Practice Areas
Practice areas will be used in a few integral ways in your account. They will be used in your automations to make sure that potential clients are getting forms, documents, and email specific to their case. You will also be able to track the number of potential clients entering the CRM by practice area and conversion rates by practice area on our Analytics page.
Practice areas are also used for automatically assigning specific folder groups for managing your matters' various files.
First and foremost, you will need to create a list of your firm's practice areas in Lawmatics. Please follow the instructions below to add your practice areas:
- Go to your settings page in Lawmatics
- Select Practice Areas on the left of your screen
- Click the Add New Practice Area button at the bottom of the screen
- Select a practice area from the list or Create Custom Practice Area at the top of the list
- Select a color can click Save
When adding your practice areas, you generally want to be specific enough to a point that will be insightful for your firm's breakdown of different practice areas. For example, if your firm only handles family law cases, you will likely want to create a different practice area for each specific type of family law like Adoption, Divorce, etc.
There is no exact right or wrong way to divide up your practice areas, it really just depends on how they will be used at your firm. The rule of thumb is that if you want to be able to separate an automated workflow, report, intake form, document, etc for a specific type of case, then that should be created as its own practice area.
Once you have created your practice areas, you then have the option to create folder groups. These groups pertain to a specific practice area so that when a matter is created of that practice area, the system knows to automatically create the appropriate folders for that matter's files. This is optional, if your firm does not often deal with file storage then this may not be something that applies to you.
If you do wish to use folder groups, simply click the button to add a new folder group, and then make your selections as shown below.
As shown above, you can create as many folders as you need within this particular group. You also have the option to apply this group to more than one practice area, which is useful for areas that involve similar types of files. Once you have saved your folder, you will then see it listed in your folder groups where you can edit, delete, or copy it as needed.
FAQ's
What will the practice area be used for in Lawmatics?
It is essentially used as a way to label the type of case for each of your matters. Once you have matters labelled as their appropriate practice area, then it can be used to filter reports, trigger & segment automations, send appropriate correspondence, etc.
Can I import in my practice areas from my old CRM?
Yes, when importing matters you can use the column header practice_area on your spreadsheet to include practice areas in your import. When you run the import, the system will match the practice areas you import with the practice areas that have already been created in Lawmatics, and any that do not match will be created as a new practice area.
How do I set the practice area on a matter?
When viewing a matter's profile, you will see the practice area label near the top right corner. Click the edit pencil icon (to the right of the words Practice Area) to set the practice area.