Reflecting on a Year of Progress: Actionstep’s 2023 Highlights

As we say farewell to another transformative year, it’s time to reflect on the journey that defined Actionstep in 2023. We’re lucky to say this year has been nothing but short of extraordinary, marked by innovation, growth, and an unwavering commitment to empowering legal professionals worldwide.

None of our achievements would be possible without the support of our customers, partners, and the entire Actionstep community. Your trust, feedback, and collaboration drive us to push boundaries and redefine what’s possible in legal technology. Thank you for being an integral part of our story!

Here, we look back at some of our team’s favorite moments and accomplishments.

Big Announcements

This year Actionstep had some big news-worthy moments!

Actionstep joined forces with FilePro and Soluno

In August, we were thrilled to announce the acquisition of Australian legal software company FilePro. The combined businesses provide existing FilePro customers with access to extended cloud technologies and drive additional product development investment. Then in September, we announced our exciting acquisition of Soluno, a North American legal accounting platform.

Together, the combined companies offer the best of modern practice management and accounting software for midsize law firms in the U.S. and Canada. We look forward to offering some exciting solutions and choices to our customers as a result of these transactions.

Both transactions further bolster our position as the leading practice management software platform for mid-sized law firms.

Actionstep opened new global hubs

In a stride toward building closer connections with legal professionals around the world, we proudly announced the opening of three new office spaces in Denver, Colorado; Brisbane, Australia; and Perth, Australia via our FilePro Acquisition!

Our US headquarters is nestled in the heart of Denver and serves as our hub for collaboration, innovation, and dedicated support, enabling us to better serve our valued clients across North America. The new office in Brisbane represents a testament to our roots and ongoing commitment to support legal firms across Australia and the Asia-Pacific region.

Actionstep launched the first two Midsize Law Firm Priorities Report

At the beginning of the year, we launched our first ever 2023 US Midsize Law Firm Priorities Report focusing on legal professionals working for midsize law firms in the US. At the end of this year, we launched a second report, this time for the Australian legal market. These comprehensive reports delve deep into the unique challenges, trends, and priorities facing midsize law firms in these regions.

These reports demonstrate our commitment to providing actionable insights and empowering midsize law firms with the knowledge needed to thrive in a rapidly evolving industry. They serve as a compass, guiding firms toward informed decision-making, technological advancements, and strategic growth initiatives. Stay tuned for our 2024 US Midsize Law Firm Priorities Report which will be launched in the new year!

Big Product Updates

We hear your feedback! Our team has been hard at work this year making several exciting improvements to Actionstep. Our goal at Actionstep has been, and will always be, to help law firms reach their goals through our practice management platform features.

Product highlights

During the first half of 2023, our Product team focused on enhancements to usability, financial management, and productivity. Improvements to usability came in the form of Actionstep Academy which is filled with helpful courses and resources for legal professionals using our platform, an improved UI to make navigating the platform more intuitive, and a Recent Matters button for quick access to your most important information. We also made a range of improvements to our financial management tools, helping law firms collect fees more efficiently, manage international trust accounts and manage profitability.

With productivity top of mind for law firms, we added the capability to update existing matters via webforms, improved our Kenect integration for two-way text messages, and introduced rich text editing for file notes for better readability. We also delivered significant updates to eight different management reports that help Actionstep users get more visibility and powerful insights into their law firm’s productivity and profitability.

In the second half of 2023, our Product team focused on making improvements to client engagement, profitability, and compliance features within Actionstep. We enhanced the Daily Data Extract Extension which makes it easier for you to export data from Actionstep to use in another tool, created additional anti-money laundering capabilities within Actionstep to keep up with the regulations in NZ, AU, and the UK, and introduced our Release Notes Forum which notifies subscribed users of updates or changes to Actionstep.

Last but not least, we’ve prioritized making our platform even more stable and secure with ongoing use of AWS and switching to Amazon Aurora Serverless v2. We’ve also continued using Datadog. By doing this, we saw many improvements, such as faster response time, screen transitions, network usage, and memory usage so we easily scale law firms as they grow.

Big Milestones

This year Actionstep reached several notable milestones.

38,000+ Users

Actionstep surpassed the 38,000 mark for subscribers this year. We are very grateful to all our new customers and those who have been with us through the years. It is always an honor to support your journeys as law firms.

12 New partners

We were very excited to welcome several new Actionstep Partners. Our Partners are valuable resources for our customers and help make Actionstep successful. In the US we welcomed Encoretech, C&S Legal Tech, Profitpoint Group, O’Malley Consulting, Makwa Consulting, Million Dollar Solution, and Optiable. In the UK we welcomed AccessPoint, Xperate, Fuse Technologies, and Forenzix and Bizwell for our new ANZ Partner.

50 New Actionsteppers

2023 presented an exciting year for growth at Actionstep, including a growing team! We welcomed more than 50new team members including several experienced industry leaders like Valerie Connell, SVP of Product, Beth Thompson, Senior Director of Market Growth, and Ravi Rao, Director of Partnerships, North America. We are committed to building a strong team to empower midsize law firms around the globe.

To learn more about these and other new Actionsteppers on the team, read this article.

7,000+ Actionstep Academy courses completed

This year our Actionstep Academy courses shined! With more than 7,000 courses completed and videos watched, we were thrilled to see the excitement our customers have for becoming Actionstep power users.

Big Happenings

With in-person events back in full-swing around the globe, we cherished each event and the opportunity to connect with the legal community at the many industry and Actionstep-hosted events.

11 New Zealand/Australia events

Events we attended included our own hosted event, Future of Law Australian Firm Challenges and Insights Leading into 2024 where we launched our first Australian Midsize Law Firm Priorities Report, ALPMA Summit 2023, and LawFest 2023.

19 UK events

We participated in and hosted a whopping 19 events in the United Kingdom including Alternative Legal IT Conference 2023 for the first time, hosted our first event in the UK, Future of Mid-Market Law: Leveraging Community, Culture, Compliance, and Technology for Success, and attended LegalEx 2023.

12 US events

In the United States, we were very excited to host our first US Partner Summit where our valued partners gathered at our Denver headquarters to discuss upcoming initiatives and opportunities for collaboration. We joined several ALA events across the US, NetDocuments Inspire as Global Sapphire sponsors, and ILTACON 2023.

Big Fun

In 2023, we made sure to have some team fun too! We’ve connected face to face with team-members for both business and social occasions across our offices and feel very lucky to be part of this global, diverse, best-practice-sharing team! We ate, drank, bowled, sailed, played games, and just had a blast getting to know each other better.

A Big Year Ahead

As we turn the page on 2023, our excitement for the future is high! The year ahead holds the promise of even greater advancements, deeper connections, and more innovative solutions… Perhaps even a refreshing new look (wink wink). We’re ready to embrace the challenges and opportunities that lie ahead, continuing our journey of empowering legal professionals globally.

Stay connected with our team to hear the latest Actionstep news by following us on LinkedIn, Facebook, or X (formerly Twitter).