What to expect from a Legal Matter Management System

Understanding Legal Matter Management

‘Legal Matter Management’ generally refers to the effort of coordinating the tasks and information related to the handling of a legal case, or a matter. A ‘Legal Matter Management System’ (LMMS) aims to support this effort. Its primary aim is to store and make accessible information and documents, reduce inefficiencies, mitigate risks, and track progress.

Key Features of a Legal Matter Management System

The key functionalities of a LMMS can be summarized as follows:

• Metadata Management and Reporting: Arguably the core feature of any LMMS is the storage of structured data on legal matters, such as the type of legal matter, involved stakeholders, status, due dates, importance or risk-level, etc. Having structured data available in turn informs various types of reporting on current and past activities of the legal department.
• Document Management: Storing documents allocated to a matter is another core functionality. Pre-defined folder structures or document categories facilitate coherent document management. Version control, locking documents for editing and parallel editing are further features to be expected.
• Task Management & Due Date Tracking: An LMMS should always provide for comprehensive due date tracking and task management capabilities, notifying inhouse counsel of upcoming key dates relating to the matter and giving users the ability to assign tasks to colleagues and check on their completion easily. Setting up due dates with either personal, team-wide or matter-wide effect is powerful – and generative AI can even allow for an automatic extraction of potential due dates from uploaded documents.
• Intake, self-service and workflow automation: Advanced LMMS can be opened to internal customers and allow them to place a legal service request directly from a portal side (a.k.a. Legal Front Door), ideally being offered self-service applications while doing so. But legal-internal workflows matter just as much. Whether it is running through checklists or obtaining internal approvals on documents produced (or reviewed) by the legal department, automated workflows help reduce administrative work and focus on the higher value task of legal analysis.
• AI-empowered Search & Filter: The ability to search and filter through the information and documents in a LMMS turns matter management into effortless knowledge management – if the access rights grant sufficient visibility. Full-text search across documents is a given, modern solutions also allow for semantic search capabilities. The latest addition to search capabilities are genAI-powered chatbots which can make the contents of a LMMS accessible in a way that was not possible before: Imagine receiving answers with direct links to documents or matters to questions such as “Have we ever had a matter that has dealt with a product liability case before? If so, show me.” or “Where did the claimant in case 1234 A 2025 argue that the liability limitation clause was null and void, and with what arguments?”
• Collaboration and Communication: LMMS can offer collaboration and communication tools that help reduce e-mail traffic and make communication happen directly in the context of the work. Being able to communicate via chat / comments allocated to a matter or document are standard functionalities. Whether these communication channels, and indeed collaboration via the LMMS in general, extend also to external users, such as external legal advisors or even counterparties, is often a question of policy but should not be limited by technical restrictions. Even in the presence of alternative communication channels, e-mail is still a predominant communication tool in the legal world. Most LMMS offer a plugin for standard e-mail clients that (semi-) automatically imports matter-related e-mails into the system.
• Legal Spend Management: Managing external legal spend is a further functionality offered by many LMMS. Keeping track of budgets and processing e-invoices are the typical features. More advanced systems can even compare invoices against e.g. billing guidelines or commitments made in the engagement letter with the external law-firm using generative AI.
• Document automation or template management: Some LMMS provide for separate management of document templates, sometimes also offering automated generation of individualized documents from a dynamic template.
• Time Tracking: Some LMMS also help track the time spent by inhouse-teams on a legal matter.
  

Below all of the above lies an access rights management and a detailed audit trail as well as a data retention concept and support compliance with data protection laws.

Further considerations

The cost of acquiring and operating a LMMS is an obvious further factor to consider, as are technical requirements regarding data security, service levels or hosting location (in case of a cloud-hosted LMMS).

The integration of the LMMS into the existing IT landscape of an organization is another topic – and it is not limited to single sign-on. LMMS can integrate with contract lifecycle management systems, with a separate legal service request intake system or with systems providing information on legal entities both within and outside of the organization. In fact, while some LMMS are strictly focused on legal matter management, other solutions on the market offer multi-purpose functionality including additional components such as contract, legal entity or IP asset management, which can be very attractive from the integration standpoint but also be a challenge if there is too much overlap with existing solutions in the organization.

And, of course, there is the make-or-buy decision. Deloitte Legal has supported clients such as Merck KGaA (press release) and E.ON SE (press release) in developing their very own solutions.
 

Conclusion: Harnessing the power of a legal matter management system

Modern Legal Matter Management Systems offer many helpful functionalities that can significantly increase the efficiency of the legal department and help in-house lawyers focus their time on their core value contribution to the organization: Rendering excellent, practical legal advice.
As tempting as it may seem to treat the implementation of a LMMS as a ‘technology project’ and focusing on finding the right software, our strong recommendation is to spend at least the same amount of time and effort on making sure that your legal department is fully empowered to use the new system, not just via trainings but through a comprehensive hyper care phase in the first weeks after go-live. Storing documents in a new environment, switching from sending e-mails to commenting within the matter or document, or even asking a chatbot for help on locating information in the system will not come naturally to everyone – the real value of a Legal Matter Management System lies in using it consistently.
 

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Published: October 2024