5 powerful use cases for in-house legal matter management software

If you're leading an in-house legal team, you already feel the pressure. Legal requests keep piling up, but budgets remain flat — or even shrink. You’re expected to handle an ever-growing workload efficiently, minimizing outside counsel costs while ensuring compliance, mitigating risk, and keeping business operations moving. Meanwhile, legal intake and triage remain chaotic, communication is scattered across emails and messaging apps, and tracking key deadlines can feel like a constant struggle.

Whether you realize it or not, you're already managing legal matters — but are your current methods working for you or against you?

Matter management software is designed to transform in-house legal operations by streamlining request intake, consolidating communications, automating workflows, and delivering actionable insights. With the right legal technology in place, legal teams can eliminate bottlenecks, reduce turnaround times, and provide greater transparency to business stakeholders.

In-house legal matter management software can help your team work smarter — not harder. Here are the top ways efficient in-house legal teams are using it and the features that enable them.

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5 key uses of matter management software 

1. Comprehensive intake of all legal requests

Traditionally, legal department intake has focused primarily on contract management. But in-house teams handle everything from compliance and licensing reviews to HR and employment issues, so keeping track of all legal requests, not just contracts, is crucial. By consolidating various legal inquiries into a single platform, legal teams can prioritize and manage workloads more effectively while significantly reducing inefficiencies.

Features that matter:

• Integrations: Seamless integration with tools like email, Slack, Salesforce, and contract lifecycle management software ensures that all legal requests, regardless of origin, are captured and centralized.
• User-friendly legal request portal: A portal that allows business stakeholders to easily submit requests encourages system adoption so no request is overlooked. It also increases the likelihood that lawyers receive necessary information on the spot.

2. Centralized communication

Effective communication is the backbone of successful legal operations. An effective central hub creates a single source of truth for legal matters and ensures information is accessible and organized, reducing the risk of miscommunication. This approach allows business stakeholders to continue using their preferred tools, such as Slack and email, while capturing all communications within the legal matter management system and reducing the need for back-and-forth emails and phone calls.Features that matter:

• Tagged comments: Legal professionals can tag specific issues or individuals, facilitating organized discussions with internal and external stakeholders.
• Document sharing and approvals: Managing documents and kicking off approvals within the platform streamlines the review process.
• User-friendly interface: An intuitive interface ensures all business stakeholders can navigate the system efficiently.
• Single sign-on and access controls: These options make it easy for colleagues to log into the system and enhance security by ensuring that only authorized personnel can access sensitive information.

3. Legal workflow automation

‍Automation is a game-changer for legal departments aiming to increase efficiency. By configuring request workflows to align with existing processes, in-house legal teams can handle matters more consistently and swiftly.Features that matter:

• Custom triggers and actions: Create automated review or task assignments based on specific criteria.
• Ability to add followers, send notifications, and schedule reminders: Keep all relevant parties informed without manual intervention.
• No-code configuration: Set up and modify legal workflows without the need for IT support.

4. Legal matter lifecycle optimization

Efficiently managing the lifecycle of legal matters — from triage to resolution — is crucial. Optimizing this process ensures that resources are allocated appropriately and that high-priority issues receive immediate attention while minimizing the risk of delays. Once you’ve implemented a system and begun tracking the most obvious requests and processes, you can use more advanced features to find items that may be slipping through the cracks.Features that matter:

• Smart triage workflows: Automatically route legal requests to the appropriate team members based on predefined criteria.
• Automatic sorting and unified request list: View a comprehensive list of all active matters sorted by priority or deadline.
• Time tracking at each step: Identify bottlenecks by monitoring the time spent on each phase of the legal matter lifecycle.

5. Continuous process improvement

Leveraging insights and metrics from matter management software enables legal departments to continually refine their operations. This data-driven approach can help prove the legal team’s value to leadership, build the case for additional resources, and forecast future capacity.Features that matter:

• Dashboard visualizations and live snapshots: Quickly view real-time insights into the status of legal matters.
• Reporting and analytics: Generate detailed reports on key performance indicators, such as time-to-close, response time, and request volume, to facilitate informed decision-making.
• Trend analysis and volume projections: Anticipate future workloads and resource needs.

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See smart legal matter management in action

Implementing a comprehensive legal matter management system transforms how in-house legal teams operate. By embracing these use cases and leveraging the associated features, in-house teams can drive efficiency, transparency, and strategic decision-making within the legal department.

‍Learn how Streamline AI's legal matter management solution can enhance legal operations.