TechnoLawyer: Accounting/Billing/Time Capture

Coming today to BlawgWorld: Our editorial team has selected and linked to 151 articles from the past week worthy of your attention. Below you'll find a sample article from each section of today's issue, including our BlawgWorld Pick of the Week.

Three Game Changing Products at ABA TECHSHOW 2013

Review: Status Board

Seven Lawyers Weigh in on Starting a Law Firm

How to Write a Persuasive Email Message

Congratulations to Robert J. Ambrogi of LawSites on winning our BlawgWorld Pick of the Week award: A New Approach to Tracking Billable Hours

Today's issue also contains links to every article in the April 2013 issue of Law Practice Today. Don't miss today's issue or any future issues of BlawgWorld.

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Coming today to BlawgWorld: Our editorial team has selected and linked to 167 articles from the past week worthy of your attention. Below you'll find a sample article from each section of today's issue, including our BlawgWorld Pick of the Week.

Bill Your Time Everywhere Your Practice Takes You

A Scanner at Home in Your Bag and in Your Office

The Mandatory CLE Question No One Wants to Ask

Law Firm Mobile Web Sites 101

Congratulations to Joe Kissell of Macworld on winning our BlawgWorld Pick of the Week award: How to Edit PowerPoint Documents on an iPad

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Our newsletters provide the most comprehensive coverage of legal technology, practice management, and law firm marketing, but not the only coverage. BlawgWorld enables you to stay on top of all the noteworthy articles (and podcasts) published online without having to hire a research assistant. Even when you're busy, you won't want to miss each issue's Pick of the Week. The BlawgWorld newsletter is free so don't miss the next issue. Please subscribe now.

Today's issue of TL NewsWire covers a practice management system for small law firms with a new mobile time-tracking technology (see article below), a cloud document management system, an iPhone app that increases reading comprehension and speed, and a cloud collaboration application. Don't miss the next issue.

Bill Your Time Everywhere Your Practice Takes You

The best billable time-tracking tool is the one you have with you in your pocket — namely, your smartphone. But you can't run your entire law practice on your smartphone. There's no app for that. Accordingly, your firm's billing and practice management system and your smartphone seem like two silos with regard to time tracking. Instead, they should function as an integrated system.

Amicus Attorney Small Firm Edition … in One Sentence

Launched recently, Gavel & Gown Software's Amicus Attorney Small Firm Edition (Amicus Small Firm) is a billing and practice management system with a new mobile billing technology.

The Killer Feature

Amicus Small Firm runs on a server, but the hardware requirements are modest — a low cost Windows PC is all you need. The server facilitates the use of Amicus TimeTracker, a new billing technology that works in mobile and desktop web browsers, including the iPad and iPhone.

With Amicus TimeTracker you can create new time entries, edit previous time entries, and see a list of time entries with running totals for each day, week, and month. You can also view time entries by client and file (matter). To facilitate faster time entry, you can create shortcuts.

When you create or edit a time entry, Amicus TimeTracker uses bank-grade encryption to update your Amicus Small Firm database at your office (if you don't have an Internet connection it updates as soon as you have one again).

"We're very excited about Amicus TimeTracker, which is only available in the 2013 versions of our products," Gavel & Gown President Ron Collins told us. "Lawyers receive so many calls and email messages on their smartphones that it's essential to track that billable time. The fact that Amicus TimeTracker pushes these time entries to your firm's practice system enables you to work out of the office for days yet still get your bills delivered on time."

Other Notable Features

Gavel & Gown describes Amicus Small Firm as being designed "from the lawyer down, not the technology up." For example, the Time Entry Assistant lists all your unbilled activities so that nothing slips through the cracks. Amicus Dailies enables you to stay on top of your agenda and, if you work in management and have full administrative privileges, the entire firm. The software even suggests client development opportunities based on your data, thus enabling even solo practices to benefit from "business intelligence" just like much larger law firms.

Other features include legal calendaring, document and matter management, tasks based on triggers such as court rules or a prior dependent task, and the ability to create automated time entries upon completion of designated tasks. Amicus Small Firm's "Do" button enables you to automate some of your work from dialing telephone numbers to creating documents.

What Else Should You Know?

Pricing for Amicus Small Firm starts at $399 for the first license for new users and $299 for those upgrading from prior versions. Additional user licenses sell at a significant discount. You can add Amicus Small Firm Accounting for an additional charge or choose from a number of third-party accounting programs that integrate. Amicus TimeTracker is included at no additional charge if you're on an annual maintenance plan. Learn more about Amicus Small Firm.

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Coming today to BlawgWorld: Our editorial team has selected and linked to 163 articles from the past week worthy of your attention. Below you'll find a sample article from each section of today's issue, including our BlawgWorld Pick of the Week.

QuickBooks for Law Firms: Trust Transactions

Which Is the Safest Seat on an Aircraft?

Excerpt From Susskind's "Tomorrow's Lawyers"

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Congratulations to Joe Dysart of ABA Journal on winning our BlawgWorld Pick of the Week award: Are Mobile Legal Apps Tools or Toys?

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Our newsletters provide the most comprehensive coverage of legal technology, practice management, and law firm marketing, but not the only coverage. BlawgWorld enables you to stay on top of all the noteworthy articles (and podcasts) published online without having to hire a research assistant. Even when you're busy, you won't want to miss each issue's Pick of the Week. The BlawgWorld newsletter is free so don't miss the next issue. Please subscribe now.

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SEND YOUR CLIENTS INVOICES THEY'LL PAY FAST

Many lawyers mistakenly believe that the secret to clients paying on time and without complaining lies in performing quality work for them. That's certainly one factor, but the ability to send detailed, professional-looking bills in a timely fashion is equally important. Making it easy for clients to pay you also helps.

Chrometa 4.5 … in One Sentence

Launched this week, Chrometa 4.5 is an automatic time capture application with new invoicing capabilities.

The Killer Feature

After finalizing your time sheet for one or more clients and matters for a period of time such as a month, you can create a bill with one click, and then email it to your client with a second click. Most law firms send more than one bill per month. Chrometa features batch processing so that you can email multiple bills with just one click.

Chrometa's new invoicing technology integrates with LawPay (a credit card processor for law firms) and PayPal. At your option, you can include live payment links on your bills so that clients can pay them with a credit card or via PayPal. You can toggle these payment options on or off on a per-bill basis.

Chrometa worked with a graphic designer to create professional-looking invoices. By default, the standard invoice template includes your firm's name and address assuming you've previously entered this information into Chrometa. You can further customize the template, and even create one or more templates. The customization tools function like a word processor. For example, you can add your firm's logo, and also add information such as your firm's payment terms, the partner overseeing the matter, and other such information into the header or footer.

"For the past four years we've been busy working to perfect passive time capture," Chrometa CEO and Co-Founder Brett Owens told us. "Now that we've accomplished this mission, we resolved to close the loop on billable time by helping you get paid for it fast."

Other Notable Features

Chrometa 4.5 retains all its core functionality, including automatic capture of the time you spend on your Windows PC, Mac, iPhone, and/or Android smartphone.

A new report lists all your unbilled captured time so that you can quickly assign it to a client and matter. Other tools that help you process the time you capture into time entries more quickly include plugins for Outlook and Gmail, filters that automatically categorize captured time, and intelligent timesheets.

What Else Should You Know?

Four of Chrometa's six plans include the new invoicing tools — Plus ($29 per month), Premium ($49 per month), Team Plus ($29 per user per month), and Team Premium ($49 per user per month). The invoicing tools are optional since Chrometa integrates with many third-party applications such as Clio, QuickBooks, PCLaw, and Rocket Matter. You can also export your time entries and import them into virtually any accounting or billing application. Learn more about Chrometa 4.5.

How to Receive TL NewsWire
So many products, so little time. In each issue of TL NewsWire, you'll learn about five new products for the legal profession. Pressed for time? The newsletter's innovative articles enable lawyers and law office administrators to quickly understand the function of a product, and zero in on its most important features. The TL NewsWire newsletter is free so don't miss the next issue. Please subscribe now.

Coming today to BlawgWorld: Our editorial team has selected and linked to 148 articles from the past week worthy of your attention. Below you'll find a sample article from each section of today's issue, including our BlawgWorld Pick of the Week.

Three Products for Capturing Your Expenses

Buying Guide to iPad Keyboards

Are You Worthy Enough for Your Law Firm?

How to Build Your Law Firm by Publishing (Podcast)

Congratulations to Jim Calloway of The Oklahoma Bar Journal on winning our BlawgWorld Pick of the Week award: Jim Calloway's Lawyer's Guide to the iPad

Today's issue also contains links to every article in the March 2013 issue of Law Practice Today. Don't miss today's issue or any future issues of BlawgWorld.

How to Receive BlawgWorld
Our newsletters provide the most comprehensive coverage of legal technology, practice management, and law firm marketing, but not the only coverage. BlawgWorld enables you to stay on top of all the noteworthy articles (and podcasts) published online without having to hire a research assistant. Even when you're busy, you won't want to miss each issue's Pick of the Week. The BlawgWorld newsletter is free so don't miss the next issue. Please subscribe now.

Today's issue of TL NewsWire covers a hybrid cloud-native practice management system (see article below), a web site testing tool, a stand for tablets, and a metadata removal utility for Microsoft Word. Don't miss the next issue.

PRACTICE MANAGEMENT ANYWHERE

As technology advances, it becomes simpler, which creates a rift between users and software developers. What once existed only in science fiction novels becomes routine — and most users don't appreciate the hard work involved to achieve such breakthroughs. For example, we may use the term "smartphone," but these devices are actually computers with an app for telephone calls. Thanks to smartphones and tablets not to mention the Internet, lawyers' expectations of their practice management and billing software has escalated to epic proportions. Legal vendors must now rise to this challenge.

Amicus Attorney Premium Edition 2013 … in One Sentence

Launched this month, Gavel & Gown Software's Amicus Attorney Premium Edition 2013 (Amicus Attorney) is a practice management and billing system with mobile Internet technologies.

The Killer Feature

The new version of Amicus Attorney offers law firms the security and speed of native software housed in their office, as well as the ability to bidirectionally use all functions from any web browser (similar to cloud software).

Amicus Attorney has accomplished this via a new technology called Amicus Anywhere, which enables you to access Amicus Attorney from any web browser on a Mac, PC, iPad, and smartphone (Amicus Anywhere's interface adjusts to the device on which you use it). Unlike remote control software, your computer in the office need not be running (a security risk). Instead, Amicus Anywhere accesses the Amicus Attorney database on a server in your firm.

With Amicus Anywhere, you can access all functions such as calendars, client files, contacts, tasks, telephone messages, time entries, etc. Importantly, you can enter information, not just read it. In other words, Amicus Anywhere is just as functional as the native Amicus Attorney software on your PC at work.

"Our customers love Amicus Attorney," Gavel & Gown President Ron Collins told us. "Now that they can use it with a browser anywhere, anytime, the reaction has been fantastic. Many lawyers spend a great deal of the day out of the office, so the ability to manage their practice from smartphones, tablets and laptops is a huge plus for them."

Other Notable Features

Also new is Amicus TimeTracker, which works in any desktop or mobile web browser and connects directly to your Amicus Attorney database. Amicus TimeTracker enables you to enter your billable time as it occurs before you forget, as well as review and edit existing time entries in a list view separated by day. It displays your total billed time per day, enabling you to quickly spot days that might be missing time entries.

Two years ago, Gavel & Gown introduced Time Entry Assistant, which lists all your unbilled activities. Because Amicus TimeTracker integrates with Amicus Attorney, it removes items from Time Entry Assistant in realtime as you bill for them.

Other features in Amicus Attorney include a dashboard that provides an overview of your firm and your personal agenda (Amicus Dailies), another dashboard on which you can view all communications by client and matter, bill creation, remittance, and reports, matter management, shared and personal legal calendaring, contact, document, and task management, notes, telephone messages, and more.

What Else Should You Know?

If you already use Amicus Attorney and have a current annual maintenance plan, you can upgrade to version 2013 at no additional cost, including Amicus Anywhere and Amicus TimeTracker. Otherwise, pricing for the first user starts at $499 for upgrades or $999 for those new to the product. The price per additional user is significantly lower. The company also offers Amicus Premium Billing 2013 for integrated accounting (you enable it by simply purchasing a license as there's no additional software to install). Learn more about Amicus Attorney Premium Edition 2013.

How to Receive TL NewsWire
So many products, so little time. In each issue of TL NewsWire, you'll learn about five new products for the legal profession. Pressed for time? The newsletter's innovative articles enable lawyers and law office administrators to quickly understand the function of a product, and zero in on its most important features. The TL NewsWire newsletter is free so don't miss the next issue. Please subscribe now.

Coming today to BlawgWorld: Our editorial team has selected and linked to 144 articles from the past week worthy of your attention. Below you'll find a sample article from each section of today's issue, including our BlawgWorld Pick of the Week.

Comparative Review of Four Legal Time-Tracking Tools

Review: Incredimail

Lawyer Katie Floyd's Favorite Apps

How a Small Regional Law Firm Grew in a Down Economy

How to Advertise on the Top Four Social Media Networks

Congratulations to Jeff Richardson of iPhone J.D. on winning our BlawgWorld Pick of the Week award: Which iPad and Accessories Should Lawyers Buy?

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Our newsletters provide the most comprehensive coverage of legal technology, practice management, and law firm marketing, but not the only coverage. BlawgWorld enables you to stay on top of all the noteworthy articles (and podcasts) published online without having to hire a research assistant. Even when you're busy, you won't want to miss each issue's Pick of the Week. The BlawgWorld newsletter is free so don't miss the next issue. Please subscribe now.

Today's issue of TL Answers contains these articles:

Ed Detlie, The Golden Age of Legal-Specific Software Has Arrived

Jon Ladd, Review: Daylite, Billings, MyCase

Ted Palmer, Maybe You're Not Using It Right: The Case for Microsoft Word

Chuck Baranowski, Review: GoToMyPC and Dual Monitors

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Coming today to SmallLaw: QuickBooks gives many small law firms a proverbial heart attack because of its lackluster time-tracking tools. But they can't stomach a heart transplant so they search for a bypass instead. In this issue of SmallLaw, New Jersey lawyer Edward Zohn reviews Minute7, a cloud application that enables you to record billable time and expenses in desktop and mobile web browsers and send it to QuickBooks for bill creation. It sounds good in theory. Thanks to Ed's extensive testing, you'll learn how well it works in practice. Also, don't miss the SmallLaw Pick of the Week for another tip on using BCC effectively, this time for introductions.

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