Are you a lawyer in need of a more organized way to communicate with clients? Slack is a secure messaging program that was designed specifically to make communication efforts simple, fast, and organized. Slack can be accessed through a browser, or through its app.
Lawyers still use email as a way to professionally communicate with their legal clients. It is a communication method that law firms often use to maintain a professional relationship and securely send messages and documents. Though emails are easy to send, they quickly become messy, making it difficult to track and manage emails regarding clients’ cases.
If you are interested in a more organized way to communicate with clients, continue to read this article.
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How Does Slack Work?
Businesses sign up for a plan on Slack depending on their needs as a business. There is a free, pro, and business plan. Of course, the business plan is the most expensive plan, however, it has the most features that will allow lawyers and law firms to communicate efficiently with their clients.
Here is how slack works:
- Download the slack app
- Sign up for a plan that best fits the needs of your law firm
- Invite employees and clients
Once you invite employees and clients, you can easily communicate with one another. Law firms can benefit from Slack and its effective features. Slack allows law firms to increase productivity, efficiently communicate with clients and employees, automate workflows, get organized, and save important legal documents.
Slack for Lawyers
Slack is an easy-to-use, easy-to-learn communication app. Law firms can use the app to communicate with clients, internally collaborate, and create channels that are public to those who have been invited for specific cases and situations. Here is why lawyers should utilize Slack for their law firms.
Increase Productivity
Slack is a collaboration tool for lawyers to increase productivity throughout their law firms. According to Slack, the app enables businesses to bring products to the market 23% faster, reduce email usage by 32%, and reduce meetings by 23%. As lawyers spend a majority of their time sending, reading, and managing emails, these are important numbers to consider as emails can easily take over your workday.
Lawyers can dedicate more time to legal activities if they implement Slack into their workday. How does Slack increase productivity for lawyers? With Slack, there are many different ways to communicate with clients. Law firms can create a single “channel” for each client where all of their communication efforts can take place. Instead of emailing back and forth about a question or a document, send a message in the client’s Slack channel where you can also include documents and files. All messages and documents can be viewed or saved when needed. Only those who have been invited to the channel have access to the conversation and the documents within the conversation.
This reduces the number of times lawyers and employees search through emails to read, respond, and reference past conversations. Additionally, law firms can quickly search for a channel, conversation, or document within their workspace.
Communicate Efficiently
If you are currently working as a lawyer, or for a law firm office, you have realized that lawyers never clock out of work. Even when they are out of the office, they are responding to emails, phone calls, and text messages. They are constantly collaborating with clients, witnesses, employees, colleagues, etc. There are many ways they can communicate for work purposes, and conversations quickly get lost. This can become confusing, and with the workload lawyers have, they often need to refer back emails.
Slack for lawyers provides legal professionals with a simple, unified communication source. Lawyers can create internal channels as well as external channels to communicate with both employees and clients.
For example, a criminal law lawyer needs to communicate with their law firm team regarding a high-profile case. They discuss the case daily, sharing thoughts, documents, the latest news, etc. To safely and effectively communicate with one another so that each employee is involved and receives messages instantly, they create a private channel called “high-profile-jane-doe.”
This ensures the entire team is on the same page at all times and can refer back to the channel if necessary.
On the other hand, law firms can communicate with their clients by creating external channels and sending an invite to their emails. Clients can download the Slack app so that they receive notifications once a message is sent to them.
For example, a law firm creates a channel for their client called “#jane-doe.” They would then connect with the client by sending an invite to their email. When the law firm needs to touch base with Jane Doe, they locate the clients’ connection channel on the Slack app and simply mention them within the channel. If the law firm needs to confirm an appointment that was set up for the client, they would go to the Slack app, find the channel, and the message would go as follows “@JaneDoe, we have scheduled you at [location] on [date] at [time.] We look forward to meeting with you.” The client would then receive a notification where they can respond and ask questions. With Slack, law firm businesses avoid lengthy, messy emails, and avoid the possibility of emails getting lost.
Automate Workflows
While Slack has great communication tools, it also has tools that will allow law firm businesses to automate workflows. Slack has a Workflow Builder to send requests, questions, reminders, and tasks. Using the slack automated workflow tools allows you to work efficiently and communicate with your employees effectively. In this regard, you can easily send reminders and requests using an organized workflow tool.
Additionally, lawyers and law firm managers can set automated reminders and follow-ups to law firm employees regarding important dates and incomplete tasks. When employees don’t take action on the reminders and follow-ups, Slack will notify the manager of the Slack workspace.
Lawyers can send reminders, tasks, and requests while keeping track of them to notify law firm employees throughout the process of completion. This allows lawyers to focus on their legal clients, instead of worrying about tasks that need to be completed by employees and assistants.
Slack Lawyer Rules
There are many rules and regulations while working in the legal industry. It is important to make sure lawyers are following their jurisdiction rules. Fortunately, Slack is aware of these rules and supports eDiscovery. Lawyers can download all files and messages from Slack prior to storing them in a cloud or alternative storage space.
Slack Integrations for Law Firms
There are different Slack integrations that law firms can benefit from to make workload faster and easier. Have all of your most-used software in one place and speed up the process of legal research. The following apps and software can be integrated with Slack:
Connect with Agencies
Creating a Slack account is a great way to not only connect with employees and clients but also connect with outside resources. Many external employers may already have a Slack account so you can easily communicate with one another and ensure things are running smoothly. For example, many law firms hire an IT specialist, marketing agency, website builder, or content creator to further the progress of their legal business. Law firms have many different roles that are crucial for the success of their business, and oftentimes they need to hire outside resources. Slack is a great way to organize conversations with outside employees as well.
Slack for Lawyers Recap
When lawyers utilize Slack, they can focus on clients and spend their time on larger tasks, while their law firm employees tackle the small, time-consuming tasks. Slack allows lawyers to manage and assign tasks to their employees and is a great way to communicate amongst team members, outside employees, and clients. Run your legal business smoothly with the help of Slack.
