Legal practice management software is a must-have for most law offices. It streamlines the process of handling and managing a case from start to finish. Law case management systems allow busy attorneys to keep track of contacts, documents, and calendaring, among other things, for each case that is added to the system; many offer time tracking and billing features as well.
For most law practices, purchasing practice management software that is well-suited for the size and specific practice areas of the firm is a good investment that saves time and money in the long run.
Organize Your Practice
One decision lawyers must make when choosing legal practice management software is whether to purchase a web-based law practice management system or a traditional desktop system that is installed and housed on the law firm’s server.
Once you’ve decided which type of platform you intend to use, you can then narrow down your choices based on the specific features offered by a particular system.
The American Bar Association’s Legal Resource Center offers a very useful comparison chart, which lists and compares the features of some of the more popular legal case management software systems, including both traditional and web-based systems.
The traditional desktop systems included in the chart are:
The web-based legal practice management systems included in the chart are:
Next week we’ll compare Clio and Rocket Matter along with a few other web-based law practice management platforms, including LawRD and VLOTech, and will discuss the advantages and disadvantages of web-based practice management systems.
Many lawyers express concerns regarding whether web-based systems conform with their ethical obligations. Security is also a very valid concern raised by attorneys. Accordingly, we’ll follow up the post on web-based practice management systems with a post that provides an overview for these issues and will then delve into specific ethical and security issues in subsequent posts.
In the meantime, feel free to raise any specific concerns that you may have in the comments following this post.
Looking forward to this!
Nikki – you may want to add Advologix to your SaaS list. Based on the SalesForce.com platform, they have some definite value propositions.
Toby
Thanks Toby–I’ll have to check them out.
This series of posts is an invaluable resource to lawyers trying to understand the various forms of virtual law office technology.
Great idea for help in managing law firms.
Most law firms are constantly attempting to become more efficient and increase their bottom line. One common focus of optimization is in the law firms computer software systems. One of the greatest efficiency factors lies in the ability to seamlessly pass data as needed between the various modules within an application. Yet, trying to save a few dollars, many firms purchase a stand-alone time and billing systems coupled with a second stand alone accounting system. Is this really a good choice and does it save on costs?
Financial information permeates law practice management applications. In addition to managing attorney, client, and matter information, posting time, producing invoices, and maintaining accurate general ledger balances; law firms are required to write checks, record and recover client costs, process client receipts, and maintain accurate client trust records.
When using piecemeal systems, it’s very hard to limit functionality to within “time and billing” or “accounting”. There’s no clear cut border since common information must be processed by both packages. For example: A client cost check is written in the accounting system which maintains accurate General Ledger balances, thereafter the client costs must be manually re-keyed into the client’s work in process account allowing for eventual invoicing and recovery. The manual redistribution is inherently riddled with problems. If not performed in a timely manner, the redistribution of costs may be missed and forgotten. Postings may be transposed resulting in incorrect amounts, matters, or possibly duplicate entries.
Standalone time and billing systems adequately produce and store client invoices, but fall short when processing client receipts. Receipts generally must be entered twice when using piecemeal systems; once into the time and billing system to accurately maintain the firm’s accounts receivable balance, then a second time into the accounting package to accurately record the general ledger cash and revenue balances. When re-keyed into the accounting system, each receipt must be manually analyzed to correctly allocate it against fees earned and costs recovered. The double posting requirement again results in potential omission, transposition, or duplication errors often rendering balances unreliable.
Piecemeal processing is further complicated when client trust funds should be applied against invoices. The trust balance, often stored in the standalone accounting system, is not automatically associated with an invoice generated from a standalone time and billing system. Therefore the invoice balance is not decreased by the available trust funds and the trust activity is not noted on the invoice for client review and verification. A trust disbursement must be manually entered and processed from the accounting system, then again manually entered and processed as a client receipt into the time and billing system to relieve the invoice. Again, if not performed in a timely manner, posting omissions, transpositions, or duplications may occur requiring hours of manual reconciliation time.
Taken alone, each duplicate transaction may seem insignificant. Yet when replicated multiple times per day, often by different people, piecemeal time, billing, and accounting systems rarely provide timely or accurate information. Often many hours, if not days are required to reconcile postings between the systems.
Integrated time, billing, and accounting systems completely eliminate this duplication of effort resulting in timely, accurate information. Disbursement checks post as needed to the general ledger and client work in process accounts. Receipt transactions both relieve receivables and post general ledger activity. Client trust activity is reflected on client invoices and trust funds are automatically distributed from the trust account to the general fund to relieve the invoice. Productivity reporting naturally reflects the entire firm’s performance by including time worked billing, and accounting activity.