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HubSpot for Law Firms: Grow Your Practice With This CRM
HubSpot is a powerful marketing and sales tool. Learn how to use it to increase lead generation and client conversions in our comprehensive guide on HubSpot for Law Firms.
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Research shows that at least 78% of legal firms use CRMs (customer relationship management software) to handle client intake and manage digital campaigns. A CRM helps simplify sales and enhance customer service.
However, many lawyers struggle to adapt to these programs, given they take a lot of time and effort to get used to. Worst of all, many CRMs are expensive to run unless used efficiently, and very few can be tailored to a law firm’s needs.
Thankfully, that’s where HubSpot for law firms comes in.
HubSpot is one of the most flexible, affordable, and user-friendly CRM platforms recommended for law firms of all sizes.
Let’s take a look at its benefits for lawyers and how you can get started with this platform.
What Is HubSpot for Lawyers?
HubSpot is a user-friendly CRM suite that helps lawyers organize client leads, manage conversations, automate workflows, and track marketing campaigns. For attorneys and law firms, it’s an all-in-one solution that helps them find new leads and efficiently manage their cases as they become paying clients.
Why Do You Need HubSpot for Law Firms?
HubSpot for lawyers helps to simplify the administration that comes with marketing to and serving new and existing customers.
Since lawyers spend an average of 48% of their non-billable time on admin tasks, they need all the streamlining help they can get.
HubSpot also offers different “Hubs” for marketing, sales, and customer service – all of which are easy to customize and scale with when looking for legal prospects.
Let’s summarize the customer relationship management software’s top features and benefits.
A summary of the features and benefits of HubSpot for law firms
Benefits
Features
Improve legal intake and client relationships
Pipeline managementIntake and contact management
Fine-tune custom marketing campaigns
Content marketing and SEO (search engine optimization) Landing pages
Manage lawyer admin and marketing tools in one place
All-in-one toolAppointment/calendar managementSocial media managementIntegrations
Save money on client management
Free CRM
Make client processing more efficient
AI and automationChatbots
Create a reliable digital trail
Call recording
Use reliable data to track and improve performance
AnalyticsAds management and paid lead tracking
Now, let’s explore those benefits in more detail.
1. Improve legal intake and client relationships
HubSpot helps lawyers manage and support clients at every stage of the life cycle.
The suite helps you design, manage, and track marketing campaigns for precise audiences.
To start, you can create legal client intake forms to pull data into your CRM and build lead profiles, such as a form that captures case type and contact information, streamlining the sales process compared to doing it manually.
Managing separate conversations and cases can be tricky once leads enter your pipeline. Thankfully, HubSpot consolidates client data into simple profiles:
Lawyers can use HubSpot to search for leads based on case types and their current position in the funnel. There’s also always a clear record of conversations, meaning anyone viewing client profiles is immediately caught up.
Clients benefit from a more personalized and supportive lawyer experience, too, because they don’t have to repeat themselves. They’re more likely to feel supported, boosting the likelihood of conversion.
Legartis, a Swiss legal tech brand, uses HubSpot specifically to help make its processes leaner.
HubSpot gives the firm a clear oversight of all customer interactions and journeys, meaning everyone can see where a client is heading. HubSpot CRM solves the issue of data siloing, where information piles up and is difficult to access.
Legartis also notes that integrating different tools is sometimes necessary to build complete client oversight, but this is always easy to manage.
2. Fine-tune custom marketing campaigns
One of HubSpot’s best features for lawyers is its impressive marketing customization, which lets you design and publish content campaigns from one program.
Setting goals and publishing destinations is easy, and you can manage diverse email and social campaigns as you wish.
Beyond creation, HubSpot supports lawyers with SEO and strategy programs to help promote their services organically.
HubSpot’s SEO tool helps lawyers find the best keywords to use in content to attract clients, and its free landing page builder creates web content around them.
For example, like Costa Law Firm, you might create a page based around the keyword “family law firm in Toronto,” which appears to people searching for that phrase:
Lawyer SEO, campaign creation, and content marketing are often time-consuming to manage. HubSpot, however, takes time and effort off lawyers’ plates by simplifying processes and consolidating data into one place.
Let’s consider a HubSpot law firm case study. Campmany Abogados uses HubSpot to generate more leads through landing pages to capture interest, including downloads geared toward its audience.
Using HubSpot has helped the firm’s client base grow sevenfold over the years, with revenue having doubled.
3. Manage lawyer admin and marketing tools in one place
As a lawyer, you likely spend much of your admin time switching from one program to another.
HubSpot, thankfully, offers an all-in-one solution that integrates with more than 500 third-party tools.
For instance, lawyers can merge data from calendar and scheduling software so meetings and events are recorded in one place.
This integration also makes it easier for users to monitor client statuses.
The suite supports social scheduling, meaning users can log into the CRM, create posts for different platforms, and schedule them later.
The CRM also communicates with Slack (meaning it’s easy for law teams to stay updated on tasks) and connects with call answering services like Lex Reception.
For SeedLegals, a British firm specializing in corporate legal document storage, HubSpot played a key role in streamlining its legal email marketing efforts.
The team’s email marketing management became confusing because different users signed up for various third-party inboxes. With HubSpot, the company now combines these tools into a single platform, helping it achieve a 20% productivity boost.
4. Save money on client management
Some lawyers assume that making do with the current process is a better value than paying out for expensive software.
Many CRM services offer monthly or annual pricing but at flat rates that don’t consider the size of a law firm. Smaller companies and individual lawyers often find these plans inconvenient.
HubSpot, however, has one of the most flexible lawyer CRM subscription services online. Small teams and individuals can start with a free CRM, with additional features scaling up from $20 per month.
HubSpot also offers many premium features that larger enterprises benefit from, such as more advanced operations features, more marketing contacts, and access to HubSpot’s Sales Hub and Service Hub. The most expensive CRM suite starts at $5,000 per month.
One of the biggest selling points for lawyers is the unlimited user cap. Some CRMs for law firms charge per user per month or cap the number of people who can use the software.
For growing law firms, HubSpot provides a scalable, appealing alternative that becomes more valuable as more lawyers join.
Paying a single, scalable fee also saves law firms from having to pay for multiple licenses for different software.
5. Make client processing more efficient
Manually managing client leads and case files can become complex, leading to human error at worst. This could mean disappointing clients, damaging your reputation, and losing revenue.
Couple this with the increasing administrative tasks lawyers need to attend to, and there’s a strong case for using HubSpot’s artificial intelligence (AI) and automation services.
What’s more, AI is increasingly popular with legal professionals, with 21% thinking AI will improve the quality of legal services, 31% believing it will lower costs, and 38% expecting AI to boost efficiency.
To start, HubSpot marketing automation tools can be used to create and launch email, SMS, and social media campaigns.
By automating contact management, for example, attorneys can instantly follow up at specific stages of a client’s journey to help keep them engaged.
Chatbots can also help law firms engage regularly with leads without manually addressing them. Through HubSpot’s bots, lawyers capture lead data from people exploring their websites while delivering basic customer care.
This form of lead capture warms up leads automatically. Once they enter the CRM pipeline, lawyers can work with prospects who genuinely want to move forward.
HubSpot also works with automation software such as Zapier, making it easier to automatically:
Sort clients into email marketing lists
Assign specific tasks and workflows to available lawyers
Create new CRM profiles from forms
Qualify leads and pull data from chatbots
Track emails sent and break down campaign data
Let’s look back at SeedLegals’s case study. The company also used HubSpot to automate its processes to boost productivity and increase efficiency.
In particular, the firm uses automated email triggers to inform clients at each stage of their journey. This feature helps the company grow and deliver exceptional client service while also greatly reducing manual admin.
6. Create a reliable digital trail
Another feature of HubSpot that might be overlooked by some interested lawyers is making and recording phone calls.
This feature is important because it helps users track when calls take place with specific clients. They’re easy to playback in a few clicks.
Call recording through HubSpot also helps to resolve queries because lawyers have a digital trail where they can head back to a specific dated recording in case of a dispute and find out what discussions took place.
Call recording is also immensely useful for training purposes and refining client care standards.
It’s only a small part of the digital trail through HubSpot, as the CRM also records conversations through chatbots, Facebook Messenger, and email.
7. Use reliable data to track and improve performance
Marketing analytics are important for tracking where you’re making the most advertising impact and which intake channels are worth prioritizing.
HubSpot’s analytics reporting dashboard is a free feature that scales up with different packages and works with services such as Google Ads and Meta. Users can view campaign spend, reach, and clickthrough rates.
The software’s analytics help lawyers track customer journeys by measuring a lead’s average lifecycle. For instance, analytics could show where leads frequently drop off or where you’re warming them up most successfully.
HubSpot also gives insights into your website’s traffic, meaning you can see where people are visiting from, how long for, and which landing pages are the most popular.
Returning to Legartis’s case study, the law firm uses HubSpot’s Operations Hub service to monitor funnel statistics such as cycle times – i.e., how long it takes for a lead to travel from initial capture to onboarding.
This strategy helped the firm grow dramatically and, therefore, refine its sales process and how it approached specific prospective clients.
How to Get Started with HubSpot for Law Firms
There are two ways to set up and manage HubSpot for lawyers. You can either do it yourself or hire an agency of experts to handle the platform for you.
Let’s explore both options and consider what’s best for your firm’s needs.
1. Do-it-yourself
HubSpot is one of the most user-friendly lawyer CRMs available online, and some lawyers dive straight into its programs to experiment.
However, it’s not something we’d recommend if you’re new to customer relationship management software.
Despite its relative ease of use, there is still a learning curve, especially if you’ve never used a CRM before. Do consider your available time to adapt to a new system before getting started, too. That’s time you could better spend working on cases.
If you do want to take the DIY route, we suggest you:
Look through the different reports available and set up those that support your marketing needs
Try before you buy – choose the free option before paying for the service
Explore and test out marketing automation carefully before pushing any content to your public channels
Look through third-party integrations for software you already use regularly
Plan for what you’d like to achieve with your CRM so that you can measure its return on investment in the short term
Beyond this, always consider pricing carefully. As mentioned, HubSpot leads with a free version aimed at individual users. However, it’s the most scaled-back version of its CRM, meaning if you have a larger firm or want to dive into the features, consider a paid subscription.
In our experience, the $20 per month option works well for smaller companies.
2. Hire an agency to get you set up
Hiring a law firm marketing agency like dNOVO to manage HubSpot for attorneys means you don’t have to worry about all the setup and management on your own. We help you choose the best package for your company’s size and needs.
You might find that working with an agency is a little more costly than DIY, but only in the short term.
Consider that you’ll have far more time to focus on client relationships and legal responsibilities if you pick this option. You also won’t need to configure your CRM software from scratch or work with expensive freelancers whenever you have an issue you can’t solve.
There’s also zero need for you to hire specialist staff when you want to upgrade your CRM; dNOVO’s team, for example, is highly experienced in HubSpot and can tailor the system to your specific goals.
Lastly, you never have to pay for features you don’t need. We help you filter the features that matter, and you get instant ROI from the features you do use.
Manage Clients More Efficiently with HubSpot for Law Firms
HubSpot is an incredibly accessible CRM platform that saves lawyers time, money, and headaches. That applies to finding new clients, managing their journeys, and maximizing ad spend.
We highly recommend using HubSpot for law firms’ pipeline management. However, it’s much more valuable if you set it up with the help of a digital marketing expert.
If you’re interested in trying HubSpot but are unsure where to start, contact dNOVO to learn more about how we can help you.
If you’d like to learn more about legal marketing best practices before getting in touch, consider moving on to our guide about live chat for law firms for inspiration.
HubSpot Customer Relationship Management for Lawyers FAQs
Here are some final questions and answers about how lawyers can use HubSpot for legal-specific CRM purposes.
Do law firms need a CRM?
Ideally, yes, because CRM software is extremely useful in helping law firms manage huge amounts of sensitive data. They help organize marketing activities, monitor client journeys, and keep conversations together on a single platform. Most law firms use CRMs, meaning it’s worth keeping up with the competition.
Do law firms use HubSpot?
Yes, many firms in the legal industry use HubSpot. It’s a popular tool for managing complex legal workflows, boosting client handling efficiency, facilitating business growth, and ensuring clients are up to speed on the latest developments. It’s also extremely useful for making the most of advertising spend, especially given the level of online competition for lawyers. A CRM helps simplify sales processes, too.
Can HubSpot CRM be customized for law firms?
Yes, HubSpot CRM is highly customizable. Lawyers use the software to design custom lead capture forms, develop landing pages, enhance customer service flows, and build unique marketing campaigns for specific audiences in the Marketing Hub. It also integrates easily with more than 500 different programs, including call loggers, communications portals, and video conferencing tools.
What is the best CRM for law firms?
The best CRM for law firms depends entirely on your needs and budget, and there are many in the global CRM market. However, HubSpot leads the way as an accessible and high-value service. Its approach to unlimited users per license sets it apart from the competition, and its fantastic integration possibilities make it one of the easiest CRMs to consolidate several programs into.
Is HubSpot CRM really free?
Yes, an individual version of HubSpot for law firms is free to register for and use. However, the free version is missing more advanced CRM features that help you better visualize your marketing analytics and keep track of people coming into your business. We recommend you try the free version before choosing a paid tier.
What are the limitations of HubSpot for law firms?
Some lawyers might find that free and cheaper tiers of HubSpot for attorneys offer fewer features and customization options. What’s more, it’s a generic CRM that isn’t designed specifically for the law firm business model. However, with more than 500 third-party integrations, it’s easy to build a custom setup for lawyers with the help of a marketing agency.
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