The evolution and future of CRM for law firms.

• Author: Weisberg, Jillion

Traditionally, firms have turned to customer relationship management (CRM) solutions to help them capture all of their contact information within a central location. However, CRM systems provided only contact information, not relationship information. So firms still struggled with fully understanding who knew whom, and how well, making it difficult to gauge the value of the relationship. Furthermore, these systems required manual updates, which proved time-consuming and cumbersome for attorneys. This resulted in outdated, unorganized and ineffective information.

Firms realized that if they were going to be able to effectively leverage relationship information to help them land new clients, close sales and research ideal cross-selling opportunities, they would need to completely overhaul their outdated CRM systems. They needed a system that would enable them to not only capture contact information, but also provide value for business development and marketing automation while still being accessible to attorneys.

With this, we started to see the evolution of CRM within the law firm. Though some firms are taking a more advanced approach than others, we're seeing the next generation of CRM emerge within three stages.

Stage 1: CRM to Determine Who We Know

Microsoft Outlook does a great job of making it easy to communicate with contacts without ever adding a contact into the attorney's address book. This creates a nightmare for CRM solutions, because firms are missing the opportunity to include these contacts in their CRM process. Hubbard One statistics show that more than 70 percent of a firm's contacts tend to exist in this manner.

Firms are realizing that to use their CRM system to capture not only "what they know" but also a complete picture of "whom they know," they need to integrate it with an enterprise relationship management (ERM) solution. Integrating CRM and ERM enables firms to automatically capture contact data from address books and email traffic logs and integrate it into their existing CRM system. They can then find missing contacts, insert them into the CRM process and measure relationship strength--namely how well their employees know clients and potential prospects--to help facilitate an important introduction.

Before pursuing a prospect, firms can determine if they have a strong existing relationship they can use to help open the door and get a meeting. Do they have a relationship with an existing client that is strong enough...