Choosing the Right Legal Software for Your Non-Profit

Law Foundation of Silicon Valley (LFSV) provides legal services, strategic advocacy, and educational outreach to low-income individuals in San Jose, California. They recently sought to alleviate the manual work their staff had to endure while advancing the rights of under-represented people and families.

LFSV methodically searched for a new case management system, evaluating four software solutions. Ultimately, they landed with LegalServer because of its features, support, and recommendations from many of their peers.

The other products we considered weren’t close to the level of functionality LegalServer offered out-of-the-box.

“We chose LegalServer over three other software solutions that we were considering at the time for multiple reasons,” says Nathan Lingat-Thomas, Director of Impact & Evaluation at LSFV.

“First, we felt that LegalServer was the most focused on serving civil legal-aid services with their product. Second, we had heard from many legal service providers using LegalServer who were satisfied with the product. Third, we felt LegalServer offered the most onboarding assistance and had a clear plan on how to move from our former system to theirs,” Lingat-Thomas explains.

Saving Time for Staff

“Two features from LegalServer really stand out with LSFV staff and provide big benefits: the case email feature and access from anywhere,” Lingat-Thomas notes.

“The case e-mail feature assigns a unique email address for every case in our system and allows us to forward case-related emails to that address. This automatically creates a note in the proper case with the contents of the e-mail along with any file attachments.”

Gone are the days of copy and pasting from our email program into case notes!

Empowering a Community Advocacy Model

Being able to access the system from anywhere has been a game-changer for staff as well, Lingat-Thomas explains. “LegalServer is browser-based and works anywhere with an internet connection, including tablets and phones. This capability has allowed our work to move to a community advocacy model, providing legal services anywhere in the community without being tied to a desk or an office.”

With LegalServer providing significant automation, time savings, and flexibility, LFSV’s team of almost 100 attorneys, social workers, and staff, along with pro bono volunteers, are able to complete more of their great work, including:

• Finding stable homes for abused and neglected children,
• Helping people living with chronic illnesses access the benefits they need to remain healthy and self-sufficient,
• Providing low-income people access to safe and affordable housing, and
• Addressing critical issues like domestic violence, discrimination, human trafficking, and mental health.

LFSV did their homework, chose LegalServer, and haven’t looked back.

Book an intro call today to see why LegalServer is the premier case management system for civil legal aid.