Legal management software is the set of tools a law firm runs its work on: intake, matters, documents, billing and client contact. Buy it by job, not by brand, and you pay only for the jobs your firm actually does.
The stack below is sorted by job, and five seats are priced from each vendor's own pricing page. One job gets added that the suites leave out: knowing which channel produced each matter. Every price below is a US list price, read on 8 November 2026.
Which jobs does legal management software cover?
There are five jobs. Most firms need four of them, and each comes with a one-line test.
- Intake forms: the questions a prospect answers before the first consultation. You need a tool for this if enquiries arrive as free-text emails that someone retypes.
- Matters and documents: the file, deadlines, tasks and drafts for each case. You need this once more than one person touches a file.
- Time and invoices: hours, bills and trust accounting. You need this the day you bill by the hour.
- Client portal: a login where clients see progress and swap files. You need this if status calls eat your week.
- Source tracking: which search, campaign, directory or referral produced each matter. You need this the moment you pay for any marketing.
The suites fight hard over the first four. The fifth sits upstream of all of them. It decides where next quarter's marketing money goes.
Case management or practice management?
Case management runs the matter itself: the file, the deadlines and the documents. Practice management wraps the business around it, usually adding time, billing and a client portal. Vendors use the two names loosely, so read the plan contents, not the label.
A sole practitioner with a handful of flat-fee matters can live on case management and a separate invoicing tool. A firm with paralegals, hourly billing and trust money wants the wider suite, because retyping time entries between two systems is where errors breed. The test is dull and reliable. Count how often the same fact gets typed twice.
Which plan tier includes intake forms and the portal?
This is where list prices mislead. The entry tier often lacks the very feature that sent you shopping.
On MyCase's pricing page, client intake forms and the Legal CRM sit in Pro and Advanced only. Basic has a limited client portal and no intake forms, per the same MyCase pricing page. Docketwise puts CRM and lead management in its Pro plan, as listed on its pricing page. Lawmatics publishes no prices at all, according to its pricing page. Its Essential and Premium plans need three users and Enterprise needs five, all by custom quote.
| Vendor | Entry tier | Tier with intake or CRM | Price published? |
|---|---|---|---|
| MyCase | Basic: limited portal, no intake forms | Pro and Advanced | Yes |
| Docketwise | Basic | Pro (CRM and lead management) | Yes, billing term not labeled |
| Lawmatics | Essential, three-user minimum | All plans, by quote | No |
| Clio | Not recorded | Not recorded | Page could not be read |
Clio's pricing page could not be read when this was written, so Clio appears without a price rather than with a guessed one.
What do five seats really cost?
Per-user pricing multiplies fast. A lawyer, two paralegals and two intake staff make five seats, and each one bills every month.
MyCase prices each active user per month, as listed on its pricing page on 8 November 2026. Billed annually, Basic is $50, Pro $100 and Advanced $130. Billed monthly, they are $60, $120 and $150. Docketwise shows two figures per tier on its pricing page on the same date. Basic is $80 or $90, Pro $100 or $120, and Advanced $120 or $140. The page does not say which figure is annual.
| Plan | Per user per month | Five seats for a year |
|---|---|---|
| MyCase Basic | $50 annual, $60 monthly | $3,000 to $3,600 |
| MyCase Pro | $100 annual, $120 monthly | $6,000 to $7,200 |
| MyCase Advanced | $130 annual, $150 monthly | $7,800 to $9,000 |
| Docketwise Basic | $80 or $90 | $4,800 to $5,400 |
| Docketwise Pro | $100 or $120 | $6,000 to $7,200 |
| Docketwise Advanced | $120 or $140 | $7,200 to $8,400 |
| Lawmatics | Quote only | Ask for a five-seat quote |
The yearly figures are a calculation: five seats times the listed monthly price times twelve months, from list prices read on 8 November 2026. Read the table with the tier question in mind. If you need intake forms on MyCase, the real floor is Pro, so five seats start at $6,000 a year, not $3,000. Ask every vendor whether intake staff need full seats. That one answer moves the total more than any discount.
Do law firms need a CRM as well as case management?
Only if prospects take weeks to sign. A legal CRM tracks the enquiry before it becomes a matter: follow-ups, consultations and who has gone quiet. Case management starts once there is a client.
Plenty of suites now bundle a CRM into a higher tier, as MyCase and Docketwise do. That makes the decision a tier question rather than a second product. The CRM half brings its own buying questions, such as seat minimums and who fills in each field. The legal CRM guide takes those one at a time.
How do you know which marketing produced each matter?
Record the source at the form, when the enquiry arrives. That is the one moment the visit and the person sit in the same place.
Lead source tracking does that job. Lead Source is one line of code in your site header. It covers every form on every page, including intake forms built in other tools. The form tracking page shows what each submission records. Each enquiry arrives with its channel, campaign, landing page and form, and with both first and last touch. A directory listing, a Google Business Profile click and a paid search campaign each get their own line in the report.
It is not case management, billing or a CRM, and it does not pretend to be. Leads leave through the Zapier app, signed webhooks or CSV export, so the source lands on the record in whatever system you choose. The law firm use case shows how a firm compares channels by signed matters rather than clicks. If the gap is reply time rather than attribution, the speed to lead page covers that half.
How should a firm choose in one afternoon?
- List the five jobs and mark the ones your firm does today.
- For each vendor on your list, find the cheapest tier that covers every marked job.
- Count real seats, including intake staff, and price a year at that tier.
- Ask each quote-only vendor for the same five-seat figure in writing.
- Pick the report you will read in six months, signed matters by channel, and confirm the new system has a field to hold the channel.
Step five works only if the channel is recorded before the matter exists, which is the tracking layer above. The lead capture software page covers the forms side if your current site form is a blank message box.