Best productivity apps for lawyers

Hard work is the key to success. However, when most of that work consists of non-billable hours, it can be challenging to stay focused and motivated. Since lawyers spend almost 50% of their time on mundane tasks, such as office administration, their productivity can take a severe hit. As a result, an average law firm loses millions in revenue annually.

Fortunately, digital tools can help a law firm streamline tedious manual processes and improve the overall workflow. As apps play such a significant role, we’ve compiled a list of the best productivity apps for lawyers and legal professionals.

The apps lawyers should use right now

Using productivity apps will help lawyers get the tedious processes out of the way faster, leaving them more time to focus on client-facing tasks. Since these tasks are more meaningful, they are directly related to job satisfaction and feelings of accomplishment and productivity.

Here are nine productivity apps that lawyers will love.

Dropbox

Dropbox is a powerful productivity app that offers multiple time management tools.

With Dropbox, lawyers can easily share legal documents and work on them in real time. Dropbox Paper is an excellent project management tool that lets you assign roles and set due dates on a specific project. This way, all team members can work in sync. If you need to send some important documents to clients for signature, you can grant them access to those specific files.

Dropbox also offers integrations with other valuable productivity software and apps, such as Zapier, Trello, and Salesforce.

Evernote

Evernote is an excellent note-taking app that can help lawyers capture and arrange their ideas. They can use this digital library to collect critical business documents like invoices and business cards. Plus, lawyers can take notes that can help their case management.

Since this library can grow rather quickly, you can use tags to make documents easier to locate. Also, you can file them into individual notebooks to help you stay organized. These notebooks can then be used to onboard new team members at the law firm, educate law school students, and share client information.  

Fastcase

Fastcase offers a collection of cloud-based software tools to encourage smart legal practice, including:

• Fastcase: an extensive law library used for legal research

• Casemaker: contains legal digests

• Law Street Media: offers legal news

• AI Sandbox: a custom AI tool with data feeds

• Docket Alarm: offers one-click analytics

• Next Chapter: an automation tool

Clio

Clio is law practice management software packed with features to help navigate daily workflow and run a law firm more efficiently. This valuable software is a leader in the legal industry, as it helps lawyers every step of the way. Some of the tasks include:

• Client intake

• Time tracking

• Document management

• Legal calendaring

• Task management

• Billing

Feedly

Feedly is a news aggregator app that compiles news from various online sources. Although not initially designed as a legal app, Feedly can benefit law professionals by filtering out unimportant information and creating a practical legal knowledge base.

The collected content can be used for research, competitor analysis, and marketing. To help lawyers stay organized, this app allows them to tag articles and group them into streams. In addition, lawyers can quickly share this content across social media, ensuring they always stay on top of trending topics.

Slack

Slack is a top-rated app that many law firms are turning to for communication. It can integrate with several other apps and plug-ins, enabling you to automate cumbersome legal work like legal research.

Slack can also streamline costly legal research processes. You can set up an RSS feed to monitor precedents for new citations and discuss them with colleagues and case stakeholders in a dedicated Slack room. Best of all, you can do all this remotely.

iAnnotate

iAnnotate is an IOS app that you can use to review and annotate documents. This handy app allows you to sync documents from various online sources, including Dropbox, Google Drive, and OneDrive. Besides quickly processing files from different sources, you can share specific files with colleagues and clients.

GoodReader

GoodReader is a professional PDF reader app that allows you to create, edit, annotate, and convert your files quickly and efficiently. This app is an excellent option for reviewing your documents electronically. Plus, it syncs with Dropbox directly, allowing you to store vital legal case documents safely.

Speechify

According to the American Bar Association, text to speech (TTS) apps can be a valuable asset for legal professionals. As the name suggests, these apps convert digital text to audio files, which can benefit lawyers in several ways. Speechify is one of the leading TTS apps on the market, thanks to its many helpful features.

For starters, this great app is available across all major platforms on computers, tablets, and mobile devices. If you’re an Apple user, you can download a Speechify app for your Mac or visit the App Store for the iPad and iPhone versions. Android users can rely on a handy mobile app, while Windows users get a trusty Chrome extension.

Regardless of which version of Speechify you use, you’ll be able to work with various file formats, including PDFs, Google docs, and Microsoft Office suite files. Thanks to an optical character recognition functionality, you can also extract text from images, making reading printed legal documents hassle-free.

You can also export your audio files, allowing you to listen to them on the go. All these incredible features allow lawyers to:

• Improve understanding and retention of data

• Save time and multitask

• Manage their documents more efficiently

• Review documents automatically

Try Speechify – The text to speech productivity app for lawyers

Thanks to the abundance of tools at your disposal, boosting productivity has never been easier. You can start taking advantage of all text to speech has to offer today by downloading the free version of Speechify.

FAQ

What do lawyers use to track their time?

Lawyers use management software with built-in time-tracking functionality to track time.

Do lawyers use OneNote?

Lawyers use the OneNote app. In fact, it’s one of the best apps for lawyers operating a Microsoft Office environment.

Is Excel useful for lawyers?

Excel can be useful for lawyers. They typically use it to crunch financial data or track billable hours manually.

What is an example of a law-related app?

Many apps were designed with law professionals in mind, including Fastcase and ABA Journal.

What are some alternatives for Evernote?

Individuals looking for worthy Evernote alternatives should consider Microsoft OneNote, Notion, and Zoho Notebook.