Today's issue of TL NewsWire covers an integrated financial and practice management system with dashboards (see article below), an iPad app for managing the ediscovery process, an online service for tracking federal and state legislation, and a smartphone app for obtaining low rates at upscale hotels. Don't miss the next issue.
DRIVE YOUR LAW PRACTICE TO GREATER SUCCESS
Imagine driving your car without a dashboard. While it might provide a good excuse if you get pulled over for speeding, you'd probably feel uncomfortable. There's no denying the brilliance of having all the information you need right in front of you. For this reason, all lawyers should have one or more dashboards to monitor their law firms, practice groups, and/or personal goals.
PCLaw 13 … in One Sentence
Launched this month, LexisNexis' PCLaw 13 is an integrated legal billing, accounting, and practice management application.
The Killer Feature
The new version of PCLaw features three dashboards — My Practice, My Clients, and My Business — that give you an overview of different aspects of your law firm and help you pinpoint potential problems. Each dashboard enables you to drill down to see more detailed data.
My Practice helps you manage your schedule and workload. It displays your appointments, tasks (current, upcoming, and overdue), client-related email and other messages, matters on which you've recently worked, and legal news in your designated practice areas courtesy of Lexis.com.
My Clients collects all information about each client and matter in one location — appointments, tasks, contact information, email and other messages, recent activities such as notes, telephone calls, and time entries, and financial information such as unbilled activities, trust account balance, last bill, last payment, last dunning notice, etc.
My Business gives you the big picture, enabling you to assess the financial health of your firm. You can also use My Business to track personal goals such as billable hour targets. Depending on your access rights, the My Business dashboard displays financial summaries, budget tracking, income and expense details, and key performance indicators such as account receivables, bank account balances, billable hours, work in progress, etc. From this dashboard, you can also generate income and other financial statements, and access frequently-used features such as applying payments, generating past-due notices, and writing checks.
"Our research consistently demonstrates that smaller law firms find it challenging to balance the practice of law with the business of law," LexisNexis Senior Director for Law Firm Practice Management Loretta Ruppert told us. The new dashboards in PCLaw visually surface relevant information so lawyers can monitor the firm's business performance without waiting for reports and quickly find information when clients call."
Other Notable Features
PCLaw also seeks to help law firms standardize routine processes to ensure consistency and minimize errors.
For example, PCLaw has a new paperless client intake system. From within PCLaw, you can email prospective clients a customized intake firm. When a prospective client returns the completed form, you can import the data into PCLaw, perform a conflict check, and automatically send the prospective client an engagement or non-engagement letter. Standardizing your intake system in this manner may help reduce your malpractice insurance premiums.
PCLaw also features customizable email templates for the entire billing process. This ensures that each communication is personalized, features your firm's branding, and contains your firm's payment terms.
What Else Should You Know?
PCLaw runs on Windows 8 and earlier versions, and integrates with Office 2013 and earlier versions. Pricing starts at $985 for the first timekeeper and $498 for each additional timekeeper. Your license includes a one-year Annual Maintenance Plan, which entitles you to PCLaw Mobility for mobile access, software updates, technical support via email and telephone, and web training materials. Learn more about PCLaw 13.
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