There is no single best law office management software, and any page that names one is selling something. What there is, for a firm of two to forty people, is a short list of things the system has to get right and a much longer list of things it will be demonstrated on. This page separates the two. The short list is the matter, the time recorded against it, the bill that comes off that time, and the client money held separately; everything else is either a preference or a product you are being cross-sold. The way to tell which is to price your own problem first, in your own figures, and then let the quotes land against that number rather than against a feature grid.
Judge it on the matter, not the feature grid
A firm's work hangs off the matter: the time, the bill, the client money and the file all point back to it. A system that models work as a project, a ticket or an opportunity will fight you at every handover, and configuration does not fix a wrong unit. Ask to see one matter opened, worked, billed and closed before you look at anything else.
Price your own problem first
On the worked example this site publishes -- 6 fee earners, $280 an hour, 5.2 recorded hours each per day -- a firm records $183,456 of value a month and has $331,968 of unbilled work in progress at 38 days. A quote is either small or large against numbers like those, and until you have your own you cannot tell which.
Count the migration, not just the licence
The cost that surprises firms is not the subscription, it is the fortnight of double entry and the first billing cycle run twice. Move the matter list first, then time, then billing, and keep the old system readable until one full cycle has closed cleanly.
Questions people ask about best law office management software
Is the most expensive one the best?
No, and in this size band it is usually the opposite: the expensive products are built for firms of hundreds and their configuration burden lands on you rather than on an in-house team.
Should we buy case management at the same time?
Only if you have a case-management problem. Case and document assembly, legal research, e-discovery and court filing are separate products, several with their own regulators, and buying them together is how firms end up paying for three quarters of a suite they never turn on.
How long should a decision take?
Long enough to run one full billing cycle in parallel. Firms that decide faster than that are usually deciding on the demo rather than on the work.