if you're going to spend money to automate your workflow, then make sure client intake automation is also included.
Key Capabilities to look for:
1. Survey Creation
When we say survey creation we’re talking about some feature that presents your potential clients with a survey or questionnaire. The purpose of this survey is to help you qualify leads. The questions should be unique to your firm and after reading a filled out survey, you should be able to qualify a lead as “yes this client has a case I can help with” or “no I cannot help with this client's particular case.”
2. Case Management Integration
This may seem obvious but is still worth discussing. Once you evaluate a survey and qualify a lead, make sure it doesn't take more than the click of a button, for you to input that lead into the case management part of your workflow automation software. For example, it wouldn’t make sense for you to have to separately fill out the client’s name into the case management system after the client already inputted his/her name into a survey. If the two features act individually then you’ll end up doing double the work.
Billing Automation
Before diving into this section we wanted to make one thing clear: billing automation software by itself is often not worth the price. After surveying the market we’ve found that there are several companies that offer stand-alone billing automation systems. Unless you're in a very unique situation, your better of buying an “all-in-one” system that features billing automation.
Key Capabilities to look for:
1. Repetitive task reduction
There are so many steps in the billing process that can be automated. Tasks such as invoice generation or requesting payments. Individually these tasks may seem small but trust us when we say, the time spent on these tasks adds up. So make sure that the software you choose allows you to automate such tedious tasks.
2. Process Standardization
Another big waste of time is having separate billing processes for separate cases. If you have a sample of 5 clients and all 5 clients are billed with totally different processes then, not only is your time is taken up sorting them out individually, but your time is also lost in the payment consolidation process.
When making your purchase decision, just make sure that the software in consideration, has standardized processes for all payment types.
3. Payment Portals and Invoice Creation
Since the normalization of online banking, customers have become more and more comfortable making big payments online. Clients are also more likely to pay faster the more convenient you make it for them to so.
Make sure your legal workflow automation software provides you with the ability to present your clients with a payment portal. Trust us, your earnings will be coming in a lot faster.
4. Third-Party Integration
If you plan on using services like Stripe or Law Pay in conjunction with your legal workflow automation software then make sure they both seamlessly integrate. If not, the time you save by automating your billing process will be eaten up by the time you spend organizing payments.
Reporting
With automated reporting, you have the chance to make your immigration law firm efficient twice over. First, by running the correct reports you’ll be able to identify and correct inefficiencies in your workflow. Then because your reports are automated, you won’t waste time compiling data, meaning you’ll quickly be able to identify and address process inefficiencies.
Key Capabilities to look for:
1. Automated Reporting
Just like we talked about in the paragraph before, your legal automation software must be able to quickly generate reports. Especially the reports that help you identify ways in which you can improve your firm.
2. Custom Reporting
In addition to being able to run standard reports your immigration software or the company you work with should allow you to request and create custom reports. These are reports you may have been creating on your own before you adopted any type of software or reports unique to your immigration law firm.
3. Dashboard
Running reports is great for large data analysis but for quick analysis and day to day firm monitoring, the software you choose should present you with dashboards. Dashboards are great for every member of your team because they should, if done right, be easy to comprehend and actionable.
Document Generation
Document generation is probably the oldest form of legal workflow automation. We’re talking about features that allow you to pull forms and quickly auto-fill them from a client's profile. Here are some of the most modern capabilities to look for in the document generation realm.
Key Capabilities to look for:
1. Vast Library of Immigration Forms
A lot of case management technologies provide you with access to USCIS immigration forms, but there are often pitfalls that you won’t find till you at least see a demo for the technology. One commonly neglected feature is the ability to access old USCIS forms. Some companies remove old USCIS forms after the forms get an update. After working with lawyers for so many years, we realized that just because a form has been updated doesn't mean they might not need to be filled or re-filled out.
2. Speed of auto-fill
In today's day and age, you shouldn't expect anything less than almost immediate auto-fills. Technology that takes a few minutes or even one minute is clearly outdated. Choosing such technology will just serve to put you behind competing immigration law firms.
Unity
As a final point, just make sure every aspect of your legal workflow automation works together and automates as much as possible for you. The primary purpose of the software should be to raise your immigration firms' efficiency, productivity and profit margins.
FastVisa.us
FastVisa has helped raise the profit margins of immigration law organizations for several years now, and we’ve fine-tuned our workflow automation software to be the best on the market. Our platform has all the features mentioned in this post plus a whole lot more.
Finally, we just wanted to share our free eBook that's packed with checklists and tools that immigration law firms can utilize to acquire more clients through their websites.
We’re here to serve immigration law practitioners.
