Today's issue of TechnoLawyer NewsWire covers an online expense report service, stylish software for accounting, case management, and time-billing, and a business process integration tool that can communicate with just about any legacy system a law firm might have. Don't miss the next issue.
Below you'll find one of the three articles from today's edition:
Control Your Practice in Style
By Taeho Lim
Once upon a time no one seemed to care about user interface design. Then Apple released a music player with a breakthrough interface. Software companies changed their tune and focused their energy on simple, elegant interfaces. World peace ensued. Life was good. The end.
Of course, the story doesn't really end like that. Lots of bad software design still exists. But some software companies have embraced interface design as a competitive advantage. One such company is ESI Software, which recently released ESILAW 2007 (pronounced "easy law") — "time, billing, accounting, and client control software for law firms."
One of the most notable new features is not a feature per se, but a "Follow Me" help system that guides you through the functions of the program. Also new is the "QuickStart Navigator," which helps you set up the software. After setting up ESILAW, you'll find the "ESILAW Navigator," which takes you to any function in the program with one click. You can also create your own toolbar for even faster access to the functions you use the most.
If you bill your time, you can use ESILAW 2007's Timetracker to keep track of it for you. It features time codes, timers, an integrated spell checker, and more. You can also email your time entries when on the road and import your time from other programs such as Amicus Attorney. ESILAW 2007 also supports task-based billing, including UTBMS codes.
As a full-fledged accounting program, ESILAW 2007 contains many features you would expect such as check writing, accounts payable, accounts receivable, etc., and a few you might not such as expense tracking and cost recovery. In addition to entering expenses such as travel, you can also automatically capture equipment costs from virtually any cost recovery system, including Equitrac, PrintAudit, and Copitrak.
As you would expect, ESILAW 2007 enables you to generate many reports, including work-in-progress and collection realization. You can generate all your bills from a single screen. If you don't finish in one session, ESILAW 2007 will save your place so you can return later.
What the company calls "client control," you probably refer to as case or practice management. In this regard, ESI significantly beefed up its calendar in ESILAW 2007. At a glance, you can see your appointments and tasks. You can also create time entries from calendar items. Sharing calendars across your firm doesn't require any additional software.
Like many programs, ESILAW 2007 integrates with Outlook so that you can associate email with clients and matters. But ESILAW 2007 takes this integration one step further with an option to add Quickfile4Outlook, an Outlook add-on that enables you to file incoming and outgoing email into client/matter folders. Quickfile4Outlook can also archive and print email by matter.
ESILAW 2007 is compatible with Windows Vista as well as Windows 2000 and Windows XP. It sells for $249 by itself or $348 if bundled with Quickfile4Outlook. Learn more about ESILAW 2007.
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Published on Wednesdays, TechnoLawyer NewsWire is a weekly newsletter that briefly discusses and provides links to three hot new technology products and services of interest to legal professionals. Like all of our newsletters, it's free. You can subscribe here.
