Matter management: Best practices for legal teams

Legal teams manage complex matters every day, yet many still rely on spreadsheets, outdated systems, and disconnected processes to track progress, scope, and costs. The result? Escalating budgets, limited visibility, and inefficiencies slow everything down.

With growing pressure to improve oversight and control legal spending, leading teams are rethinking their approach, moving towards structured workflows, continuous tracking, and data-driven decision-making.

But where do you start? This post covers practical ways to improve matter management, drive efficiency, and keep legal costs under control—ensuring every case progresses smoothly, budgets stay on track, and external counsel delivers real value.

The foundations of effective legal matter management

A well-managed legal matter requires clear workflows, structured oversight, and continuous visibility into progress and costs. Without these elements, inefficiencies creep in—budgets overrun, work gets duplicated, and teams struggle to stay aligned.

At its core, matter management involves:

• Tracking and organization: Ensuring every matter has a clear structure, defined milestones, and assigned responsibilities.
• Budget control: Monitoring costs continuously to prevent overruns and improve forecasting.
• Collaboration: Keeping legal, finance, and external counsel aligned with shared visibility into work in progress.
• Performance measurement: Understanding which matters run efficiently, where delays occur, and how external legal spend compares to expectations.

Strong matter management helps legal teams streamline operations, maintain cost discipline, and make smarter decisions about how legal work is handled. But too often, the process is fragmented—relying on static reports, manual tracking, or outdated systems that don’t provide real-time insight.

Let’s now look at how to overcome these hurdles.

Where matter management breaks down (and how to fix it)

Even the most well-structured legal teams run into challenges when managing matters. Processes that seem efficient at first can become bottlenecks, and without the right oversight, legal costs spiral out of control.

Here are some of the most common issues—and how to solve them:

#1. Scattered information slows everything down

Legal matters involve multiple stakeholders, documents, and deadlines, yet many teams still rely on emails, spreadsheets, and disconnected tools to keep track of everything. When key details are buried in inboxes or locked in different systems, progress stalls, and teams waste time chasing updates.

💡The fix: Centralized matter tracking ensures that all case details, budgets, and communications are easily accessible. A structured system keeps everything in one place, improving visibility and efficiency.

#2. Budget overruns are spotted too late

Without continuous oversight, legal teams often discover budget issues only when invoices arrive. This reactive approach makes it hard to forecast spend, negotiate better rates, or hold external counsel accountable.

💡The fix: Matter budgets should be tracked in real time, not just reviewed retrospectively. Continuous monitoring helps teams spot scope creep early, adjust allocations, and stay within budget.

#3. Legal and finance teams operate in silos

Legal teams oversee the work, while finance teams manage the budget—but too often, they’re working from different sets of data. This lack of alignment leads to last-minute budget approvals, unexpected spend, and friction between departments.

💡The fix: A shared system that gives both legal and finance teams the same live view of legal spend ensures better decision-making and prevents misalignment.

#4. No insight into law firm efficiency

External legal work is one of the biggest areas of spend for corporate legal teams, yet many lack visibility into law firm performance. Without tracking who is working on what—and whether the work is efficient—firms may be charging premium rates without delivering premium value.

💡The fix: Matter management should include tracking of law firm staffing, billing efficiency, and adherence to fee structures. Understanding these metrics helps teams ensure they’re getting high-quality work at the right cost.

Ultimately, the aim is to move to proactive matter management with continuous cost oversight that allows for smarter decision-making. So, let’s now look at additional best practices that leading legal teams use to keep matters running smoothly.

Best practices for smarter matter management

Fixing inefficiencies in matter management goes beyond avoiding problems. Leading firms are one step ahead and mitigate issues before they arise, thanks to having a system that takes a structured, proactive approach to managing matters, ensuring that every case progresses efficiently, stays on budget, and delivers value.

Here’s how:

1. Standardize workflows to improve efficiency

Without a clear and structured process, legal matters can face delays, duplicated work, or misaligned priorities. A well-defined framework ensures that matters move forward efficiently and key details don’t get lost in scattered email threads or spreadsheets.

✅ Establish structured intake processes so every new matter is assigned, categorized, and tracked from the outset.
✅ Define key milestones to ensure legal teams and finance have visibility into matter progress.
✅ Centralize tracking in a system that provides a single source of truth for all legal work in progress.

When workflows are standardized and accessible, legal teams can respond faster, reduce administrative burden, and improve decision-making at every stage of a matter.

2. Track budgets continuously, not just at the invoice stage

Legal teams often discover budget overruns only after an invoice arrives—when it’s too late to intervene. This reactive approach makes financial planning difficult and increases the risk of unforeseen legal costs.

✅ Set budget thresholds for every matter at the outset—aligning expectations with finance and external counsel.
✅ Continuously monitor legal costs as work progresses, rather than waiting for monthly reports.
✅ Identify scope creep early, ensuring legal teams can address cost overruns before they escalate.

Firms that track legal spend in real time or near real time have a significant advantage—they can adjust strategy, prevent budget shocks, and make more informed decisions about where legal resources should be allocated.

3. Improve collaboration between legal, finance, and external counsel

Legal teams don’t work in isolation. Yet too often, finance operates on a different set of numbers, and external counsel invoices arrive without ongoing transparency into work progress. Misalignment leads to budget surprises, unexpected approvals, and inefficient decision-making.

✅ Use a shared platform so legal and finance teams operate from the same set of live data.
✅ Set clear expectations with law firms about staffing, fee structures, and matter updates.
✅ Hold regular check-ins with finance and external counsel to ensure legal work remains aligned with business priorities.

By breaking down these silos, teams can improve budget predictability, avoid disputes over legal costs, and ensure outside counsel is delivering value.

4. Measure performance and optimize legal spend

Legal teams can’t improve what they don’t measure. Tracking how long matters take, how law firms staff cases, and how external legal spend is allocated helps teams optimize their approach.

✅ Analyze spending patterns to identify areas for cost savings.
✅ Evaluate law firm performance based on efficiency and adherence to agreed rates.
✅ Use past data to forecast future legal budgets more accurately.

Legal teams that actively track timekeeper efficiency, matter completion rates, and cost benchmarking can make smarter decisions about which firms to engage, how to negotiate fees, and where to optimize spend.

Bringing clarity and control to matter management

Keeping track of legal work is one thing—managing it efficiently and cost-effectively is another. Without the right structure, inefficiencies creep in, costs escalate, and legal teams lose visibility over what’s really happening across their matters.

That’s why leading teams are shifting from reactive decision-making to a more structured, data-driven approach. By standardizing workflows, tracking budgets continuously, improving collaboration, and measuring law firm performance, legal teams can stay ahead of challenges instead of scrambling to fix them later.

Specialist tools make this easier. With continuous tracking and real-time insights, solutions like Apperio help legal teams prevent budget surprises, strengthen law firm accountability, and make smarter, more informed decisions about external legal work.

Ready to learn more? Book a demo today–we’d love to hear from you.

FAQs: Common questions about matter management

Legal teams are increasingly looking for better ways to manage matters efficiently, reduce costs, and improve collaboration. Below are some of the most frequently asked questions about matter management and how to optimize it.

1. What is matter management?

Matter management refers to the process of tracking, organizing, and overseeing legal matters from start to finish. It includes budgeting, progress monitoring, collaboration with external counsel, and reporting on outcomes.

2. Why is matter management important for legal teams?

Effective matter management helps legal teams stay organized, control costs, and improve decision-making. Without a structured system, teams risk budget overruns, missed deadlines, and inefficiencies that slow down legal operations.

3. What’s the difference between matter management and case management?

Matter management applies to a broad range of legal work, including transactions, corporate governance, and compliance.
Case management is more commonly used in law firms and focuses on litigation, document handling, and court filings.

4. How does matter management software help?

Matter management software provides a centralized system to track legal work, monitor costs, and improve collaboration. It helps legal teams:

• Gain real-time visibility into active matters
• Track budgets continuously to prevent overspending
• Align legal and finance teams on spend management
• Improve reporting and law firm performance tracking

5. What should I look for in a matter management system?

Key features to consider include:

• Matter tracking with clear workflows and milestones
• Budget monitoring and real-time spend tracking
• Collaboration tools for legal and finance teams
• Performance metrics to evaluate law firm efficiency

6. How can legal teams improve matter management without new software?

Even without a dedicated system, legal teams can enhance their matter management by:

• Standardizing intake processes and workflows
• Regularly reviewing budget and spend trends
• Creating shared tracking systems with finance teams
• Setting clear expectations with external counsel on fees and reporting