Online Legal Practice Management: The Options

And Where There is Room To Improve

I met a lawyer friend recently and our discussion turned to how we manage our solo practices. Out of curiosity, I asked what software they use to track their time and bill clients. The answer: Excel and a free windows timer application.

Internally, I shuddered at the thought of trying to juggle excel spreadsheets and transferring time to spreadsheets and manually copying and pasting to generate invoices. But I’m sure there are plenty of solo lawyers out there doing just that.

If you are are considering a move the bar, or otherwise setting up practice on your own account, what you may not know is that there are some very affordable online legal practice management solutions out there that can take a lot of stress out of the administration of a legal practice by letting you park your Excel skills and focus on with lawyering.

What online legal practice management does for you

In my view, good legal practice management software should provide lawyers with:

• a easy way to record time spent on a matter, including timers
• a simple means to generate bills to send to clients
• clear reminders if there are any clients with overdue bills that need to be chased up
• a repository of client contact information
• basic matter management that allows documents to be associated with a matter and tasks that can be diarised where necessary
• document assembly tools to allow the lawyer to create first drafts by combining their own templates with client data

The advantage of online practice management software is that you do not need to install anything — you simply access the software as a service through a web browser from anywhere you can get internet access and from any device. You pay a monthly subscription, generally around $50 to $80 per month.

Ideally you should be able to try before you buy. There is no reason why an online software service should not allow you to do this. I tend to steer away from services that require you to contact them first in order to get a demo of their product because it suggests to me that their product is too complex. They don’t trust you to understand how the product works by yourself and are fearful that you will give up after a free trial.

What the big legal publishers offer

Lets start with looking at what the big legal publishers provide in the way of online practice management tools. These are:

• PCLaw from LexisNexis; and
• FirmCentral from ThomsonReuters.

While these products have the unique benefit of integrating with other products from the publisher concerned, in my view, that should not be the core offering of a practice management tool.

Further, the likes of ThomsonReuters and LexisNexis are generally behind the times with respect to user interface design and functionality.

The sign-up process is an indication of what you are in for. Both websites offer for you to “Try now”, but then direct you to an email sign-up, after which you have to wait for them to contact you with trial account details. It is by no means immediate. This process alone is out of step with how most online service products now seek to entice users (compare the sign up experience offered by Clio, referred to below).

These publishers also unnecessarily segment their product offerings in my view (which mirrors their approach to how they charge for access to their legal libraries — a pet peeve that I will leave to another post). For example, the Form Builder document assembly tool appears to be an add-on to Firm Central.

Both of these products may claim plenty of users (PCLaw claims 115,000+ ), but is that because lawyers already use the legal knowledge products and so opt for the devil they know rather than explore other alternatives? Or do they genuinely receive a benefit from the integration with other legal knowledge products offered by these publishers?

Other lawyer-specific solutions

The tools being developed outside the legal publishing world are more intriguing to me. They do not have a predetermined look and feel that lawyers expect from them and are not burdened by the need to integrate with other legal knowledge products. This can lend itself to greater creativity in terms of design and functionality.

The following are the main lawyer-specific online practice management solutions that I have come across:

• ActionStep — This is what I use. Why I prefer Actionstep to any other practice management tool is the ability to set up workflows that step you through a checklist of tasks for every stage in a matter with associated document assembly. The downside is that setting up the workflows is complex. It took me quite some time to understand how it worked and even after using the product for over 18 months I feel as though I have still only scraped the surface of the potential of this product. The learning curve is a huge barrier to entry for many lawyers, unless they are able to outsource their setup to someone else (a service that ActionStep provides, funnily enough). The complexity of the product is also a reason why they prefer to walk you through a demo rather than leave you alone to explore a trial version of the product from the outset, which I can understand would be a reason some will turn away before trying the product out.
• Rocket Matter — I tried Rocket Matter before deciding to go with ActionStep. It lacked the workflow and integrated document assembly features that I was after, but I did like the look and feel. Simple and clean — an style of interface that I prefer. It seemed to me that one of its key selling points is the way its tracks your time behind the scenes and picks up time that you might not have otherwise billed.
• Clio — I gave this solution a quick try. They take you through a neat tour introduction which is really helpful to get you navigating around the software. The interface is modern and preferable even to Rocket Matter. But again the workflow and integrated document assembly of the kind provided by ActionStep is not there.
• MyCase — I seem to come across this one quite often and tried it briefly. The functionality seems to be there and quite easy to understand. The look and feel is dated though — the analogy I would give is that MyCase is to Clio as the original iOS is to iOS7.

Solutions that are not lawyer-specific

There are alternative online business management products that may in some cases be cheaper and do just as good a job at replacing your mountain of Excel spreadsheets.

For example, I came across Depot recently and was impressed by its design and capability for integration with other accounting and time recording products such as Harvest. I noticed that it was sometimes slow to load, but that may improve as it is developed. There is also no document assembly features, other than automated billing.

Depot offers four main workflow areas: connect, execute, finance and analyse. That roughly corresponds to contact information, getting tasks done, billing and reports. I like this way of dividing the user’s workflow focus.

Room for improvement

I would agree with another lawyer’s summing up of the present legal practice management options — there is no perfect practice management tool out there. The strengths of each product are also their weaknesses:

• the products provided by the legal publishers are concerned to integrate their other legal knowledge products which results in segmentation;
• ActionStep aims to be the holistic tool with workflow management, but that adds complexity — too much for some;
• RocketMatter, Clio and MyCase are easier to understand, but lack sophisticated workflow or focus — they could learn from the simplicity of views offered by Depot; and
• Depot doesn’t have lawyer-specific features that the other products have, and in particular it lacks any document assembly.

I am sure that we will see other contenders arise in this market. There is still room to improve if someone can work out how to combine a simple user workflow experience with the most important features sought after by lawyers. If you know of any other products that may get closer to this achieving this aim, please add your suggestions in the comments.

And if you are still using Excel, I encourage you to try one of the options above — they may not be perfect, but you may find they make managing your practice a whole lot easier and enjoyable.