Category guide
Three categories, three records, and a boundary that vendors describe loosely. Here is what each one does, how to decide which system owns which record, and what to ask any vendor before you buy.
A firm shopping for software hears three phrases. Law firm CRM. Legal intake software. Practice management. Vendors use all three, sometimes for the same product, and a demo rarely makes the boundary clear.
The boundary matters for one reason. Each category wants to hold a record, and two systems holding the same record is where the cost shows up later. Someone retypes. Someone opens a matter twice.
This guide says what each category does, how to decide which system owns which record, and what to ask any vendor. We are new to working with law firms and say so on every page of this site. Nothing here is advice about your practice or your professional obligations.
A law firm CRM holds people and relationships before there is a matter: prospective clients, referral sources, and past clients who might come back. Buyers searching for legal CRM software usually mean this category.
Common features are contact records, lead sources, stages, follow-up sequences and reporting on where signed work came from.
The record it owns is the relationship. Its job is that no inquiry and no referral source is forgotten.
Legal intake software holds one process: turning an inquiry into a decision. It covers the web form, the phone call, the qualifying questions, the consultation booking, the conflict question and the engagement agreement.
Common features are intake forms, web and call capture, routing by matter type, scheduling, document generation, e-signature, and stages from inquiry through signed or declined.
The record it owns is the inquiry, from first contact to a decision. It usually stops where a signed client becomes an open matter.
Some vendors sell intake and a law firm CRM as one product. Others sell two under one brand, with two subscriptions and two logins. Read the order form before you trust the category name.
Practice management holds the matter after the firm has taken the work. It is the system the firm runs on. Common features are matters, documents, calendaring and deadlines, tasks, time entry, billing, trust accounting, and conflict searching across existing matters and contacts.
The record it owns is the matter and the money attached to it. In most firms this system has to be right, because deadlines and bills come out of it. It is also the hardest to move, so it usually wins the argument about who owns a record once a matter exists.
| Law firm CRM | Legal intake software | Practice management | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Owns | The relationship | The inquiry and the decision on it | The matter and the billing |
| Main users | Owner, marketing, business development | Intake staff, the approving attorney | Attorneys, paralegals, billing staff |
| Starts at | First contact or a referral | An inquiry arrives | The firm takes the work |
| Answers | Where does our work come from | What is this inquiry waiting on | What is due, what is billed, who is conflicted |
A product can sit in two of these columns. The trouble starts when two separate products sit in the same column and both accept edits.
Pick one system for each record type and write the list down. The system of truth for a record is the one where a person does the work that changes it.
| Record | Usually owned by | Why |
|---|---|---|
| Prospective client details | Intake or CRM | Staff edit them while chasing a reply |
| Lead source and marketing spend | CRM | Nobody updates that inside a matter file |
| Conflict check result | Practice management | It searches existing matters and contacts |
| Engagement decision | Wherever the attorney makes it | The record belongs where the decision happens |
| Signed engagement agreement | The document system the firm trusts | Everything else links to it |
| Matter, deadlines, time and billing | Practice management | The bill and the calendar depend on it |
One record, one owner, one direction. If two systems both accept edits to the same field, someone has to decide which was right, usually on a deadline and from memory.
A copy is fine when everyone knows it is the copy. A read-only view of matter status inside the intake tool is useful. A second editable status is a future argument.
A signed client becomes an open matter with the right matter type, permissions and billing arrangement. Done by a person retyping, it happens late and differently each time. Done by a connection, the question becomes what happens on a retry, because a connection that runs twice can open the matter twice.
A stage called won or closed inside a CRM is a pipeline status. Taking the work is an attorney's decision at your firm. The two look alike in a report and differ in every way that counts. Keep the decision as its own recorded step, with a name and a time on it.
Our intake workflow scorecard scores these seams one at a time, so you can see which to fix first.
Bring these to every demo, ours included, and write the answers down.
The American Bar Association's Formal Opinion 512, issued on 29 July 2024, names competence, confidentiality, informed consent and fees as responsibilities to consider when generative AI is used in legal work. Ask the vendor clearly enough that your firm can answer that question for itself.
Sometimes. Plenty of products do both. The useful test is what happens after someone signs. A product that stops at the signed agreement is doing intake. One that keeps working the relationship for years is doing CRM.
Possibly you do not. Check whether the built-in intake covers your matter types and routing, whether its reporting answers the questions your owner asks, and whether one login beats the best-fitting product in each category.
Yes, and firms do. A general CRM is built around contacts, pipelines and email. Matters, trust accounting and conflict searching stay in the practice-management system, so the result depends on the connection between the two.
Split the question at the moment the firm takes the work. Before it, the intake or CRM side holds the person's details. After it, practice management holds the record the bill and the calendar depend on.
Take the two tables and the vendor questions into any conversation, including one where you keep every system you run today. That is often the right answer.
If you want a second read, we map one handoff after a discovery call and say where a connection is worth building and where configuration you already pay for would do the job. We are new to legal and have not built a system for a law firm yet. You keep the map either way.