In US and UK legal practice a CRM is almost never “just a funnel.” The cycle runs through conflict check, engagement letter, matter opening, deadlines and court rules, documents, time and fees, trust or client accounting, then ongoing client updates. That is why a generic sales CRM and a practice-management platform do not play the same game — and this comparer puts both on one ranking, with explicit weights.
There is a third group that is easy to confuse in a demo: the sliced stack. Intake CRM, matter system, billing, and document automation are sometimes another product from the same brand — or a marketplace add-on. This yardstick marks a feature native only when it ships in the product under review. A sibling SKU (for example Clio Grow next to Clio Manage) or portal-only chat counts as missing on the axes that ask for those things — and the profile explains what lives next door.
Native messaging on the matter or contact (two-way SMS/inbox or WhatsApp API) is on the yardstick. Portal-only chat and marketplace bridges do not count.
A daily rotation re-reads official pages in this cut — one category per day — price, trial, new module, URL that disappears. The box at the top says what changed and what stayed the same, so you do not have to open every vendor site. The order only moves when the public source changes the product.