Modern in-house lawyers are dealing with heavy workloads under significant resource strain. Legal Departments are often dealing with a stack of disorganised legal requests, worsened by a lack of visibility across active matters. In this context, the right matter management platform can be an eminently useful salve to your team’s organizational woes.
The right system improves transparency, reduces administrative effort, and helps legal teams make informed, strategic decisions. Drawing on our experience partnering with hundreds of in-house teams globally, and our deep understanding of legal operations and technology, we break down what the best solutions in 2026 truly offer.
With a large variety of competitors in the relatively new field of matter management software, it can be difficult to choose which is the best fit for your business. The wrong software can lead to bad data, integration issues and low adoption internally. Choosing the right software can transform how your team operates.
In this article we will survey the growing field of Legal matter management software, delving specifically into different options to give you our recommendation for the best in the business.
Put simply, legal matter management software provides a centralised, structured system for organising all legal work within an organisation. Rather than relying on scattered email chains, spreadsheets, or ad-hoc processes, it brings matters, documents, deadlines, spend and communications into one streamlined platform.
Matter management software gives in-house legal teams a unified view of every active and historical matter, allowing them to monitor progress, track deadlines, and identify risks early.
By automating intake and document assembly, organizing information, and reducing manual updates, legal teams can spend more time on high‑value legal work rather than operational tasks.
Strong matter management tools deliver accurate data, enabling you to report on workload, risk trends, resource allocation, and performance with confidence.
Selecting the right matter management software depends on your organisation’s unique situation. The following is an overview of the main considerations to take into account when choosing the right software for your team.
Smaller legal teams are notoriously overworked and stand to reap the benefits of a suitable software suite, but may prefer not to invest time and resources into technically complex or bloat-featured matter management solutions.
From small businesses to large NGOs, the public service to other heavily regulated sectors, in-house legal teams will have vastly different needs and workflows, which is where having flexible, out-of-the-box configurations become important.
Some software packages can come with hidden fees, opaque pricing models and other nasty surprises. In-house legal teams need to optimise their expenditure, so it is crucial to make sure that the pricing of your chosen software aligns with your ongoing budgetary requirements.
Ensure the software integrates smoothly with your existing systems, including document management system tools like iManage, NetDocuments, or SharePoint. It should also connect easily with Microsoft 365 or Google Workspace, as well as collaboration platforms such as Teams or Slack. Support for SSO and your identity providers is also essential for security and simple user access.
Modern matter management systems include tools which help you to categorize and prioritize all incoming enquiries, helping to alleviate workflow bottlenecks.
The best platforms connect directly with your inbox, document storage, and internal communication systems, allowing legal teams to collaborate and communicate without shifting everything to a new system.
Key to matter management is having holistic insights across the whole team’s capacity, delivery and performance. Live, detailed analytics allow you to make data-driven decisions.
Systems that offer built-in task lists, reminders, and collaborative notes offer structure and productivity enhancements to teams under pressure.
Xakia provides users with comprehensive legal matter management, supporting in-house teams with a single, fully integrated platform.
Xakia boasts a sophisticated yet intuitive interface, which in turn increases adoption and makes the onboarding process smoother for new hires.
With highly advanced reporting and analytics purpose-built for in-house legal teams, Xakia is the industry leader for matter management.
Pros: Fast implementation; excellent reporting; strong integrations; purpose-built for in-house teams.
Cons: Designed for in-house use only, not for law firms.
Best For: In-house legal teams seeking a comprehensive, modern matter management system.
Checkbox.ai centres on workflow automation, allowing legal teams to build self-service tools and automate repetitive, low-risk processes.
Pros: Strong workflow automation; good for high-volume tasks.
Cons: Less robust for full matter management.
Best For: Legal operations teams focused on automating standardized processes.
Brightflag offers a spend-focused approach to matter management software, with a relatively simple interface.
Pros: Useful visibility; solid reporting.
Cons: Limited depth in automation and advanced features.
Best For: Teams needing clear visibility into their budget.
Onit is an intricate solution, designed for large organizations with complex legal operations.
Pros: Highly configurable and highly scalable.
Cons: Requires significant implementation time and investment.
Best For: Large enterprises with sophisticated requirements.
Ironclad is a matter management solution primarily specialising in contract management and document automation.
Pros: Helpful contract lifecycle management tools.
Cons: Less holistic approach around matter management.
Best For: Teams struggling with contract backlog.
LawVu offers an extensive platform which brings together document automation, collaboration, and reporting.
Pros: Offers collaboration tools, reporting capability.
Cons: Potentially difficult to integrate with pre-existing tech.
Best For: Mid-sized legal teams able to adopt complex software.
Clio is a well-known legal platform offering basic matter and document management primarily for law firms and smaller teams.
Pros: Simple interface; good for small teams.
Cons: Not designed for complex in-house environments.
Best For: Law firms.
Already adopted by many international household name brands, Xakia stands head and shoulders above its competitors for in-house teams looking to revolutionise their operations.
Because it was specifically designed for use by in-house teams, Xakia’s clean, intuitive interface is easily integrated and set up, which drives adoption. This, however, does not compromise its sophistication in data analysis and reporting, making it easier to demonstrate effectiveness and value.
Importantly, it is also scalable and cost-effective, with a transparent and competitive pricing scheme without any sneaky charges or hidden fees. If you are looking for the right legal matter management software for your business - speak to Xakia today.
Jodie is an innovator, entrepreneur, and advocate of LegalTech. Her passion to give in-house counsel greater visibility and control to their legal operations is the driving force behind Xakia, an in-house legal matter management platform that is simple, powerful and affordable and services hundreds of legal teams - and thousands of lawyers - around the globe.
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