For lawyers, paralegals,
and legal professionals.
Here’s our essential list of the legaltech tools that are making legal work faster and simpler.
The world of legaltech is complex; there’s an endless array of different solutions on the market, and many of them do more than one thing. While legal technology can increase your productivity and help you cut costs, it’s important to understand what sorts of tech tools are on the market so that you know how to apply each one. Investing in the wrong technology at the wrong time can cost your firm time and money, which is why you’ll want to survey the legaltech landscape to determine which type of solution is best suited to address your current needs. The good news is that whether you’re looking to facilitate file sharing, automate your accounts receivable, or accelerate document production, there’s a solution for you. Here’s our essential list of the various legaltech solutions you can use at your firm to increase revenue, cut costs, boost productivity, and save time.
One of the first legaltech solutions you’ll want to adopt is one that can manage what matters most: Your finances. There’s no shortage of accounting apps on the market; most of them, though, aren’t geared specifically toward law firms. That’s where legal accounting apps like CosmoLex, Xero, Soluno, and PCLaw come in. These solutions make it easy to capture expenses, manage your banking, and bill clients – all from a single portal. Proper accounting is essential to successfully managing your financial operations and ensuring regulatory compliance, making these apps must-haves for modern legal practices.
Clio is one of the most well-known legaltech solutions around, and for good reason: It’s one of the industry’s leading legal practice management and case management solutions. This comprehensive software suite makes it easy for firms to manage cases, operations, billing, and more. Clio’s software features a calendar for managing appointments, case management software for tracking matters, and a CRM for tracking client communications. Clio offers over 250 integrations with software suites like Microsoft Outlook, Intuit QuickBooks, MailChimp, Zoom, and Dropbox, making it easy to import and export data across multiple applications. With Clio, you can even track your billable hours and automatically generate invoices.
LEAP is a cloud-based legal practice productivity solution that serves law firms across the globe with a variety of practice management features. LEAP’s software includes a document assembly and management system, a law practice management system with time tracking functionality, legal accounting software, and a client collaboration portal designed to securely share private and confidential documents. With LEAP, users also have access to a comprehensive library of legal precedent documents, forms, legal guides, and legal commentary.
FileVine is a legal tech stack that includes case & matter management, document management, time tracking & billing, and lead tracking software. FileVine’s suite of comprehensive solutions is powered by artificial intelligence, making it easy to generate demand letters, scan and summarize documents, automate tasks, and assemble documents.
Intapp Time is an AI-powered time tracker for law firms. With Intapp Time, lawyers and paralegals can capture every minute they work, reduce billing disputes, and minimize the need for data entry. Intapp Time also supports operational compliance reporting, shared time entries, and AI-powered data capture, all while enforcing firm and client requirements.
Other major players in this space include LawPay, uLawPractice, PracticePanther, ActionStep, Smokeball, MyCase, and Rocket Matter.
Email is a core business tool across the legal industry. Whether you’re coordinating work with colleagues or updating clients on their open matters, email is the often unappreciated workhorse of legal practice. But while there are many email tools available to execute this critical function, not all of them are created equal. Cloud-based email services are the norm now, offering lawyers and paralegals the unique ability to draft and send emails across multiple devices. Cloud-based email services like Microsoft 365 and Google Workspace provide accessible email management with robust security services, making them ideal for use in the corporate environment. They can even integrate with calendar functions to make setting appointments a breeze.
Communicating with your colleagues in real-time is essential when it comes to getting legal work done. Whether it’s a quick question about a client file or a more substantial conversation regarding an open matter, real-time collaboration is how you and your colleagues accelerate work.
While it may be easy to drop in on a colleague in-person to ask a quick question, this isn’t possible if you’re working with remote coworkers.
That’s where collaboration tools like Slack and Microsoft Teams come in. These instant messaging platforms make it easy to loop coworkers in on what you’re working on, so you can get answers instantly and get back to work faster. They even offer video chat capabilities if you need a face-to-face conversation, making Slack and Teams integral tools for a remote-first world.
Other collaboration software suites offer advanced features to make collaborating with remote colleagues a breeze.
Cisco Jabber is an instant messaging, voice & video calling, and desktop sharing app with a wide array of capabilities. With Jabber, your team can easily instant message with each other, leave voicemails, and collaborate more effectively – no matter what device you’re using.
Zoom is one of the world’s most popular videoconferencing tools. It also offers a team chat solution, so you can instant message colleagues, a digital phone for making voice calls, and a calendar for scheduling meetings.
Managing contracts during their lifecycle can be a burdensome endeavour for law firms. Whether you’re managing your own contracts or those for clients, contract lifecycle management involves managing the intricate details of contracts from drafting, to negotiation, to approval, to compliance, and beyond. Contract lifecycle management can be time-consuming, which is why emerging applications like Ironclad are facilitating the process with new digital solutions.
Ironclad is an AI-powered contract lifecycle management app that combines contract creation, negotiation, signing, and compliance features for an all-in-one contract solution. Ironclad offers an artificial intelligence assistant that can handle complex prompts and solve challenging contract tasks, as well as automatically tag, extract, and report on contracting data. Ironclad’s app enables redline suggestions, unapproved clause flagging, and automatic contract data tagging for faster contract review. No matter how complex the contract in question, Ironclad ensures faster, safer digital contracts.
Other major players in the contract lifecycle management space include Docubee, ContractSafe, Lexion, and ContractHero.
Entity management is a time-consuming, often tedious task for paralegals and legal assistants. That said, it’s a necessary part of maintaining proper corporate records for clients. While many legacy law firms still manage their entities on paper or through Word docs, emerging legaltech solutions are making it faster and easier to create, update, and review entity documents – all while automatically keeping your minute books up-to-date.
Athennian is a corporate entity management suite that centralizes all of your minute books in one place. With Athennian, you can manage beneficial ownership documents, annual filings, structure charts, stakeholder data, and more.
ALF Software Inc. provides a corporate records management solution used by law firms and corporate departments across Canada. ALF features an intuitive interface and robust database for organizing and automating corporate records.
MinuteBox is a corporate entity management suite that automates compliance tasks and manages corporate records & legal entities in one place. MinuteBox makes compliance simple and easy with audit-ready entity management that’s customizable to your needs.
Appara (that’s us!) is a corporate entity management suite that automatically updates your minute books as you complete matters. In addition to minute books, Appara also offers document automation and workflow automation features. Appara’s structured cloud-based database makes it easy to maintain more accurate records across your practice and find data faster by automatically eliminating duplicate files, making ongoing & annual maintenance faster and easier than ever. Appara offers a comprehensive, full-practice solution for solicitors, combining corporate, real estate, and estates matters all in one platform to leverage one shared database.
(Interested in learning more about how Appara helps you save time, cut costs, and reduce errors? Book a demo to unlock your free trial here.)
Managing paper documents is cumbersome. Paper documents are difficult to search through, take up a great deal of storage space, and can’t be shared with remote colleagues. Paper documents also aren’t secure; they’re vulnerable to threats like fire and theft.
Enter: The DMS. Document Management Systems (DMSs) like NetDocuments and iManage make it easy to securely store, organize, and share your critical documents.
NetDocuments is a legal DMS that uses optical character recognition (OCR) to turn your paper-based documents into searchable, shareable online documents that are easily indexed for future reference. NetDocuments even enables users to accurately file emails with a single click, making it easy to organize your documents and emails by client or matter.
Meanwhile, iManage uses an AI-powered knowledge work platform to collaborate safely and securely from anywhere, on any device. iManage’s document and email management software makes it easy to streamline collaboration and boost productivity, even across remote teams.
Other DMS systems include Sharepoint/OneDrive, FileVine (discussed above), Google Documents, and Worldox.
Document review takes up a significant amount of a lawyer’s day. From proofing, to styling, to ensuring you’re using the correct precedents – it can all be overwhelming.
That’s where document review systems come into play. Document review systems like Litera, Kira Systems, Harvey, Relativity, and CoCounsel by Casetext leverage artificial intelligence and machine learning to analyze, search, and review legal documents like contracts. These solutions make it easy to identify and extract content from your contracts and documents in an accurate and efficient manner, allowing for expedited review.
In days gone by, handwritten signatures were the only way to conduct business; this limited law firms to conducting business only within their immediate area. It also meant coordinating multiple schedules to set up a time for all parties to come to your office to sign the document in question. Now, e-signature software has made it possible to digitally sign documents from anywhere in the world.
E-signature platforms like Docusign, Dropbox Sign (formerly HelloSign), and Adobe Sign have made it possible for you and your clients to remotely sign documents with digital signatures, eliminating the administrative burden that comes with managing paper documents. The result? Faster, easier digital signatures.
(Fun fact: Appara directly integrates with Adobe Sign and Docusign, automatically creating signature packages to make signing documents seamless.)
Verifying your clients’ identities can be a cumbersome endeavour; it typically means meeting in-person with the client or having the client scan or fax their ID to you. Now, though, emerging digital solutions are making it possible to verify client IDs online in an even more secure manner.
Treefort Technologies is a leading provider of digital identity verification software that uses advanced multi-factor authentication to digitally verify IDs and spot fakes. Treefort leverages integrations with credit bureaus and other reputable sources to compare your client’s ID to other records, enabling client ID verification in as little as 5 minutes.
Meanwhile, Realaml is an onboarding and ID verification platform that leverages FINTRAC and Law Society-compliant verification tools to verify client IDs. Realaml uses over 200 ID data sources to check over 10,000 ID documents in real time.
Other providers in this space include FCT Bluink, Adobe, and Docusign.
Legal research used to consist of going to a law library, sorting through index cards, and pulling case files off shelves. But now, you can search through case law and legislation digitally using legal research software.
LexisNexis is the industry’s leading legal research portal, powered by a generative AI that offers conversational search, drafting, summarization, and document analysis. LexisNexis users can leverage Lexis+ AI to perform conversational searches, draft contract clauses in minutes, and summarize legal statutes or case law in seconds – without clicking into a single search result. With Lexis Advance Quicklaw, LexisNexis users can access case law and legal news from a wide array of sources that often aren’t accessible elsewhere. Quicklaw’s QuickCITE service enables users to validate the authority of cases, so you’re always confident that you have the most up-to-date case law information.
CanLII, the Canadian Legal Information Institute, is a non-profit organization founded in 2001 by the Federation of Law Societies of Canada. CanLII provides users with open access to judicial decisions and legislative documents from across Canada. A critical legal research tool, CanLII is free to use and offers decisions and documents from all ten provinces and three territories.
Westlaw by Thomson Reuters is a comprehensive collection of primary and secondary law documents, making it easy to find not only statutes and cases, but also the background history of various judges, lawyers, and other parties. Westlaw enables users to access data-driven insights on judges, courts, lawyers, and case types, making it easy to enhance case strategy.
Working in the real estate side of the legal industry often involves a flurry of document production and workflow management. Whether it’s last minute closings, changing client instructions, or the collection of information from a multitude of data sources, the practice can be exhausting. That’s where real estate productivity solutions are stepping in to eliminate mistakes, reduce time, and help organize documents and workflows.
Appara (that’s us!) is a document automation and workflow automation platform that leverages the power of logic and a platform-approach across practice areas to expedite legal work across purchase, sale and refinance matters. With Appara’s powerful automation features, you can automatically generate entire transactions-worth of closing documents with customizable precedents at the click of a button. It also works seamlessly with Appara’s other product offerings to make sure you have a single source of truth for all the work you do.
eConveyance by Dye & Durham is a BC real estate industry solution that simplifies real estate conveyancing. It allows users to enter deal data into a matter and generate the required closing documents for purchase, sale, and refinance matters in B.C.
Unity by Dye & Durham is a real estate practice management solution that boasts conveyancing workflows and integrations baked in from the start. Unity enables users to manage their practice quickly and efficiently, leveraging comprehensive workflows and documents to execute transactions seamlessly.
Goveyance is a digital conveyancing solution that provides an alternative to legacy conveyancing software in BC. Goveyance integrates with Soluno, Stewart Title, Chicago Title Canada, FCT, and the BC Land Title & Survey to add increased functionality.
RealtiWeb by LawyerDoneDeal is a made-in-Canada provider of real estate and wills & estates solutions, giving legal professionals access to conveyancing software to help prepare and process clients’ real estate deals. LawyerDoneDeal’s WillPowerWeb application is a comprehensive suite designed to help lawyers quickly produce wills, powers of attorney, and other documents.
Closer by LawLabs is an Ontario conveyancing platform that provides law firms and conveyancers with task management, document & package preparation, title insurance ordering, and mortgage preparation software. Designed to accelerate deal flow, Closer makes it easy to monitor and stay informed on tasks and activities with custom checklists and file status indicators.
Other productivity solutions on the market include real estate conveyancing solutions like Prolegis, ProSuite, Quintalink, ConveyMe, LCS, and Resolve.
Cloud-based document storage has been around for some time, but for law firms who still use local storage, it’s an emerging new solution that can free up precious hard drive space and enable file sharing across your organization.
Dropbox is a cloud-based file storage system that makes it easy for remote colleagues to collaborate on projects. Dropbox’s flexible file sharing and smart organization enables you to share critical documents with anyone who has an email address. Users can comment on files with their feedback, placing all of your organization’s commentary in one repository so you can get documents to their final version in less time.
Google Drive is a cloud-based file storage and sharing system that offers built-in protections against spam, malware, and ransomware, keeping your critical files safe in the cloud. Drive integrates with Google’s other productivity apps like Docs, Sheets, and Slides, enabling you to natively collaborate with colleagues across multiple applications. You can even collaborate with remote colleagues in Microsoft Office files without needing to convert file formats.
Both Dropbox and Google Drive offer scalable solutions, enabling you to grow your storage account as your needs increase.
Other major cloud-based storage systems on the market include iCloud, OneDrive, and Sharepoint.
Trust accounting is an important endeavour, but it’s one that is plagued by intricate administrative minutiae and compliance requirements. Thankfully, emerging legaltech software is making trust accounting a breeze.
CosmoLex is a legal practice management solution that offers built-in trust accounting features to help manage and maintain compliance automatically. ComsoLex’s accounting features post funds where they need to be posted and automatically allocate expenses to the proper accounts. CosmoLex’s trust accounting features make it possible to manage single client ledgers or multiple trust accounts, all within the same application that law firms use to manage their practice.
Aderant is a cloud-based legal software suite that unifies and automates client guideline compliance across time, billing, and eBilling functions. Aderant’s Onyx software uses artificial intelligence to extract key terms from outside counsel guidelines, enforcing them throughout the time and billing journey. Aderant makes it easy to improve coordination among multiple teams and accelerate workflows. Aderant’s Onyx automatically identifies compliance risks, giving teams real-time guidance to prevent violations.
Unity Accounting (formerly esiLaw) is an accounting and payment processing solution built for law firms and legal professionals that also offers practice management features.
Other major trust accounting solutions on the market include PC Law, Soluno (ActionStep Accounting), and TrustBooks.
Managing wills and estate matters can be challenging. That’s why emerging technology is making it easier to administer trusts, draft and execute wills, and handle estate matters.
Estateably is an industry-leading estate, trust, and incapacity accounting and administration suite that encompasses all of your estate administration matters in one easy-to-use platform. With Estateably, users can administer and account for estates, perform trust accounting and administration tasks, and execute power of attorney agreements.
Willful is an online will creator that enables users to create wills for as little as $99 CAD. Willful’s interface is designed for consumer use, which makes it easy to use. Approved by the Law Society of Ontario, Willful enables both consumers and will & estate lawyers to create and register a last will and testament, with free unlimited updates. Willful’s premium offerings enable users to also create power of attorney documents and asset lists, all online.
eState Planner is an estate planning tool that streamlines client intake, creates error-free estate plans, and makes it easy to generate wills, POAs, and other legal documents. eState Planner’s client questionnaires make it possible to draft wills up to 5x faster, and its ePlans can create estate plans in just a few clicks.
Emergent is an estate planning solution that provides users with the ability to generate single or mirror wills, powers of attorney, reporting letters, and statements of account. Emergent integrates with the Canada Will Registry, making it easy to search for or register wills.
Appara (that’s us!) is a document automation, workflow automation, and entity management platform designed to accelerate legal work. Appara’s Estate Planning and Estate Administration solutions make it easy to draft and manage fully customizable will and estate documents, with custom precedents. Appara’s built-in AI makes it possible to draft documents in minutes, not hours, and even flags errors for you.
The best part about being in the legal technology space? It’s constantly evolving, and new companies are always springing up to make legal professionals’ lives easier. See a product that we missed? Let us know in the comments on LinkedIn – we always look forward to learning what else is coming to market.
Legal technology has evolved at a rapid pace in recent years. There’s an endless array of legaltech products on the market that can help your legal practice to cut costs, reduce errors, increase productivity, and collaborate remotely, making it easy for law firms to accomplish more work in less time. As your law firm grows, consider leveraging some of these tools to digitize paper processes and save time on critical tasks.
Is your firm ready to digitize your documents, accelerate your workflows, and automate document production? Appara can help. Book a demo to unlock your FREE Appara trial today and discover how much time you can save with Appara.
Engaging insights and the latest news, designed for legal professionals.
