To start-up and small legal firms, technology has never presented such an exciting opportunity and an overwhelming challenge. 

Just about every need of these nascent companies can be fulfilled by one software application or another, and with legal technology revenue set to reach over $25 billion USD by 2025, firms are faced with an overwhelming array of choices when it comes to building a technology stack.

Inevitably, as your firm grows, so too does your software roster, your software bill, and the risk your firm will grapple with disparate systems that cause more problems than they solve.

As da Vinci famously said, simplicity is the ultimate sophistication. The key to achieving a simple and efficient legal technology stack? Integrations - or tying your software applications together through a central legal technology platform like mattero. 

Here are four ways integrations can empower small firms.

1. Streamline Your Workflow

Gartner predicts that workflow automation will reduce IT costs by 30% within three years. Any startup or small legal firm should be aspiring for effective automation as they grow, and design their technology stack with this goal in mind.

Integration between your Microsoft 365 applications and your legal technology platform is a simple example of workflow efficiency. Creating documents from pre-filled templates, saving them automatically to matters and sharing them between staff securely in the cloud can power substantial time savings that compound as you grow.

Likewise, improving your workflow by integrating your legal and accounting software can reduce administration overheads. mattero’s integration with Xero allows you to synchronise contacts, invoices, payments and more with your legal CRM, giving you a centralised view of financial management.

2. Maintain Better Data

Accuracy is everything in the legal profession. As the custodians of masses of information, legal teams need confidence that their data is up-to-date, accurate and easily accessible as and when they need it. 

For many small firms, this realisation became abundantly clear as the COVID-19 pandemic thrust teams into new ways of working. Remote data access, sharing and security across all devices has become the minimum standard, requiring technology applications that can speak effectively to one another. 

Even simple integrations, such as those between your email provider and legal software, can help to close the loop on data management. Integrating your matter management tools with information tools like InfoTrack can go a step further to empower your team with accurate and accessible data from a central secure location.

3. Use Custom Forms and Templates

Reinventing the wheel every time your firm needs to generate a document is unnecessary, frustrating and inefficient. At the base level, your legal software should integrate with tools that allow you to create, save and share documents from flexible templates. 

For example, mattero’s Office 365 integration allows users to:

• Create drag and drop templates, documents, emails, files and folders
• Create blank Word, Excel and PowerPoint documents
• Edit Microsoft Office documents within the mattero application
• Preview PDFs in the mattero preview pane.

Better yet, these documents can be easily saved to a matter or contact and labelled with Document Tags for flexible sorting, filtering and classification.

4. Access Everything From One Location

Each of the integration use cases described in this article share a common theme; centrality. Working within a central platform that connects with an ecosystem of other applications is the key to a productive workflow, accuracy and quality.

As Thomson Reuters Technologist Joseph Raczynski notes in his article “What the heck is a legal platform & why does it matter now?", the heart of legal integration is:

“Integrating activity streams, teams, search, documents, billing dashboards, and the interconnectivity of applications that can create workflow and enhance productivity and efficiency, all in a secure cloud-based platform.”

A central place where your team can manage matters, documents, knowledge, finances and communications, all powered by best-in-class applications like Xero and Office 365, is a powerful accelerant for your firm’s early growth. Furthermore, a platform like mattero that empowers you to integrate your own preferred applications and platforms via Zapier will provide more flexibility, efficiency and customisation to your workflow.

To see how mattero’s flexible integrations can improve the performance of your small firm, you can get a free 14-day trial today.