With the legal landscape becoming more and more competitive, a well-maintained Client Relationship Management (CRM) system is one of your most strategic assets. For law firms, especially those with specialized practices and high-value clients, CRM systems are foundational to business development, marketing, and operational success.
Research by Harvard Business Review (HBR) demonstrates the importance of data quality in CRM systems:
The average company loses $12.9 million annually due to poor data quality.
Bloomfire for Harvard Business Review
Maintaining CRM data integrity and maximizing its utility are common challenges. Too often, law firms struggle with outdated contact records, disjointed data sources, and underutilized insights. The solution? A disciplined approach to CRM maintenance supported by robust data integration strategies.
Read on for seven CRM best practices that your law firm can use for a more proactive approach to client relationship management, backed by insights from our advanced data solutions.
1. Adopt a centralized data governance model
The first step in effective CRM management is establishing a clear governance framework.
Ask your teams:
- Who owns the data?
- Who updates it?
- How frequently is it reviewed?
Assign ownership to a dedicated CRM team or role, often within marketing or business development, responsible for overseeing data entry, cleanup, and user training. Consistent processes create accountability and set the tone for firmwide adoption.
Try using standardized templates and dropdowns for key fields to ensure consistency across records and reduce human error.
2. Invest in law firm data integration solutions
Your CRM shouldn’t operate in a vacuum. By integrating it with other systems, such as email marketing platforms, billing systems, and external databases, you can have a 360-degree view of clients and prospects.
For example, Altrata’s data integration solutions, delivered via APIs and data feeds, allow firms to enrich CRM profiles with executive insights like career history, board roles, academic backgrounds, and relevant news mentions. This real-time data enhancement eliminates silos and amplifies CRM value.
3. Prioritize data hygiene with ongoing appends and cleansing
Stale data will slowly and silently deteriorate your CRM. Regular data appending and cleansing can ensure that contact information, job titles, and relationships remain accurate.
Data integration solutions help law firms maintain CRM quality by appending existing contact records with up-to-date information on executives and influential decision-makers. This automation reduces manual updates and boosts confidence in the system’s reliability.
4. Maintain high data quality
In a webinar held in partnership with RelPro our COO, Connel Bell, told viewers it’s simple: “Good data is data that delivers value.” But there’s nuance here. Value doesn’t come from having more data. Instead, it comes from clear, trustworthy data that can directly inform the decisions you need to make.
For sales and marketing teams, investing in improved data quality directly translates into efficiency and better outcomes. If you’ve ever experienced a sales cycle stretched thin by outdated contact information, duplicate entries, or incomplete client histories, you know firsthand how poor CRM data quality drains resources.
Top quality data matters; it’s critical to your infrastructure. Your data drives everything from prospect identification and personalized outreach to relationship-building and strategic growth.
Improving your data isn’t simply a cleanup task. Be sure to take a strategic approach to get the most out of the heavy lift of data improvement and enrichment. When your CRM contains timely, accurate, and complete information, you can quickly identify your best opportunities, craft outreach effectively, and build relationships with confidence. If you’re wondering how to improve CRM data quality, start by viewing it as a core component of your strategy. Not an afterthought. Read more about data quality.
5. Use relationship intelligence to enhance engagement
Beyond contact details, relationship pathways provide critical context. Who at the firm knows a specific executive? What mutual connections exist? Is it possible to get a referral form a current client?
Altrata offers relationship mapping tools to connect the dots between you and your organization to firm contacts and influential business leaders. Data can unlock that warm introduction you’ve been looking for. Insights like these allow firms to make more successful connections, build targeted engagement strategies, and deepen existing relationships.
You can leverage relationship intelligence to guide partner introductions or identify the warmest path to a new prospect. Read more about relationship mapping.
6. Align CRM strategy with business development goals
Your CRM can be even more effective if it aligns with broader business goals. Whether your firm is focused on growing in a specific industry, expanding into new markets, or deepening existing client relationships, your CRM should be structured to support those priorities.
Tag contacts and companies with key attributes such as industry sector, geography, and practice relevance. This makes it easier to create targeted campaigns and track progress against business development metrics.
7. Train and report on CRM effectiveness
Even the most advanced CRM system is ineffective without user adoption. Many law firms struggle with buy-in from attorneys, who are hesitant to modernize their business development approach and may view the CRM as administrative rather than strategic.
Show how an up-to-date CRM can drive ROI and act as your firm’s competitive advantage. Invest in training programs that demonstrate how the CRM supports their goals: winning new business, preparing for meetings, or deepening client relationships. Highlight how integrated tools like Altrata’s executive data can make this process seamless.
Create dashboards or alerts that deliver value directly to the attorney’s inbox, such as updates about a client’s recent promotion or board appointment. Then, establish KPIs to track CRM health and performance: data completeness, contact activity, engagement metrics, and campaign ROI. Regular reports help identify gaps and celebrate wins.
Simplify your CRM efforts with a trusted partner
Law firm client relationship management software can be a powerful enabler of growth when maintained with discipline and enriched with high-quality data. By following these CRM best practices, law firms can drive smarter outreach, deeper client connections, and measurable business development impact.
You can reach out to our team for custom tips about how Altrata’s executive insights, relationship mapping, and law firm data integration solutions help CRM systems evolve from static repositories into dynamic engines to drive new business.