A legal CRM (client relationship management system) is the record of every person and organisation a law firm deals with, how they relate to each other, and where each prospective piece of work stands. For a law firm it also has to connect to matters, conflicts and billing, because a client record that sits apart from the matter list goes stale.
Legal CRMs usually cover two jobs: contact management, meaning accurate records of clients, companies, opposing parties and referrers, and business development, meaning an opportunity pipeline, referral tracking and proposals.
In LawAOS, Contacts and Companies hold the records, with relationships, activity and notes. Intake carries the opportunity pipeline from Prospect to Won or Lost, with Referrals and Activities tabs, and Proposals sends engagement letters and fee proposals that convert to a matter when accepted.
- Relationships between records
- A contact can be linked to companies and to other contacts, so the firm can see who works where, who referred whom, and who is related to a party on a matter.
- A merge that moves the history
- Merging two contacts re-points their matters and invoices to the surviving record, so the merge does not leave orphaned billing history.
- Activity and notes on the record
- Activity and notes sit on the contact, so the next person to speak to the client has the context.
- One record for conflicts
- Conflict checks search contact names, companies and aliases, so a clean contact list makes conflict searches more reliable.
Partners doing business development need to see open opportunities, what stage each is at, and who is carrying it. The Intake pipeline shows Prospect, Initial Meeting, Proposal Sent, Negotiation, Won and Lost as an opportunity board, and the Referrals tab records where work came from.
Proposals covers the paperwork: Engagement Letter, Fee Agreement, Retainer Agreement, Proposal and Scope of Work, with statuses Draft, Sent, Viewed, Accepted, Declined and Expired. A proposal with no response for seven or more days is flagged, and the fee estimate can draw on the firm's comparable closed matters.
- Does the contact record link to matters and invoices, or does it need a sync?
- Can duplicates be merged without losing billing history?
- Do conflict checks search the same contact list?
- Can partners see opportunities by stage without a separate tool?
- Does accepting a proposal open the matter, or does someone retype it?
Record people and organisations
Add clients, referrers and other parties in Contacts and organisations in Companies, linking them with relationships.
See the moduleKeep companies connected
Organisations live in Companies, linked to the contacts who work there, so a corporate client reads as one relationship.
See the moduleTrack opportunities
New work enters the pipeline and moves from Prospect to Won or Lost, with referrals and activities logged on the Intake tabs.
See the moduleSend the proposal
Send an engagement letter or fee proposal by email on letterhead, track its status and follow up when it is flagged as unanswered.
See the moduleConvert to a matter
Accepting a proposal opens the matter in one step, with its folder and default tasks, linked to the existing contact.
See the module
Stated plainly, so you can decide before you sign up rather than after.
- Proposals are sent as a plain-text email attachment, not a PDF.
- There is no client-facing accept or sign link on a proposal; staff mark it Viewed or Accepted.
- LawAOS does not integrate with Slack or Zapier, and has no marketing email campaign tool.
- The LawAOS Switch importer brings in contacts, companies and matters from Clio, MyCase or PracticePanther exports or a CSV; a general firm-data importer is not yet shipped, so documents are uploaded and time, invoices and trust balances are not imported.
Anything the list leaves open, our team answers directly.