What Is The Difference Between Matter Management and Legal Case Management?

Summary

In the corporate legal department, is there a difference between matter management and legal case management? Legal operations professionals are more inclined to manage a matter, while lawyers are accountable for case management. While it’s a fine line, there is a difference between matter management and legal case management. This post looks at matter management features and the more specific case management in the legal department and the law firm. 

What Is The Difference Between Matter Management and Legal Case Management?

To understand the difference between matter management and legal case management, we look first at who's responsible for matter management and who is integral to legal case management. From the top down and broadly throughout the department, matters are initiated by the legal team. The primary lawyer on the matter may hire outside counsel to assist with details of a case from day to day. 

Others on the law firm team, timekeepers and principal practice attorneys, are responsible for court filings, third-party negotiations, moving the case through the courts, and also with reporting to the legal team about the status of the case. 

Enterprise legal management software, like LexisNexis CounselLink+, is a comprehensive platform that includes matter management features. Both law firms and the legal team can collaborate within the matter management dashboard. AI-powered tools within the CounselLink+ solution drive analytical reporting and matter summarization, ensuring the leadership in the law firm and the legal department know the status of the matter. 

What Is Matter Management in the Law Department?

Above, we introduced LexisNexis CounselLink+ enterprise legal management software with its matter management application. Based on the description, you can see that matter management is the broader, higher-level process of overseeing all aspects of a legal matter from start to finish. This includes:

• Initial matter intake and conflict checking
• Budget planning and cost management
• Outside counsel selection and management
• Strategic oversight and decision-making
• Resource allocation across the entire matter
• Reporting to stakeholders and executives
• Risk assessment and management
• Contractual compliance with regulations

By reviewing this list of how a matter wends its way through a law department, it's important to note who's responsible for matter oversight. This is where legal operations comes into play, assisting and collaborating with the in-house legal team to initiate a matter, assess and manage budget, set billing guidelines and payments, select appropriate outside counsel, and ensure appropriate resources are available for the legal team working on the matter. 

Selecting the Right Technology Solution For Matter Management

Enterprise legal management software is an anchor technology for law departments. LexisNexis® CounselLink® is ELM software for legal departments, including matter management features as the primary application in the platform. This robust solution enables legal operations to manage documents, contracts, analytical reporting, performance, collaboration, and workflows, all in one convenient platform and dashboard.

Legal operations professionals can manage the entire matter from start to finish with the CounselLink+™ software. Matter management requires knowledge of legal spend at many points throughout a matter. Managing accruals and legal holds can be done in the enterprise legal management solution with AI-driven analytical reporting.

The reporting aspect of the solution is a key benefit for company leadership and business stakeholders. For example, the director of finance wants to know whether matters are on budget and how much legal spend is leaving the law department. New visual graphics in a legal spend report snapshot provide that information with a simple click.

Few lawyers think about a contract when managing a matter; however, there are times when a contract must be referenced for monetary information and other terms and conditions. Typically, contracts are stored outside the enterprise legal management system. LexisNexis CounselLink+ is one of the first solutions integrating contracts with matters. Anyone who needs to reference the original contract aligned with a matter can view the associated contract within the matter dashboard. Search time is eliminated, and productivity is enhanced.

A primary user feature of LexisNexis CounselLink+ is its access to the LexisNexis ecosystem. Users can access the LexisNexis products they subscribe to with one click from the unified enterprise legal management dashboard. For example, that single sign-on to the LexisNexis ecosystem delivers hundreds of LexisNexis Practical Guidance® contract templates and an approved clause library for contract authoring. Regulatory guidelines and state legislation are accessible with a subscription to LexisNexis State Net®, also accessible from the ELM dashboard.

The benefit of selecting LexisNexis CounselLink+ as an enterprise legal management solution shows up in its various applications that legal operations can use to facilitate and initiate a matter. The vendor management application helps evaluate and select outside counsel; the financial management feature helps legal ops keep tabs on legal spend, invoices and expenses; workflow management delivers work intake tools to triage requests from business stakeholders and customizes workflows within the platform; analytical reporting is powered by AI so that leadership has a visual snapshot of the status of matters; contract lifecycle management integrates with the matter management application so that the legal team can view status of matters against contract compliance.

Set up a demo of LexisNexis CounselLink+ and see the key benefits of matter management.

Understanding Legal Case Management

Legal case management is focused more on tactical, day-to-day activities within an overall matter that can include litigation. This encompasses:

• Document management and discovery
• Court filing deadlines and scheduling
• Witness coordination and preparation
• Evidence organization and tracking
• Calendar management for hearings and depositions
• Task assignment and workflow management
• Communication with opposing counsel

Hiring outside counsel to manage various aspects of the legal case management frees up the in-house legal team to focus on legal protection of the enterprise. The enterprise legal management solution is the common thread between teams managing matters and those handling every day legal cases. The outside counsel team collaborates within the ELM software, and everyone in the law department is updated when the timekeepers report on their activity. 

By addressing both matter management and case management above, we’ve ascertained that there is a difference, albeit slight, between them. Think of matter management as the "business side,” focusing on strategy, costs and overall matter governance, while case management is the "execution side,” handling the specific legal tasks and processes needed to move a case forward.

TL;DR

In practice, matter management often encompasses case management as one component, especially in large organizations where legal departments need to maintain oversight of both the strategic and operational aspects of their legal work. Many law firms and corporate legal departments use integrated enterprise legal management solutions like LexisNexis CounselLink+ that handle both functions. Features and differences between matter management and legal case management can be understood by focusing on who's responsible for which aspect of a matter or case.