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Using Matter Tags and Practice Areas in LeanLaw

How to create and use matter tags and practice areas in LeanLaw to organize your matters, filter reports, and track revenue by practice group.

LeanLaw lets you categorize matters using Practice Areas and Tags. These labels power filtered views, reporting by department, and revenue tracking across your firm's work types.

 

Practice Areas

Practice Areas are firm-defined categories assigned to matters at creation (or edited later). Common examples include Litigation, Estate Planning, Corporate / Business, Real Estate, Family Law, and Criminal Defense.

Practice areas are used across LeanLaw's reporting suite — including Billables Reports and Revenue Reports broken down by practice area — making them one of the most valuable organizational tools for firms with multiple departments or partners.

 

Setting Up Practice Areas

  1. Click the gear icon ⚙️ to open Settings.
  2. Navigate to Team Settings → Practice Areas.
  3. Click Create and enter the name.
  4. The practice area is now available in the matter creation form.

💡 Tip: Set up all practice areas before creating matters, so every matter gets categorized consistently from the start. Retroactively adding practice areas to existing matters is possible but time-consuming for large firms.

 

Assigning a Practice Area to a Matter

  1. Open the matter (or create a new one).
  2. Find the Practice Area field in the matter details.
  3. Select the applicable practice area from the dropdown.
  4. Save the matter.

 

Matter Tags

Tags provide a flexible, free-form way to label matters beyond the structured practice area field. Tags can be used for:

  • Flagging matters for follow-up (e.g., 'Past Due', 'Needs Review')
  • Marking matters by case phase (e.g., 'Discovery', 'Trial', 'Settled')
  • Grouping matters for internal campaigns or reporting (e.g., 'Q2 Focus')

📋 Note: Tags are typically more flexible than practice areas and can be added or removed at any time without affecting report categories. Practice areas, once assigned, affect all historical reporting.

 

Using Practice Areas in Reports

Report

How Practice Area Applies

Billables — Practice Area

Shows billable time, fees, and expenses broken down by practice area across the firm.

Revenue — Practice Area

Shows collected revenue segmented by practice area.

Ready-to-Bill

Can be filtered to show only matters in a specific practice area.

Matter List

Filter and sort the matter list by practice area.