In summary:
- Legal firms face rising caseloads, growing client expectations, and operational strain, making the modernisation of matter management essential.
- With transparency demands, efficiency pressures, and increasing AI adoption, firms must unify workflows, automate manual processes, and enhance communication to stay competitive.
- Modern matter management boosts capacity, lowers cost to serve, strengthens compliance, and elevates client experience, turning it into a strategic business priority.
Across the legal sector, structural pressures are forcing firms to rethink how they operate. Rising caseloads, client expectations shaped by digital‑first industries, and internal resource constraints are amplifying long‑standing inefficiencies. Fragmented workflows, manual triage, slow onboarding, and opaque processes are no longer just operational irritants, they are becoming strategic risks.
Recent industry research makes this clearer than ever. The 2025 CLOC State of the Industry Report shows that 83% of legal departments expect demand to rise, with 63% citing workload and bandwidth as their biggest challenge. At the same time, AI adoption has nearly doubled, signalling a push toward more efficient, technology‑supported operating models.
The message is clear: firms that modernise matter management will not only run more smoothly, they’ll compete more effectively.
Clients want more: transparency, predictability, and consistency
The era of opaque legal service delivery is ending. According to Leaders in Law’s analysis of transparency trends, clients increasingly expect real‑time visibility, predictable pricing, and open communication workflows. Cloud‑based tools and project‑management platforms are accelerating this shift by enabling live progress tracking and budget monitoring, removing the traditional “black box” barrier.
What’s driving this? Firms are under intense scrutiny to justify spend, prove ROI, and maintain strict accountability. Unclear timelines, inconsistent updates, and unpredictable billing no longer pass muster. Firms that cannot demonstrate transparency risk losing clients to more open, data‑driven competitors.
Matter management sits at the heart of this shift. When intake, triage, updates, documentation and approvals live across disconnected systems, transparency becomes impossible. Without standardisation or visibility, clients experience delays, repeated questions, or inconsistent communication, eroding confidence and goodwill.
Simultaneously, legal professionals are already juggling administrative work that distracts from fee‑earning tasks. Triage processes still involve unnecessary back‑and‑forth.
This operational fragility becomes even more significant when combined with market‑wide pressure. The American Bar Association’s 2025 Legal Industry Report found that while 31% of individual professionals now use generative AI, firm‑wide adoption lags due to inconsistent workflows and legacy systems. This gap shows a widespread desire for improvement but difficulty in turning aspiration into scalable change.
Modern matter management is not just an upgrade, it’s a stabilising force for strained teams.
Efficiency becomes a strategic differentiator
Today, efficiency is about far more than cost‑cutting. Research on operational excellence highlights that modern legal firms define efficiency by:
- Adaptability, not rigidity
- Cross‑functional collaboration, not departmental silos
- Outcome‑focused workflows, not traditional billable‑hour models
- Real‑time insights, not backward‑looking metrics
When firms redesign processes around these principles, the effects are immediate and measurable.
Technology isn’t replacing lawyers, it’s replacing the friction around legal work. Firms that embrace this shift gain capacity, speed, and clarity, allowing them to focus on client partnership rather than firefighting.
Matter management is now business‑critical
The foundational role of matter management — intake, triage, communication, documentation, and compliance — makes it one of the most impactful areas to modernise. Improving these workflows delivers benefits across the entire firm:
1. Faster turnaround and reduced friction
Current processes rely heavily on emails, manual document chasing, and team‑to‑team back‑and‑forth. This slows onboarding and frustrates both clients and service teams. Automated triage, centralised portals, and workflow routing remove delays and improve predictability.
2. Stronger governance and compliance
With expanding regulatory obligations, manual controls are no longer adequate. Modern systems provide auditable trails, automated approvals, and consistent data capture — reducing risk and supporting audit readiness.
3. Increased capacity and lower cost‑to‑serve
Workflow automation and AI‑enabled routing free up fee‑earners to focus on high‑value work.
Cost‑to‑serve decreases as administrative effort drops and performance visibility improves.
4. Consistency, standardisation, and better client experience
Centralised matter records, document portals, SLA tracking, and automated notifications ensure both internal teams and clients stay aligned, reducing ambiguity and unnecessary follow‑ups.
In short: modernising matter management is no longer optional. It is a strategic lever for firms aiming to stay competitive, compliant, and client‑centred.
How to move forward
Across every major legal industry report, a consistent theme emerges: agility will define the next generation of high‑performing firms. The firms that thrive will be those that:
- Replace disconnected systems with unified workflows
- Move from reactive to proactive communication
- Shift from manual oversight to automated governance
- Provide clients with transparency, clarity, and confidence
- Equip teams with tools that reduce administrative drag
This transformation does not require a disruptive, rip‑and‑replace overhaul. Modernisation can, and should enhance what already works, not replace it.
A practical path forward: ServiceNow CSM from Sopra Steria
For firms reviewing their approach in 2026, ServiceNow’s Customer Service Management platform, with tailored delivery by Sopra Steria, offers a proven route to achieving the speed, transparency, and agility the sector now demands. It integrates seamlessly with existing systems, centralises matter workflows, enables secure client communication, and automates the high‑friction steps that slow legal services today.
If you’re exploring how small, strategic improvements can make a meaningful difference, I’d be happy to share more of what we’re seeing across the legal sector, or take you through a short demonstration of how leading firms are transforming their operations without disrupting what already works.