What Is Criminal Law?

Criminal law is the body of law that relates to any crime. It prescribes conduct perceived as threatening, harmful, or otherwise endangering to the property, health, safety, and moral welfare of people inclusive of one’s self. Criminal law varies according to jurisdiction, and differs from civil law, where emphasis is more on dispute resolution and victim compensation, rather than on punishment or rehabilitation itself.^[1] Put simply, criminal law is the body of law dealing with crimes. Criminal law deals with actions that the law has prohibited. It differs from other types of law because criminal cases are filed, investigated, and prosecuted.^[2]

Criminal law is only one of the devices by which organised societies protect the security of individual interests and ensure the survival of the group. There are, in addition, the standards of conduct instilled by family, school, and religion; the rules of the office and factory; the regulations of civil life enforced by ordinary police powers; and the sanctions available through tort actions.^[3]

What is Criminal Law Software?

As a criminal defence attorney, a lawyer needs a practice management solution that is as smart, agile and quick as they are. Criminal case management software gives access to law firms on the go and helps keep track of all matters required for cases and clients. This makes things more efficient so that lawyers can spend more time winning and less time managing.^[4] Criminal law softwares are designed for criminal lawyers and law firms to support them with their overall work as they progress from arrest to bail; and during preliminary hearing, and the trial.^[5] This software is a system of record and communication hub for your criminal defence cases.

Using a criminal lawyer defence software, an attorney can manage communication with clients, save documents and files related to each case and client online, and organise the client’s legal calendars and court dates all in one place.^[6]  It helps the client as well as the lawyer of the case to keep all contact information, evidence, documents, and communications organised, and also streamlines the process of invoicing clients.^[7]

What Does a Criminal Law Software Do?

The process of taking on criminal law cases always involves a lot of information collection. Law firms and lawyers are often working with dozens of clients and collecting data on hundreds of data points. It is quite hard to keep track of this information without the help of a reliable software tool. Crime case management softwares will save all of this data in a single place very securely. Having all of the client information in one place makes it easy to visualise the data, create reports, and leverage the information that has been collected.^[8]

Criminal law software helps to keep your cases organised. It automates many of the repetitive tasks of running a criminal law practice, mitigating the risk of error that comes with duplicate data entry, or with manually calculating court deadlines.

Criminal lawyer softwares also has forms that are specific to the subject. Lawyers can access their custom built library of forms, letters, and templates specific to their criminal defence practice and have completed materials within seconds. Then they can simply extract that in a PDF format, send, and save to the relevant matter with a single click!^[9] This makes another tedious part of their work very easy and quick.

Another thing is that information relating to criminal law is highly confidential and needs to be protected securely, digital document management features of criminal law software safeguards confidential or highly sensitive information is sent properly.^[10]

Although the employees at a lot of offices and companies have begun working from, it simply doesn’t replicate office life. Criminal law firms need to be able to ensure the time allocated to each case is done efficiently, securely and recorded accurately – even when lawyers and other law firm staff are working remotely. From the moment criminal lawyers receive their case through to potential trial, criminal law software supports all of these things.^[11]

With cloud-based criminal law software, lawyers can access case information from anywhere.^[12] It can also automate other recurring tasks that come with running a criminal law firm. Additionally, it can help lawyers maximise their financial yields and eliminate productivity roadblocks so that it is easier to focus on what matters most: defending your clients.^[13]

Criminal law firm softwares even offer a number of options to make payment easier for the clients, and to make the follow-up process easier for the lawyer. This includes the option to accept credit card payments online, and the option to set up payment plans.^[14]

To put things simply, criminal law office software makes the overall work of attorneys and law firms working on crime cases much simpler, easier and quicker.

Features of Criminal Law Firm Softwares:

Automated Crime Billing
With full integration to the accounts system and auto-form production, users can quickly record attendances, disbursements and expenses to create a Legal Aid complaint claim and automatically update the accounting ledgers.^[15]

Document Bundler

Whilst a good court bundle cannot win a bad case, a bad bundle can damage a good case. With criminal law software, the law firms and the case handlers are given quality tools to empower them to manage their cases successfully.^[16]

Compliance and Risk Management
Using criminal law software’s powerful workflow functionality, law firms can customise how they want to manage the risk of cases and check that compliance is being adhered to. It provides the tools that enable users to ensure key information such as Legal Aid references, applications and correct funding is in place before work begins.^[17]

Secure Document Exchange

Criminal law provides criminal lawyers with the highly secure tools, which they need to handle private and confidential information on their clients’ behalf, taking care of all concerns about client confidentiality. Documents can be accessed via a secure web portal for the firm’s clients to read, and a monitor tells the law firm when a client has logged in. The criminal law firm’s clients can get their answers quickly and easily from the internet without having to contact the firm directly.^[18]

Auto-Form Production

Time Recording

Criminal Case Management Software

An important part of criminal law software is the criminal case management software. Criminal case management software will enable law firms and attorneys to monitor and track the key steps and stages of every crime case – from police station to trial. All standard letters, documents and forms are called up in an instant, automatically assembled and pre-populated with the relevant case information, (for example – defendants’ name(s), court details, and bail dates among other things) saving both lawyers and clients valuable time and effort. These softwares are incredibly flexible, so case handlers can change the procedures to suit their own ways of working should they wish to. There are also generic workflow tools for law firms that wish to set up unique crime procedures from scratch.^[21]

Criminal case management software provides law firms with one central location to store and track all client data. This includes things like contact information, case notes, appointment scheduling and history, client communications, and billing.^[22]

Criminal case management software also makes collaboration between caseworkers easy. Anyone who is part of a case can be given access to the information they need. Communications regarding a client can usually be sent within the software and automatically attached to their case file. In some softwares caseworkers can even send communications directly to their clients. Since these communications are sent from within the system, they’re automatically tracked, so lawyers never have to worry that they are missing something.^[23]

Another major benefit of  criminal case management software is that client progress and other metrics can be easily tracked and displayed using various report types. This gives managers and other senior employees an overview of how the agency is performing and helps to pinpoint where and how operations can be made more efficient.^[24]

Benefits of Criminal Law Software

There are endless reasons why you should adopt criminal law software. Here are eight major benefits of it that you should know about:

When clients trust attorneys with their freedom, lawyers can not afford to miss a beat. That is why with criminal law software, users can rest assured knowing that they are on top of their cases, court dates, and tasks. It will help lawyers organise documents, evidence, and other information that comes in different formats, so that the documents, images and videos of each case are stored in an organised manner. ^[25]

Criminal law software helps law firms and lawyers create custom online intake forms for DUIs, property crimes, and other types of criminal cases to collect the relevant information for every matter. It will also enable the law companies’ support staff to monitor and track the key steps and stages of all crime cases. All standard letters, documents and forms are called up in an instant, automatically assembled and pre-populated with the relevant case information as per the demand of the user saving a lot of valuable time and effort..^[26]

The one-size-fits-all software approach simply doesn’t work for criminal lawyers as they need to track PVs and related cases, FST results, charges, RAP sheets, strike priors, custody credits, DMV hearings, and sentencing among other things. The legal criminal document management software can help organise all crime data in formats customised by lawyers for all cases.^[27]

Criminal law software is also a dedicated practice management interface that allows criminal law attorneys to see all components of their cases alongside a fully integrated billing and legal accounting system.^[28]

Crime case lawyers should not be restricted in their options while working if it helps them with their cases – which is why criminal law softwares gives lawyers the option to have freedom to work however they want to and wherever they want using the cloud-based criminal law software.^[29]

Criminal law firm software also helps the law firm staff to avoid carrying heavy files and spending hours searching through documents and forms of their multiple clients and digitalise the document creation and storage.^[30]

Criminal lawyer softwares are even equipped with features to provide in-depth management tools to monitor the profitability of Legal Aid cases including analysis of time recorded against fees claimed and comprehensive reporting showing the expenses of the business against revenues brought in.^[31]

In Criminal law software, the document bundle is an effective tool to save valuable time, as it quickly retrieves the case specific documents. Workflow automation generates and updates crime forms swiftly; standardising documentation to increase accuracy and mitigate human error. Valuable time is saved on complex form completion relating to court information and defendants details with re-existing templates and auto-document filling.^[32]

What to Look for in Criminal Law Software?

While all the features of criminal law software (that are discussed above) are important, the following few things must be considered when choosing the best criminal law software:

Does the provider offer quality, ongoing support?

Is it easy to retrieve and report on the data collected?

Can the system be configured to fit the firm’s unique needs?

Can the criminal law firm make minor system changes without having to go through the provider?

Can the software grow and adapt to your organisation?