2019 Visalaw.ai Case Management Survey Report

• Publication year: 2020

Greg Siskind^*

Abstract: One of the most critical (and expensive) choices immigration lawyers must make in the management of their practices is the selection of case management software. While the software needs to handle basic functions like populating government forms and keeping track of client data, the demands of today's practice are forcing practitioners to look for a number of additional features and lean more heavily on their software vendors for support. And while the immigration bar is small compared to other areas of law, there are a large number of vendors providing immigration-customized products, as well as large general legal market vendors that are now targeting the immigration bar. Confusion abounds. The author has conducted a detailed survey of lawyers on their views of the various products in order to help members of AILA make more informed choices and presents his latest findings in this article.

In the spring of 2019, the author of this article conducted a market survey of immigration lawyer users of immigration case management systems. This was the follow-up to a similar survey conducted in 2018. In 2018, 178 individuals completed the 13-question survey. In 2019, an additional question was added and the number of people who responded to the survey increased to 219.¹

What was the point of the research? Case management software is central to an immigration lawyer's practice. Without it, cases would take considerably longer to prepare, the odds of mistakes (such as missed deadlines) would increase, and lawyers would have much less of an understanding of the state of their practice. Despite the small size of the immigration bar compared to other practice areas,² there are numerous immigration-specific case management products as well as general systems used by practitioners. The costs of a case management system can be one of the most expensive items in a law firm's budget. Yet in an age in which people rely on ratings from consumers to evaluate every major purchase—think of sites like TripAdvisor, Amazon, Yelp, and Angie's List—immigration lawyers have virtually no way of knowing what their fellow lawyers think of the available products. The author set out to help solve this problem.

The survey began by requesting demographic information regarding the law practices of each respondent, particularly the lawyer's type of immigration work and firm size.

The survey also attempted to determine the market share of each of the products. This was done in two ways—first based on the raw response, and then adjusted based on the size of the firms of the respondents.

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The author researched features and capabilities of dozens of general and immigration-specific case management systems in order to design questions that allowed respondents to get "into the weeds" as to their opinions of these products and to discuss their desires for specific new capabilities for their systems. The survey also delved into additional questions on subjects like pricing models and the preference for immigration-specific or customizing general case management systems.

Finally, while the author did not set out with this intention, he has come to realize that the survey can also benefit case management system vendors, and not just because some who ranked high will have bragging rights. In many cases, candid comments were received that may help vendors improve their products. And knowing what features lawyers really want versus what they hope they want can only be useful.

Findings

The following is a question-by-question analysis of the survey findings:

Q1: Which case management system do you use for immigration matters? If you use more than one system, pick the one primarily used for immigration forms management.
Respondents were asked to choose among the following options:
- Cerenade eImmigration Air
- INSZoom
- LawLogix
- Tracker
- BlueDot
- Prima Facie
- Lolly Law
- Clio
- Rocket Matter
- MyCase
- Time Matters
- Immigrant Pro
- ProLaw
- Amicus
- Practice Master
- Practice Panther
- Time Matters
- Abacus Law
- Docketwise
- Innovation Law Lab
- Salesforce
- Microsoft Dynamics
- Camp Legal
- Info Tems
- Other (with respondents requested to list the product)

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The selections included products listed in a 2016 American Immigration Lawyers Association (AILA) survey,³ as well as additional products the author has become aware of that are being used by immigration practitioners, including products people identified in the 2018 survey.

The popularity of the products can be measured based on the selection of each survey respondent. However, the second survey question was designed to provide a way to re-weight the responses to reflect overall user numbers by looking at the number of users in a respondent's firm or organization.

Q2: How many users does your firm currently have for your case management system? If possible, please specify how many are paralegals and how many are attorneys.

So, for example, if product X is used by five respondents and they have only two users per firm, but product Y is used by two respondents with 10 users per firm, then product Y is actually being used by twice as many users, even though the number of respondents was substantially fewer. Here is the unweighted tally from the 2019 survey:

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Product	Percent of respondents	Total
INSZoom	21%	45
Cerenade eImmigration Air	20%	42
LawLogix	15%	32
Tracker	7%	16
Docketwise	6%	12
Clio	6%	12
Immigrant Pro	6%	12
BlueDot	3%	7
MyCase	3%	6
Lolly Law	2%	4
Prima Facie	1%	3
Practice Panther	1%	3
Innovation Law Lab	1%	3
Time Matters	1%	2
ProLaw	0%	1
Abacus Law	0%	1
Salesforce	0%	1
Camp Legal	0%	1
Other	6%	12

The products listed by the respondents who did not see their product in the selection list were the following:

- Custom-made systems
- Google Drive
- MyKWA
- Adobe Acrobat Pro and USCIS.gov forms
- Smokeball
- Sunapsis (a university-targeted product)

Weighted by number of users, the results are as follows:

Product	Responses4	Total number of users
INSZoom	45	627 (average: 4.6 lawyers/9.3 staff)
LawLogix	32	441 (average: 5.34 lawyers/8.43 staff)
Tracker	16	267 (average: 5.87 attorneys/10.81 staff)5
Cerenade eImmigration Air	42	215 (average: 2.88 lawyers/2.2 staff)
Clio	12	72 (average: 2.25 attorneys/3.75 staff)
BlueDot	7	48 (average: 2.71 attorneys/ 4.14 staff)
Immigrant Pro	12	31 (average: 2.83 attorneys/2.08 staff)
Docketwise	12	29 (average: 1.66 attorneys/.75 staff)
Lolly Law	4	24 (average: 2.5 attorneys/3.5 staff)
Time Matters	2	24 (average: 12 attorneys/0 staff)
Sunapsis	3	21 (average: 1.66 attorneys/5.33 staff)
Prima Facie	3	17 (average: 2 attorneys/ 3.66 staff)
MyCase	6	14 (average: 1.83 attorneys/0.5 staff)
Innovation Law Lab	3	9 (average: 2 attorneys/3 staff)
Google Drive	2	6 (average: 2 attorneys/1 staff)
Practice Panther	3	6 (average: 1.66 attorneys/.33 staff)

Firm sizes varied. In 2018, most products in the survey were used by firms in the one- to four-attorney range, which is consistent with the AILA Marketplace study from 2019 showing that approximately 76 percent of AILA members are in firms with three or fewer lawyers. This year, the firms at the top also had a somewhat larger average attorney size, which may reflect the growth of immigration practices. Readers may find the average size and attorney/paralegal data useful as a possible indicator of what type of firm is typically using each product.

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Q3: What type of cases does your firm handle? Check all that apply.

Respondents were given the following options:

- Family matters
- Business, investor, and employment matters
- Asylum matters
- Removal matters
- I-9 and E-Verify matters
- Other types of immigration matters

Respondents answered as follows:

Answer choices	Response percentage	Number of responses
Family matters	87%	187
Business, investor, and employment matters	71%	154
Asylum matters	53%	114
Removal matters	56%	120
I-9 and E-Verify matters	27%	58
Other types of immigration matters	44%	95

The data were largely consistent with 2018 except that the percentage of respondents handling asylum matters increased by 5 percent and those handling removal matters increased by 12 percent. Most respondents practice family immigration as well as handle employment matters.

Q4: On a scale from 1 (not important) to 5 (extremely important), please rate how you regard each of the following case management features. If you are not sure, please leave that rating box blank.

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Feature	Average score
Creating government forms and saving client information in them	4.54
Creating customized reports	3.66
Suggested case checklists and process steps that are customizable	3.69
A client portal allowing clients to complete online intake forms that flow into government forms, upload/download documents, make payments, etc.	3.90
The ability to send mass emails to clients based on set criteria (nationality, case...