Streamline AI simplifies lifecycle matter management for in-house legal teams by consolidating legal request intake, triage, communication, review, and approvals into a unified, intuitive platform.
Discover how Streamline AI's pre-built integrations can enable your legal and business teams to work seamlessly together, where and how they want to work.
A matter management system is a software solution designed to help in-house legal departments efficiently organize, track, and manage their legal requests, projects, and matters. Matter management software streamlines and facilitates information flows for the delivery of effective legal services by in-house counsel and serves as a centralized, real-time repository for all matter-related context, including request background information, files, documents, emails, comments, tasks, deadlines.
A sophisticated matter management software platform facilitates real collaboration among team members by aggregating the work performed across the business and providing a single source of truth for all request-related activities, ensuring that everyone is on the same page and that important information is easily accessible. Advanced features such as analytics and reporting can allow legal teams to gain insights into their operations, such as volume of high-risk requests, processing times and response times for requests, time at each review and approval step, and make data-driven decisions to improve key legal processes.
These advanced systems often integrate with other legal and enterprise software, providing seamless workflows and reducing the need for manual data entry or administrative work.
Matter management systems are a powerful way to improve the efficiency of legal departments and contribute to better risk management and cost control.
Matter management is crucial for in-house legal operational efficiency because it streamlines the handling of and collaboration on legal matters, ensuring that all aspects of a legal request are properly documented and tracked, from intake to completion.
A comprehensive matter lifecycle approach minimizes the risk of missing critical requests or key deadlines, losing important documents, or miscommunicating with team members and cross-functional stakeholders. Having one hub for all context saves valuable legal team time and enables seamless collaboration and work handoffs among legal team members, without having to search for background via emails, Slack messages, and more.
Matter management is also vital for maintaining compliance and mitigating risk. The streamlined intake capabilities of matter management software simplify the process for business teams to submit legal requests, encouraging them to involve the legal team. If the process is too complex, business teams may avoid engaging the legal team. By having a well-organized matter management system in place, legal teams can ensure that they are meeting regulatory and legal requirements and can quickly produce necessary documentation in the event of audits or disputes. The audit trail feature of matter management software makes it straightforward to understand who did what, and when. This proactive approach not only protects the organization from potential legal issues but also enhances its ability to respond effectively to any legal challenges that may arise.
Matter management software provides critical real-time data that helps legal teams articulate their impact and value within the organization. It helps legal teams quantify the number of legal requests they process, where additional resources are needed, and identify key trends. It offers legal leaders the transparency and visibility needed to monitor workloads, track progress, and engage in strategic business conversations.
Want to learn more? Keep reading here, or check out our more comprehensive guide to in-house legal matter management.
An effective matter management software solution should encompass several key features to ensure comprehensive and efficient handling of legal matters:
According to the 2023 Legal Technology Report for In-House Legal Professionals, 31% of non-GC in-house counsel, 43% of General Counsel/CLO, and 55% of legal operations professionals find matter management software to be the most effective legal technology for their role.
Matter management and case management are often used interchangeably, but they refer to different aspects of managing legal work.
Both matter management and case management address legal requests but serve different functions. Matter management is the superset and offers a broad view of all legal requests and work within an organization, including contract negotiations, regulatory compliance, intellectual property, and employment law. These legal requests are both transactional and litigation-related. Matter management software helps track tasks, monitor reviews, approvals, and other progress, collaborate with requestors, and more.
In contrast, case management is a subset of matter management and more narrowly focuses on any matters related to individual litigation cases, managing documents, deadlines, court requirements, and litigation-specific workflows. Case management matters are commonly outsourced by corporations to outside legal counsel and law firms.
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