Every lawyer knows what it’s like to deal with a packed day—you sit down at your desk with a cup of coffee and try to sift through a mountain of paperwork that’s been waiting for you since yesterday. 

You have client meetings all day, and you need to prepare for court, but you also need to get on the phone with potential leads and find ways to turn them into clients.  

By the time the end of the working day rolls around, you’re wracking your brain, trying to remember how much time you spent on everything you’ve done, and that mountain of paperwork? It’s somehow doubled in size. 

Times like these can make even the most organized attorneys want to run for the hills. With the right strategies in place, though, you can make drowning in paperwork and administrative tasks a thing of the past. 

5 ways to reduce your administrative burden (and focus on clients instead) 

At CosmoLex, our goal is to make legal work easier to handle so that clients are satisfied and law firms are profitable. If you’re looking to set up processes that support your success, we suggest using CosmoLex to help in the following areas.  

1. Create a system for organizing your information 

If your information isn’t organized, it’s going to be tough to complete your tasks in a timely manner. 

The first step to getting out of the weeds when it comes to paperwork is to create a structured system for storing files and documentation. You could spend days and weeks coming up with naming conventions and folder structures, or you could let CosmoLex do the heavy lifting for you.  

CosmoLex offers law firms two ways to store and manage files:  

• Integration with industry-leading document storage solutions like DropBox, Google Drive, and NetDocuments 
• Native file storage within CosmoLex 

While many attorneys may be attached to their third-party document solution, there are a host of benefits to storing files within CosmoLex itself. Doing so simplifies the number of tools to manage, saving you time and increasing the security of your client and firm data. CosmoLex also connects documents directly to individual matters, making managing the files even easier.  

2. Set up custom workflows for tedious tasks   

Think back to the statistics we mentioned earlier. Approximately 70% of your day is taken up with tedious administrative tasks. What would that mean for your firm, though, if you could get even a fraction of that time back?  

You can get more than a fraction of that time back by creating repeatable (and often automated) workflows for your most common activities. Some excellent candidates for custom workflows with CosmoLex include:  

• Document assembly: Pull together legal documents with less risk of error with automated document assembly 
• Client intake: Qualify leads, send automated follow-ups, and stay top-of-mind with automated marketing and client intake  
• Billing and payment: Create custom invoice templates, batch-generate invoices, and automate payment reminders to get paid faster (and with less work)  
• Time tracking: Automate time-tracking activities to capture all your billable hours and maximize your potential profit 

Within these workflows, you can highly customize processes so they reflect your firm’s ideal operational processes, engage the right collaborators, and keep your work moving forward instead of stuck in the weeds.

3. Make client communication a snap 

If you’re having difficulty juggling client questions and meetings on top of all your other work, it’s time to invest in a tool that will make client communication effortless.  

CosmoLex has several features that support more efficient client communications. CosmoLex’s legal CRM software allows for law firms to engage leads and build relationships with clients via marketing automation, text and video messaging, and email drip campaigns.  

For example, instead of having to respond to each client inquiry yourself, you can automate a reply thanking them for their interest and sending them useful information on their next steps. They’ll feel attended to—and just as importantly, this information syncs with CosmoLex’s practice management software, eliminating the need to manually enter all that data.  

You can also take advantage of CosmoLex’s built-in client portal. Secure client portals allow your clients to view everything related to their matters with the click of a button, freeing you up to keep working instead of fielding questions. 

4. Stop chasing down signatures 

One of the most time-consuming tasks for any law firm is collecting signatures for important documents. 

If you’re still chasing down your clients to sign on the dotted line, or worse, using snail mail, you’re losing precious time that could be spent on more high-value tasks. 

With CosmoLex’s file sharing and eSignature software, you can drastically reduce the time spent sending and receiving documents for clients. Our software gives you the ability to create customized file requests from any contact you have and upload them directly to the matter they’re associated with. 

On the other hand, our eSignature solution allows you to collect legally binding signatures easily from your computer or smartphone with secure links that will keep you moving forward and staying compliant with legal regulations for collecting signatures. 

5. Take the pain out of billing and invoicing 

If you’re still tracking time, invoicing, and billing manually, you’re missing out on the opportunity to take on more client-facing work.  

Manual billing keeps you stranded at your desk at the end of the month, crunching numbers, and trying to remember all of the time you spent on billable tasks instead of working with clients. 

With CosmoLex’s legal billing software, you can streamline every part of the billing process and free yourself up to focus on other things. Our solution provides you with: 

• Batch billing that allows you to create invoices for all your clients with the click of a button 
• Customizable branded templates that make invoice generation a snap and present an itemized, polished template to any client in just a few minutes  
• Retainer management features that enable you to create detailed invoices and expense reports to keep your clients in the loop and increase their trust in your services 
• Time-tracking solutions that allow you to run multiple timers at once from anywhere, so you can effectively track time, in the office or on the go, instead of racking your brain at the end of the month trying to remember the work you’ve done 
• A money finder feature that double checks all your records to locate unbilled time, so you never lose a second of billable time 
• Payment options that allow you to cater to the needs of all your clients by accepting online or ACH payments 
• Automatic past-due reminders that help you get paid faster by removing the need to chase down your clients for past-due payments 

Put the focus back on your clients 

If you’re feeling like there just aren’t enough hours in the day to get the job done, you need a solution that will get you back on track so you can focus on your clients instead of time-consuming admin work.  

From automated invoicing and billing solutions to user-friendly client communication tools, CosmoLex helps you focus on your clients rather than administrative tasks. Ready to make the switch? Sign up for a free trial today.