By Legal Futures Associate Perfect Portal
Client onboarding is often designed to be a clear and structured starting point for legal matters. However, for many fee earners, the reality of managing onboarding day to day is far less straightforward, with inefficiencies and fragmented processes continuing to impact time, focus, and overall workflow.
While client onboarding may appear simple at a high level, the practical experience of delivering it often tells a different story. In many firms, onboarding sits alongside existing workloads, requiring fee earners to manage it with active matters, client communication, and deadlines. Without a fully joined-up process, it can become difficult to maintain a consistent and efficient flow.
In practice, onboarding is rarely a single, seamless journey. Instead, it often involves switching between tasks, chasing missing or incomplete information, repeating requests, and working across multiple systems that do not fully connect. Individually, these steps may seem minor, but together they create friction at the very start of the legal process.
This friction is often felt in small but frequent interruptions – quick follow-ups, checking details, and moving between systems. Over time, these moments add up, breaking focus and slowing momentum. As a result, onboarding can begin to delay progress before a matter has properly begun, rather than supporting a smooth start.
Many of these challenges stem from how onboarding processes are designed. While they are built around essential requirements such as compliance and risk management, the day-to-day experience of using those processes is not always considered in the same way. This can result in processes that work in theory but feel inefficient in practice, with disconnected systems and communication that does not fully support the overall flow.
Even with the introduction of technology, the experience does not automatically improve. Tools can support onboarding, but when they operate in isolation, the process can still feel fragmented. Over time, fee earners often adapt by finding workarounds to keep things moving, whether that means following up earlier, double-checking details, or managing parts of the process manually. While effective in the moment, these adaptations can allow inefficiencies to become part of the routine.
The impact of this goes beyond individual workloads. A slower or more fragmented client onboarding process affects how work moves through the firm, influencing consistency, timelines, and overall efficiency. It also shapes the client experience, often more than expected, as onboarding sets the tone for the relationship from the outset.
As firms continue to look for ways to improve both internal efficiency and client experience, onboarding presents a clear opportunity for change. Rethinking how the process is structured and connected in practice can help reduce friction and create a more consistent starting point for every matter.
To explore these challenges in more detail, download The Experience Gap: Rethinking Client Onboarding for Modern Law Firms.
