In this day and age, a reliable software solution is a must when you’re running a legal practice. They speed up your work, help you save on manpower, and can greatly improve the quality of your service.
However, picking the right one is easier said than done. Furthermore, if your choice ends up not being quite right for your needs, migrating to a new solution will cost time, money, and may even result in errors or loss of data — never a good outcome, especially if you’re running a trust fund.
To help you make the right choice, we’ll list 4 of the best legal software solutions on the current market.
Servicing the market for well over 30 years, PCLaw is a tried-and-true solution. As such, it comes with a wide range of features, all to help you with every aspect of your practice.
Most notably, PCLaw includes a compliant trust accounting system for handling trust fund reconciliation. That means that the software will save you quite a bit of time and money in double-checking all the ins and outs of your trust accounts.
Furthermore, PCLaw’s integrated billing and accounting automates a significant share of the processes you would otherwise need to handle manually. Also, its comprehensive and unified matter management tool will streamline your workflows to a high degree.
In addition, the solution is pretty easy to use. As if all that wasn’t enough, PCLaw is highly customizable all across the board, letting you fine tune it to your business’ needs.
Sadly, the software does come with its share of downsides. First, PCLaw’s initial setup is somewhat complex. Next, while it is generally user friendly, that only goes until you run into an actual problem. This is the case because their support can take a while to fix issues due to the large number of clients in the waiting queue.
Finally — and most importantly — the software is somewhat behind the times in terms of accessibility, design, and perhaps (based on your needs) even necessary features. In particular, PCLaw entirely lacks mobile or iOS support; as the name implies, it’s PC-only.
In contrast, uLawPractice is a modern legal software solution that follows all the recent trends. That means that it’s regularly updated and as stable as it can be.
Like all good legal software, this one includes comprehensive systems for both trust and general accounting, making reconciliation effortless. Similarly, the software has client and matter management functions. All of these will improve the quality of your work and save you a significant amount of time.
Speaking of saving time, uLawPractice offers AI and machine learning-based client billing and invoicing — it’s all quite fast and effective. Just as importantly, the solution offers so-called SMART docketing, letting you plan and effortlessly track all your deadlines.
Their customer support is excellent, and uLawPractice has plenty of detailed instructional videos on YouTube. Lastly, if you happen to be a resident of Canada, their legal accounting systems are made to be entirely compliant with that country’s regulations.
No software is perfect, and uLawPractice is somewhat inflexible. Namely, you cannot upload your own forms, and some of the existing ones are incomplete or do not allow for adjustments. Also, the calendar is lackluster, as it doesn’t feature notifications or many useful software integrations.
Despite the aforementioned tutorials, uLawPractice does have a somewhat steep learning curve for certain functions. Also, undoing some changes or features is difficult or impossible, which isn’t exactly ideal.
CosmoLex boasts everything one expects from a legal software solution, from trust accounting (making 3-way reconciliation a simple process) and general accounting functionality, automated billing and invoicing, calendar and schedule-related options, and other standard features.
What sets it apart, however, are its impressive additional characteristics. For instance, CosmoLex has a number of built-in reminders for time tracking, so that you always bill your clients for all your work hours.
Also, the so-called Client Intake and Relationship Management (CRM) system can automate your marketing and outreach efforts, saving you a lot of money on promotion. Their customer support is first-class; you’ll always talk to a real person and never an AI. Just like uLawPractice, they’ve got a number of tutorial videos on YouTube.
Conveniently, the company offers a 10–day free trial. You can check out what they’ve got, and if you don’t like it, you can keep looking.
Unfortunately, CosmoLex is a bit on the expensive side at almost $100 a month. And they get costlier if you’re employing multiple lawyers, as you’ll need to pay for more copies of the software.
Next, for such a premium solution, CosmoLex can be a little bit rough around the edges. Namely, some have found the interface awkward to use, but this issue typically goes away with experience.
Similarly, some of the software’s features do come with unusual restrictions. For instance, you can only upload or download one document at a time, documents’ names are limited to 64 characters, and so on.
With over 1,500 reviews on Capterra, Clio is often considered the best in the industry. Depending on your needs and preferences, that may or may not be true.
Like every other piece of software we listed, Clio offers full accounting support, including trust reconciliation to ensure compliance. They also provide legal task management software (from setting task lists to keeping track of progress), analytics and progress tracking, billing and payment automation, automatic document management, a calendar, and so on.
Due to Clio’s success, the program is being constantly updated, and new features are being added regularly. The solution favors ease of use, which is one of the main reasons for its popularity. If you’re not sure which legal software to go for, this one is an excellent choice.
As for the downsides, Clio does have a big one: its integration with accounting software (most notably QuickBooks) could be better. You might end up losing data and having to duplicate it manually, which isn’t a great use of anyone’s time.
In addition, while Clio does offer an ever-expanding list of features, not all of them are as detailed as you may prefer. Simplification is the name of the game, and some functionality is absent. For example, their reports are relatively bare-bones, their calendar is quite basic, and note integration has to be done manually.
Surprisingly for such a user-friendly solution, Clio has quite a time-consuming initial setup. When the process concludes, however, everything becomes much easier.
As you’re probably aware, data migration is one of the main reasons why most legal practices hesitate to upgrade to a new software solution. Simply put, a badly-performed migration (or migrating to inappropriate software) could lead to a partial or even complete loss of data. And if that happens, the only way to fix it is to update the data manually — a time-consuming process.
Our data migration service will help you avoid such an outcome. We can transfer your data to and from any of the aforementioned solutions — or from your existing software to one from our list. For instance, if you try out CosmoLex but aren’t pleased, you won’t be forced to keep using them out of fear of complications.
Whatever you need, don’t hesitate. Just send us a message, let us know what you have in mind, and we’ll get it done with no loss of data.