PracticePanther Review: Law Practice Management Software
Lawyerist Rating for PracticePanther
Rating Breakdown
Our Rating: 4.7/5
Our rating is based on our subjective judgment. Use our resources—including our rating and community ratings and reviews—to find the best fit for your firm.
4.7/5
What is PracticePanther?
PracticePanther is a comprehensive Law Practice Management Software (LPMS). With it, one could easily move from potential client intake to closed and paid-in-full without leaving the platform. It has select integrations emphasizing document storage (integrations vary by PracticePanther pricing tier). However, it does have an open API, integrates with Zapier, and connects directly to MailChimp. So, for users looking to increase efficiency without breaking the bank, PracticePanther is likely worth a review.
Starting Cost: $49/user/month
- Customizability
- Intake
- eSignature
- Simple Document Management
- Basic Templates
PracticePanther Review: Law Practice Management Software Features
Customer Experience & Support
/5
Price & Value
/5
Security
/5
Innovation & Future-Proofing
/5
Terrible for multiple lawyer use
They finally fixed the ability to combine multiple matters into one invoice for clients…BUT beware, if you do this, the originating lawyer gets stripped out of the combined invoice so you have to go through ALL combined collections to figure out who to give origination to. (thank you for adding yet another hour to my billing process)
They already dont have a “next” function while reviewing invoices online, so you have to print them (and can only print 50 at a time), or have to open new tabs for each invoice. Again, their invoice platform for more than 50 clients with more than 2 lawyers is awful.
Only reason I havent moved yet is that the transition is even more awful than PP lack of addressing real lawyer needs for reporting. When I had 2 lawyers billing with a small number of matters, PP was great. Now I lose 3-4 hours in doing billing due to their failures of addressing the many problems with their billing and reporting.
Customized client intake, easy reporting, and simple invoice tracking!
PracticePanther helps me complete tasks 5 times faster than before
Practice Panther
User review
Before PracticePanther, we had splintered information – billing on one application, calendars on another, contact information on another .. no integration. There was difficulty in keeping everything synced up. Nothing worse than needing to return a call to an important contact while out of the office and not able to access the contact information because it’s on a desktop back at the office!!! Not everyone signs emails with contact information included so it was a constant frustration but not anymore with PracticePanther!
We learned about PracticePanther from a referral from a young attorney who had been doing contract work for me, who then joined the firm and the need for us to have a unified approach to keeping track of calendar dates, billing, contacts, etc. all in one resource accessible anywhere.
We never expected a pandemic (just was not on the radar) but we were READY and never missed a beat all because of PracticePanther. Our systems were in place and we were ready to face other challenges unconcerned about our technology being able to meet our new needs. PracticePanther was ready even if we never expected such a change in operations
The application is so intuitive and constantly evolving; adoption of using PracticePanther was not difficult and I am sure there are powerful tools we don’t even use that we may need in the future that are there waiting for us to access them right within PracticePanther. That’s surprising because EVERY single application we had been using in the past had barriers and learning curves, etc. and we tried a lot of different potential solutions before finding and adopting PracticePanther. It’s easy to use, across EVERY platform from desktop to tablet to iPhone – so simple without having to use “helper” apps to get access to our data!
The Boss was just saying this morning that billable time ratios are up. I feel that the reason is largely attributed to converting to PracticePanther and I personally feel much more productive during office hours. The usability of Practice Panther has been very impressive. We have a very niche practice and there are many features that are extremely helpful and even more features are available with PracticePanther that we have yet to utilize.
PracticePanther had all of the tools I was looking for (plus more than I was looking for) and it was easy to set up and easy to use. As PracticePanther has added integrations and new tools over the years, it has been growing with my business and allowed me to make new integrations as I was ready for them. The customer service is also excellent – whenever I have a question or a problem, someone responds quickly and thoroughly and follows up to make sure that the information resolved the issue.
This has freed me up to spend a relatively small amount of time on the administrative side of my law firm and spend the vast majority of my time on the billable matters that make the firm successful. Clients are generally happy with the experience with their Client Portals and the features within them. And the automatic invoice reminders (some set for before they are due and others for after they are overdue) result in excellent payment practices by my clients.
The responsiveness and thoroughness of all aspects of customer service. Problems are rare on this platform, but when one arises it is addressed quickly. Most of the time, I just want some piece of information about how to accomplish a given task that I cannot find within the FAQs, and either there are already processes or integrations to allow this to happen or someone will work with me for a work-around and submit it to their software development teams for consideration of whether that new tool or process should be added to the platform.
PracticePanther has allowed me to focus on my practice and minimize the time I need to focus on administrative tasks. Support is generally very prompt and can answer most questions on the first try. Even if more follow up is required they are prompt and committed to resolve the question or issues.
Very Easy to Learn
Practice Panther was already chosen when I came on board. I believe the price, the ease of working the system and the look of the invoices were the deciding factor.
Invoicing is a big portion of running a law firm and the bookkeeping system made things run very smooth along with a billing system set into play.
PracticePanther gives me seamless technology capabilities all in one, easy to use place. In addition to the technology, their customer support is awesome! If I have a question, a knowledgeable customer support person assists me with my issue and stays with me until the issue is resolved. Really, I’ve always been so pleased with their expertise.
In short, PracticePanther is simply amazing!
But now with PracticePanther, our company can handle almost all matter-related and administrative tasks remotely. Time sheets, expenses, invoicing, retainer agreements, email, notes and other correspondence consolidation, mass client databases, task management tools and employee productivity analyses are all handled in the cloud. If you have an internet connection, then you can be connected to every aspect of your firm, anytime, anywhere, all with the simple click of a mouse. For example, I have personally been able to run our administrative processes from the WiFi connection of an airplane during business trips. Perhaps most importantly, in lieu of the pandemic, PracticePanther has given our staff the freedom and flexibility to operate without having to physically gather together in our offices. We haven’t skipped a beat since the pandemic hit in March 2020, and PracticePanther is primarily responsible. This software is a lifesaver…an all-in-one aggregation of our entire company’s infrastructure in one box. Our invoicing and contracts are now automated, generated and sent to our clients in a matter of seconds. Even better, PracticePanther directly integrates with Quickbooks and DocuSign, which means all payables, receivables and other financial information immediately update in our Quickbooks account. Our intake processes have also been streamlined. You can custom build a new intake form, and after it has been completed, PracticePanther automatically updates our client database and creates a new matter in the system. These conveniences have saved us a considerable amount of time and energy, so that we can focus on our work and not get bogged down in administration. By my estimation, PracticePanther has saved us 10-15 hours per week. Further, our time, expense and flat-fee entries can now be reviewed in real time, which allows us to catch potential errors immediately. PracticePanther also integrates with our email systems, so whenever a client corresponds with us, the emails are automatically documented in PracticePanther’s software, creating a nice chronology. Tasks and notes are integrated, too, even with our calendars, so we can all stay on task and monitor each-others’ schedules. PracticePanther keeps all of us on the same page, no matter where we are and no matter what we are doing. None of us can imagine life without it. After a full year of using PracticePanther, we don’t ever want to go back to the old way of doing business.
The customer service. It’s impeccable. I know most of us hate calling customer service, only to be inundated with auto-attendant prompts and forced to press a million buttons to get help. That doesn’t happen here, because when I call PracticePanther, I get a human being on the phone who can easily solve my problems. That’s pretty rare nowadays. And oftentimes, they will even customize the software to our specific needs. Our account manager, Andy S., has always been professional, helpful and accessible. They make us feel like we are their only customer, and we all know what a big deal that is.
Five Stars
We looked at the market and decided on PracticePanther. While we are based in the UK the majority of the UK packages are bloated, very old fashioned, very expensive and lack much flexibility. What made us choose PracticePanther was the excellent trial period and most of all, the team at PracticePanther who are without doubt amongst best we have ever worked with. PracticePanther has made us more profitable, no more arguments about clients, and lack of billing and we are far more efficient.
What surprised me most about PracticePanther was just how adept the team has been dealing with a UK based firm and we have never had any lost time or data.
I am a huge proponent of PP and am so glad that I chose PP almost 5 years ago!
I chose Practice Panther because it solved both problems, through the use of the Client Portal and Law Pay. In addition, PP included time-keeping, document building, and more. It is the whole package.
Practice Panther is competitive price-wise, and offers as much as any other program, and more than most.
Onboarding to Practice Panther caused me to think about all aspects of conducting a law practice, and it organized me in a way that was new. Everything is in one place!
No Support, Lotsa Problems and No Refund
At the time, PP was marketing an easy sync with Jublilee–one of the three or four major petition preparing software packages on the market. In fact it has a canned webinar on its site about the “exciting news” that it integrates with Jublilee. If you watch the webinar closely (after the fact I did several times) you can actually see where the sync doesn’t seem to work and the PP guy tries to excuse the lack of a result as “it sometimes takes a few moments.”
The truth is, the sync doesn’t work AND PP doesn’t give a shit. I tried to get it to work for four months. IT NEVER FULLY WORKED. Moreover, if you contact PP support, their response was: “talk to Jublilee.” (BTW, I was generally pleased with Jublilee’s efforts to try and resolve my sync problem.) When PP wasn’t telling me to “talk to Jublilee” they would refer me to a canned answer in their “Q & A” database that really had nothing to do with my problem.
As to my second requirement that I be able to save emails to a client or matter— if you are using Microsoft Outlook 365, there is an “add-in” that you have to download from Microsoft’s website that allows you to use PP within Outlook.
PP also has a canned webinar that takes you through the steps to add this in. I tried to load this onto my Outlook and it didn’t work. Tried to do it again, didn’t work. Tried a third time, still didn’t work. Send PP a question–what do they do refer me to their canned webinar. Frustrated I contacted Microsoft, as I had “tech service agreement.” They tried to figure out what was wrong, and the initial person who I spoke to also could not figure out why it would not “add-in.” Finally, after several hours and Microsoft bringing in another engineer we were able to get the PP “add-in to work.”
Bottomline: don’t use PP, it doesn’t work and they don’t support their product beyond referring you to their canned webinars. BTW, I stupidly paid a year subscription for PP (I know I should have my head examined). When I asked several days ago if I could have a partial refund, I was put on hold for several minutes, and then the rep, said they would get back to me “very soon.” I am still waiting–maybe they are going to refer me to a “canned webinar.”
Be prepared for delays, lies and ineffencies
Our office did not have a paperless system before, and as I had worked in prior paperless offices I was put in charge of the transition. We’re now 6 months in and still not using the system because things do not port over correctly, nothing works as they promised and we’ve had to do so many workarounds that it practically borders on efficiency.
While I do understand that my firm is not the norm in what we do, there are basic needs that would affect every form (for example putting a file on hold as mentioned above) that the system can’t do.
There were some red flags when we were looking into the system, such as the flat out refusal of the salesman allowing our IT person to speak to their IT staff saying he could answer every question, the fact that he told us what we need to hear to placate us, only to find out what he told us was flat out WRONG when we actually got to the use stage. When it came to transferring our files to this system they did little to nothing and it took me personally 4 weeks of about 60 hours a week doing nothing but fixing what they brought over.
Overall, avoid this system. We’re stuck for now, but honestly, construction paper and crayons works out better than this system does.
Robust, Mostly Reliable, Kinda Mediocre
Hours tracking is simple, straightforward, and easy to review. Similarly, once you understand the database structure – i.e. that everything builds off of the initial contact, it’s pretty easy to build business practices off of. However, while PracticePanther works, it isn’t seamless – and the lack of insight customer service reps have into their own software could be a deal breaker for a firm without internal IT know-how.
Examples:
1. While PracticePanther sells itself as fully integrated with Google Drive, it’s not. Multiple users will pretty much break Drive integration for even a small firm – just plan to use DropBox.
2. Every contact must have a unique ID number for integration with any cloud platform, yet the option for creating that unique identifier is optional, only to be explained as required after hours on the phone with support.
3. Occasionally software rollbacks have been set for mid-morning on a weekday, essentially breaking your paperless office at an essential time – but this hasn’t happened in a while, so I don’t want to be unfair.
If you want practice management software that can do it all, PracticePanther is a good bet. However, it isn’t intuitive, seamless, or straightforward. However, it is reasonably priced with responsive customer service reps, willing to work through problems.
Most user friendly law firm management software out there
Practice Panther is the best CRM, CMS combination out there