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Legal CRM: How to Manage Clients and Cases in Your Law Firm
Complete guide to legal CRM for law firms: intake pipeline, case management, integrated billing, and advantages over Excel or generic CRMs.
Table of contents
Legal CRM: How to Manage Clients and Cases
Most Spanish firms still use Excel, paper diaries, or generic CRMs designed for sales. The lawyer-client relationship is fundamentally different.
1. Generic CRM vs. Legal CRM
| Aspect | Generic CRM | Legal CRM |
|---|---|---|
| Work unit | Opportunity/Deal | Case file/Matter |
| Pipeline | Lead → Close → Upsell | Consultation → Engagement → Case → Archive |
| Relationships | 1 client → multiple opportunities | 1 client → multiple cases with opposing parties, witnesses, experts |
| Deadlines | Flexible commercial | Legal deadlines with expiration |
| Billing | Simple invoice | Fees + disbursements + tax withholding + retainers |
2. The 4 Pillars
Intake pipeline: Lead → Prospect → Client → Inactive. Case management: digital case file with parties, documents, deadlines, billing. Document management: structured storage, versioning, templates, access control, search. Integrated billing: hourly/per-action/contingency fees, disbursements, IRPF, VAT, VeriFactu.
3. The 7 Common Mistakes
- Excel as CRM (unmanageable at 100+ clients) ( 2. No conflict checking ) 3. Decentralized deadlines ( 4. No time tracking ) 5. Scattered documents ( 6. No intake pipeline ) 7. Invoicing with Word/Excel
4. What to Look For
Essential: customizable pipeline, conflict checking, complete digital case file, multi-channel deadline alerts, time tracking, document management, legal billing, profitability reports, role-based access, GDPR compliance.
5. Market in Spain
| Software | Price | Strength | Weakness |
|---|---|---|---|
| Lexiel | From €52/mo + VAT | AI + case law + VeriFactu | Young product |
| Kleos (Wolters Kluwer) | See its website | Practice management | See its website |
| Aranzadi Fusión | Not published: demo on request (according to its website, checked on 11 November 2026) | Matters, agenda and billing | Separate product from its AI |
| Clio | See its website | Practice management | See its website |
6. Return
We do not publish a savings figure because we have not measured one. What a legal CRM does change: you find the case documents without digging through email, every incoming enquiry is followed up, deadlines have alerts and time worked is recorded so it can be billed. To estimate your return, compare the hours you spend on those tasks today with the plan's cost (from €52/month + VAT, billed annually).
How Lexiel Combines CRM and AI
Complete CRM with drag-and-drop kanban, AI with case context for drafting, semantic search across 130,000+ official sources, case-linked time tracking, VeriFactu billing (SHA-256, QR), deadline alerts with regional holidays, client portal, and brief generation with verified citations.
The advantage: a generic CRM manages data; Lexiel manages data and generates quality legal work.
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