Best Apps for Lawyers: 21 Legal Apps Your Firm Can’t Do Without

We’re all accustomed to using apps on our personal phones and mobile devices, but what about apps for lawyers?

Which must-have legal apps should firms use to ease the daily workload, help your people be more productive, and free up time to put into more billable hours?

Bloomberg Law recently ran a Legal Operations and Technology Survey where most law firms reported using apps for billing, e-signatures, timekeeping, and matter management. However, the survey also noted a “lack of tech-savvy and familiarity with the technology tools” available.

Nine out of ten attorneys recognized that “legal technology improves the services they provide to clients and is crucial to meeting client demands,” but the uptake of this technology still lags.

We looked at many of the best apps for lawyers and compiled the following list of 21 that might work for your law firm.

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Best apps for legal note-taking

Lawyers often need to take notes on the go. Regardless of your preferences with this (voice or written notes), there’s a suitable app.

None of the following apps are specific for lawyers but can help you jot down or record important facts, data, or thoughts as and when you need to, whether in court, with a client, travelling between appointments, or in the office.

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Evernote

Evernote is an app that can help you with note-taking, building task lists, organizing legal research documents, archiving emails, creating presentations, or storing business contact information.

It’s very simple to use and integrates with your smartphone camera so that you can capture images, edit them, and share them from your mobile device.

The ABA’s 2021 Practice Management report found that Evernote is the most popular cloud-based general business app downloaded by lawyers.

Pricing: Free & paid options (for a few dollars per month)

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OneNote

OneNote is another good note-taking option for lawyers who work in a Microsoft Office environment. It’s part of the Microsoft 365 product suite.

The strong points of OneNote for lawyers are its easy navigation and search, ability to highlight or ink annotations, and the capability to easily organize and find all notes for cases in a single centralized place.

Pricing: Free to download with premium features available with a Microsoft 365 subscription (Microsoft 365 accounts start at $6.99 per month)

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Noteshelf

Do you prefer to handwrite notes rather than typing them?

If so, Noteshelf is the answer. You can make unlimited handwritten electronic notes, but that’s not all you can do. You can record audio, markup PDFs, and add photos, among other things.

Pricing: One-time costs of $9.99 for iPad/iPhone, $7.99 for macOS, and $5.18 for Android

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Penultimate

Penultimate is another of the best note-taking apps for lawyers from the team at Evernote.

Like Noteshelf, this is an app for digital handwriting. But unlike Noteshelf, it’s only available for iPad users.

This is one of the best productivity apps for lawyers because it combines the natural experience of pen and paper with the power of Evernote’s sync and search features. So, you can search for handwritten text within the app.

Pricing: Free

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Dictate+ Connect

The Dictate+ Connect app replaces the need for a dictaphone for lawyers who prefer taking audio notes to typed or handwritten notes. It’s easier to use than most high-end dictaphones and more intuitive.

You can use it to record your thoughts or to sync testimonies, interviews, etc.

Pricing: Free version available, $16.99 for iPhone or iPad

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Best app for legal research

The ability to research legal databases online has been groundbreaking for many law firms who need to access case law, statutes, regulations, court rules, constitutions, and other legal information.

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Fastcase

Fastcase is a dedicated app for lawyers designed specifically to help attorneys conduct legal research out of the office.

The Fastcase app is the world’s largest free mobile law library, providing attorneys with access to what amounts to the entire American law library. This vast database includes law review articles as well as all the key information on case law, statutes, regulations, court rules, constitutions, etc.

Pricing: Free version available with premium subscriptions starting at $65/month. You may be able to obtain free access to a premium subscription through your bar association. You can check that here.

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Best practice management app

For a full rundown of legal practice management apps, you can check out our recent article on practice management software.

For this article, we’ve selected one of the most popular practice management apps available for lawyers.

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Uptime Practice

Managing billing, client intake, documentation, legal calendaring, and more is a constant struggle for lawyers who still do it manually.

Uptime Practice is specifically dedicated to managing all of the tasks that traditionally take up time but can be automated with technology. Being cloud-based, it’s all possible on the go.

You can track time, view client information securely, and create new matters and contacts. It’s like having a complete law office in the cloud, meaning you can run your entire practice effectively even when you’re out of the office.

If you’re committed to your server-based legal software but want to move to the cloud, your legal software can be hosted in a secure virtual desktop workspace

Pricing: $395/month for 3 users. Additional users: $95/month.

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Best legal apps for cloud storage

Cloud storage solutions offer a secure way to remotely store and access your documentation in a centralized location.

You only need internet access and a web browser to access, create, edit, collaborate on, and share documents.

None of the following apps are lawyer-specific, but that doesn’t diminish how useful they can be for law firms that must deal with such large volumes of documentation — and they are secure (always a major consideration for law firms).

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Google Drive/Google One

Google Drive is one of the most popular cloud storage apps for lawyers, with Google Docs providing a simple and convenient way to edit documents from your browser.

Pricing: Free up to 15GB of storage. 100GB $1.99/month, 200GB $2.99/month, 2TB $9.99/month.

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OneDrive

If you mainly work in a Microsoft environment, you may gravitate towards OneDrive rather than the alternatives.

The app integrates with the Microsoft Office suite of apps, making life easy for switching between Word docs, spreadsheets, presentations, etc., and has a good reputation regarding security.

Pricing: Plans from $5/user/month to $12.50/user/month. All plans provide storage of up to 1TB per user.

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Dropbox

Dropbox is another app for lawyers designed for large-scale document storage in the cloud. It’s easy to use, and one of its key strengths is its security protocols, which are always important for lawyers.

Pricing: From $15/user/month for the Professional plan (up to 3,000 GB) to $24/user/month for the Advanced plan (unlimited storage – minimum of three users).

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Box

Box is another of the best apps for lawyers when it comes to cloud-based document storage. It takes document security seriously with advanced security controls, intelligent threat detection, strict data privacy, and full industry compliance.

The in-document search feature for enterprise clients enables lawyers to find what they need especially quickly.

Pricing: From $15/user/month for the Business plan (unlimited storage – minimum of three users) to $35/user/month for the Enterprise plan (unlimited storage – minimum of three users – upload files up to 50GB).

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Best document management apps for lawyers

With the vast volume of documentation that law firms must handle, it’s smart to use the available technology to make this process easier and improve productivity.

Document management is part of most practice management software packages. Still, if you’ve yet to employ all-encompassing software like that, several of the best productivity apps for lawyers can handle it.

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CamScanner

The ability to scan documents quickly and easily has become a basic requirement for law firms, which are gradually becoming more paperless.

CamScanner helps you do that and much more, with text recognition (OCR) capabilities, a built-in PDF converter tool, document storage, and share capabilities with multiple apps (including Evernote, Gmail, etc.)

The app can help lawyers onboard clients or keep backups of important case files, allowing users to scan, share, sync documents, and add watermarks or signatures.

Pricing: Free plan available with storage space up to 200 MB. Business accounts (with 10GB storage space, advanced editing capabilities, and no ads/watermarks) at $6.99/user/month.

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iAnnotate

Reviewing and marking up documents is made easier with the best cloud-based apps for lawyers. They’re secure and flexible and help you to access documents from anywhere.

iAnnotate helps you achieve all this while syncing PDF documents from multiple channels such as Dropbox and Google Drive.

iAnnotate is not available for Android — only for iPhones and other Apple devices. The above-mentioned Noteshelf may be an alternative for marking up documents on Android-based devices.

Pricing: $9.99 (one-off fee)

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GoodReader

According to the ABA’s 2021 practice management survey, PDF creation software is the most popular document software at law firms.

GoodReader falls into that bracket as a professional tool for creating, converting, editing, and annotating PDF files.

It makes redlining, highlighting, and annotating PDF documents easy. You can sync with Dropbox, Google Drive, OneDrive, etc., for secure storage of legal case documents.

Unfortunately, Android users will need to look elsewhere as it is only available for iOS.

Pricing: Pro Pack $17.99 (annual), $2.99 (monthly) or $79.99 one-off fee.

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Best communications apps for lawyers

The pandemic was responsible for many professionals changing how they work. Lawyers were no exception.

Communicating with clients, colleagues and even courtrooms through video, chat apps, and collaboration software has become the norm for many attorneys.

So, which are the best apps for lawyers in this section?

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Slack

Slack has become increasingly popular for businesses in recent years. More law firms are using it to communicate with their teams and with clients and become more productive.

Instead of one-off email chains, communication is organized into channels, so that everyone knows exactly what they need to know to get work done.

The app integrates with other apps like Google Drive, Office 365 and many more through Zapier (see below).

Pricing: Free version is available with access to 10,000 messages among team members and 1:1 video calls. Paid versions from $6.67/user/month (up to 15 team members for video calls) to $12.50/user/month (with advanced security, compliance and support).

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Zoom

A video calling app is a necessity for law firms. Zoom grew phenomenally during the pandemic, and the free version became a household name. But the Pro and Business plans are ideal apps for lawyers and law firms.

Whether you need to meet with a client, remote team member, or somebody else, Zoom’s business plans enable meetings with up to 300 attendees, unlimited whiteboards, group chat and file sharing, and 5GB of storage.

There are also options available for phone calls and webinars/events.

Pricing: Free plan available. The Pro plan is $149.90/user/year, and the Business plan is $199.90/user/year.

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Best lawyer apps for social media

Whether you like it or not, social media for lawyers is a “thing.” You can choose to stay on the sidelines and potentially miss out on a steady flow of leads or manage the move to social media that many firms are making — and reap the benefits.

A couple of the best apps for lawyers help you do this effectively without it eating into your valuable time.

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Buffer

Social media accounts like Facebook, LinkedIn, and Twitter are useless unless maintained and active.

Buffer is a complete social media management platform. It can help manage lawyers’ entire social media presence and automate many of the tasks that seem so time-consuming.

The app helps legal professionals schedule social media posts, keep track of mentions on social media channels, stay on top of trends in the legal community, and boost the number of leads you get from social media.

Pricing: Free version available for up to three social media channels. Paid plans at $5/month/channel and $10/month/channel (with unlimited team members/clients and reporting).

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Feedly

Part of the dilemma many lawyers face with social media is knowing that there’s a wealth of excellent information out there but finding it too time-consuming to trawl through feeds.

With Feedly, you streamline the content you monitor so that you only see what’s relevant — such as a particular practice area, a trending legal case, or another topic. You can organize content into streams, collect articles with tags, share with followers, and save it to Evernote or OneNote.

This helps you filter out the “noise” and focus only on what you need to be more productive and effective in your legal work.

Pricing: Free plan available for up to 100 feeds and three folders. Pro plan at $6/month (up to 1,000 feeds). Pro+ plan at $8.25/month (up to 2,500 feeds). Enterprise plans are available on application to the sales team.

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Best app for litigation

Some of the best law-related apps deal with particular practice areas or certain types of legal processes.

Even complex processes like litigation can now be assisted with the use of technology.

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KLW EZ-Litigation App

The KLW EZ-Litigation App is somewhat unique in this list of best apps for lawyers because it’s designed by lawyers for lawyers.

It helps to efficiently manage important litigation tasks and workflow on the go, including scheduling and hosting virtual depositions, scheduling court reporters, downloading/viewing transcripts, monitoring breaking legal news and paying professional invoices.

The app is not as popular as it probably could and should be but is featured on both the Apple Store and Google Play.

Pricing: Complimentary for KLW clients. Price on application to KLW.

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Best lawyer app for notary services

Getting documents notarized can be time-consuming. By streamlining the process, you can free up valuable time.

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NotaryCam

NotaryCam is an online service used by law firms and attorneys to notarize documents in any U.S. state using its network of certified notaries.

To protect against fraud and maintain compliance, a certified notary creates digital versions of documents and uses the app’s built-in webcam feature to verify a client’s identity before it is electronically signed

Pricing: $25 per notarization in the U.S./$79 per notarization if you are located outside the U.S.

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What is Zapier, and why do lawyers need to know?

Zapier is not an app, but law firms should know about it as it helps you integrate the apps you use so that they work seamlessly with your existing setup.

If you seem to be wasting time on carrying out tasks between apps, it’s worth checking out whether you can automate them with a “zap” on Zapier. It works for many of the most popular apps for lawyers covered in this article (as well as over 5,000 other apps).

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Identify the law-related apps your firm needs most

Whether you’re an iOS or Android user, you can choose from a vast array of apps for lawyers that can help with everything from managing your Twitter account to marking up important case documents.

The apps you select for your firm will make a huge difference to your day-to-day productivity. Check out a few of those described above (many have free trials or are free to use) and identify the ones that can help you grow your firm.

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