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Avoid Lockup with Professional Invoices Through TimeSolv

Getting paid as attorneys means that we keep track of the work we do, that we send appropriate invoices in a timely manner, and that we promptly follow up on overdue invoices. It’s as simple as that.

Fortunately, today’s web-based software makes those tasks faster and simpler than ever. Using TimeSolv, you can quickly record billable events, add them to a professional-looking invoice, arrange billing and payment details, and send the client a bill with easy ePayment options.

Quickly Record Billable Events

While hourly-billing attorneys see the direct relationship of “time = money,” flat fee and contingency firms also benefit from at least occasional time tracking to know whether flat fees are correctly priced and how effectively firm processes work.

TimeSolv has the time tracking features all firms need:

  • Track Time Anywhere: In this era of an increasingly mobile workforce, having the right tools at your fingertips makes doing the right thing in the moment a no-brainer. Getting paid for your work starts with capturing all the work you do. With TimeSolv, you can record time from any device, at any time of day, from wherever you are, even without an internet connection.
  • Speedy, Consistent Entries: Much of the work we do daily follows similar patterns: meetings, court appearances, phone calls, researching, reviewing, and writing. TimeSolv offers Custom Abbreviations to speed up “repetitive” entries and ensure that all users describe events consistently. For example, rather have phone conversations described variously as “called X,” “phoned Y,” or “talked to Z,” set a custom abbreviation of “tfcw” that expands to “telephone call with.” You save a few seconds, and firm users create uniform time entries.
  • Account for Task Switching: For most attorneys, it’s a rare day when they can work uninterrupted. More often, you’re switching between emails, phone calls, meetings, etc. TimeSolv lets you track several tasks simultaneously by running multiple timers. When you start a new timer, any then-running timer pauses itself. Restart the paused timer later or turn it into a time entry.

Create Professional Invoices

Saying that an invoice looks professional means that it contains a few key traits:

  • it’s visually appealing;
  • it’s easy to understand; and
  • its payment instructions are clear.

TimeSolv makes creating professional invoices meeting these criteria a simple, point and click task.

Let’s look at the TimeSolv’s features that help you make better bills quickly:

  • Billing Templates: As with custom abbreviations, consistency matters. But what one wants consistently on a bill may vary by practice area or client. TimeSolv’s flexible billing templates meet that need. Create individual bill and estimate templates catering to each client’s requirements.
  • Split Billing: If you have matters with multiple clients, for example a mediation where each party pays half of the invoice, split billing support is essential. With TimeSolv, you can not only divide an invoice between parties, but also customize how that invoice is divided. For the mediation example, the division need not be 50/50 or an even split between all payors. You control the split percentages.
  • Easy Billing and Payment Options: Several TimeSolv tools ensure that you promptly distribute invoices and that clients can receive and pay bills in a way that works for them.
    • Batch Invoices: TimeSolv helps you create and send invoices to similar types of clients with one click, such as where you offer services with the same line items, shaving hours off monthly billing tasks. Use tools like recurring invoices and TimeSolvPay for billing saved credit card and/or bank account information for ongoing retainer fees.
    • Scheduled Invoices: Create date/time reminders of when invoices need to be delivered. Billing and invoicing on a schedule, or via recurring invoices, means bills go out timely, improving the likelihood of timely payments.
    • Electronic Billing: Skip overhead fees and wasted time from paper billing and use TimeSolv to bill electronically. Help your business master critical codes, including ABA task codes, UTBMS, LEDES 1998b, LEDES 1998BI, Chubbs, and Litigation Advisor.
    • Accept Electronic Payments: Clients can pay online through the client portal via credit cards and ACH. Schedule recurring invoices to bill clients on retainer automatically to their credit cards or bank account, lowering your accounts receivable.
    • Easier Mailing When Necessary: Some clients may hesitate to switch to electronic invoicing and billing. Meet their needs with TimeSolv, which gives you the ability to have TimeSolv physically mail invoices for you, making it easier to streamline your billing process.

Get Started Sending Great Invoicing

TimeSolv has the tools you need to easily and timely create, send, and collect on your firm’s invoices. Visit TimeSolv’s website to learn how it helps you bill faster with confidence.

Master Your Billing with Rocket Matter and QuickBooks 

We know that law school doesn’t teach attorneys how to run a business. Even so, law firms face greater financial complexity than other professions because we hold money as custodians on behalf of other people in special accounts specifically created for that purpose. Managing trust accounts (also known as IOLTA accounts), their recordkeeping, and reporting, or failing to do so, are among the most common ways lawyers face disciplinary action. 

Fortunately, we’ve come a long way from the days of ledger books and even spreadsheets. In the same way that Microsoft Word is the sine qua non of business writing, and Adobe Photoshop fulfills the same role for digital artists, QuickBooks plays that part for business accounting, especially small business accounting. And just as Word and Photoshop offer growing web-based versions, so too does QuickBooks with QuickBooks Online. 

Rocket Matter, an innovative, feature-rich law practice management system (LPMS), and one of the earliest online LPMS tools, offers a robust integration with QuickBooks Online. The combination of these best-of-breed products ensures easy, stress-free, and precise trust account management. 

Easy to Activate 

It takes only a few clicks to connect Rocket Matter with QuickBooks: 

  1. Click on the Accounting module on the left navigation panel in Rocket Matter; 
  1. Select QuickBooks, then toggle the integration on; 
  1. Sign in to QuickBooks when prompted; and 
  1. Select your company from within QuickBooks. 

That’s it. With those four simple steps, you’ve connected the two programs. 

On the QuickBooks Online side, there are some additional configuration steps. Of course, Rocket Matter is here to help. Their experts have prepared a help article and PDF guide to ensure you get the best interoperability available, maximizing the strengths of each program. 

Easy to Use 

Once connected and configured, Rocket Matter and QuickBooks work together to support your practice, making routine tasks simpler while providing a complete view of your financial picture. 

Think of the financial activities you perform in Rocket Matter. A list likely includes: 

  • Creating invoices and recording their payment; 
  • Altering invoices, including discounts and write-offs; 
  • Tracking matter “hard costs,” like filing fees; and 
  • Monitoring client trust accounts. 

Rocket Matter’s QuickBooks integration helps with all of these.  

Conveniences of the integration include: 

  • The ability to sync entire deposit slips between Rocket Matter and QuickBooks, rather than having to touch individual transactions, improving accuracy and speed for batch deposits; 
  • Simplifying reconciliation to eliminate the need for manual adjustments; 
  • The capability to customize your firm’s invoice payment syncing between Rocket Matter and QuickBooks; and 
  • Greater visibility into transaction details with comprehensive syncing logs. 

Easy to Appreciate 

A strong accounting system makes the day-to-day tasks of tracking bills, expenses, and payments as simple and straightforward as possible. It puts the right tools and information where you want it in the form you need it. Rocket Matter’s integration with QuickBooks passes these tests with flying colors. 

The combined power of Rocket Matter’s industry-leading LPMS and QuickBooks’ financial tools are supported and complemented by Rocket Matter’s relentless focus on helping attorneys. Rocket Matter works with you on the customization of general ledger accounts and services, so you can focus on practicing law while their experienced personnel handle the financial setup. And, of course, it’s all backed by the Rocket Matter team, with customer support available 24/7. 

The Rocket Matter-QuickBooks integration is a game-changer for streamlining financial management and ensuring accuracy. Learn more about it by visiting Rocket Matter’s website. 

Effortless, Specialized Trust Accounting with CosmoLex

Most attorneys worry about properly handling client money. Not only is mishandling of trust account funds among the leading sources of bar disciplinary action, but the concern is most acute among solo and small firm attorneys. Often, smaller firms lack the accounting staffing, structure, and software of larger competitors, and  are often less able to withstand a financial accident.

The best way for a small firm to overcome these hurdles is to embrace a user-friendly, integrated solution where matter information and accounting data coexist in a single software product.

CosmoLex Helps You Follow the Rules

Attorneys often joke that they attended law school instead of business school because they hate math. Unfortunately, every business involves math, and the joke may have the last laugh. Law firms confront two types of accounting: general business accounting and client trust accounting (also called IOLTA). And the rules and regulations for the two are completely different. Many accountants and bookkeepers themselves don’t know the IOLTA-specific concepts and compliance requirements.

Good trust accounting software prevents you from making errors. In the same way that law practice management software (LPMS) understands the concept of a “matter” (i.e., contacts plus appointments plus documents, time entries, expenses, notes, etc.) in a way that Outlook and Gmail do not, legal-specific accounting tools understand IOLTA requirements in a way that general business accounting packages do not.

Those respective understandings reinforce one another in CosmoLex, which combines matter management and accounting in one product. A single source of truth makes it easier to avoid trust accounting pitfalls like comingled funds, IOLTA overdrafts, duplicate check numbers, and other common errors.

CosmoLex Helps Make Trust Accounting Painlessly Paperless

Manual accounting is both time consuming and error prone. No matter whether you’re using a siloed piece of software, a series of Excel spreadsheets, or even paper ledger books, CosmoLex represents a tremendous step forward for accuracy, efficiency, and security.

A matter could have many moving parts involving a trust account. A single activity could impact client billing, trust, and operating accounts. For example, the firm invoices the client (client billing), then disburses trust funds to pay the invoice (trust account), and transfers those earned funds for its use (operating account). Recording this series of events correctly in multiple disconnected paper or electronic systems not only consumes time better spent elsewhere, but it also risks bookkeeping inaccuracies that become harder to find and correct the longer they linger.

With CosmoLex, you can:

  • Effortlessly manage single client ledgers or multiple trust accounts with separate ledgers for trust and operating accounts;
  • Apply trust funds to individual or bulk invoices with ease, including automatic transfers from trust to general accounts, and generate disbursement checks directly from the system; and
  • Efficiently manage and disburse third-party lien claims, import electronic bank statements, and auto-reconcile your books to save time and reduce errors.

CosmoLex’s integrated solution ties together matter activity and time tracking, invoicing, and accounts receivable. All pertinent data is always at your fingertips. This linkage reduces the risk of mistakes and omissions. It also saves time that might otherwise be spent tracking down and fixing discrepancies between an LPMS and a synced accounting program, to say nothing of spreadsheet files or ledger books.

CosmoLex Helps Reconcile You to Good Trust Accounting

Your jurisdiction’s governing body likely has rules regarding trust account reporting requirements. The more manual, disjointed, and infrequent your trust account bookkeeping and oversight, the more time consuming and painful any required reporting will be.

In many jurisdictions, your bookkeeping ledgers and bank statements must match to the penny on a daily basis. As attorneys, we have a fiduciary responsibility to handle client funds responsibly, and that includes the ability to comply timely with IOLTA tracking and reporting regulations.

CosmoLex performs three-way reconciliation reporting with just one click and provides a full set of trust record-keeping and financial reports to ensure compliance and transparency.

By using CosmoLex, a purpose-built, integrated solution, you stay continually informed on the status of your IOLTA account, eliminating the uncertainty, stress, and lost time that could otherwise result from weeks or months of lax trust account reconciliations.

Get Started with CosmoLex and Make Good Bookkeeping Easier

CosmoLex’s LPMS solution with integrated accounting offers three core, interconnected features to keep you compliant:

  • Built-in safeguards to prevent errors and missteps within the firm;
  • Automated bank account reconciliation to ensure that the firm and the bank match; and
  • Comprehensive reporting to know the health of the business and meet compliance needs.

Trust accounting with CosmoLex is seamlessly integrated into the legal software, operating alongside law practice management, billing, and general accounting functions.

CosmoLex ensures that your law firm’s trust bookkeeping is managed automatically, in real-time, and in the background. With CosmoLex, trust accounting becomes a streamlined, reliable process, allowing your firm to focus more on legal practice and less on financial administration. Learn about CosmoLex’s trust accounting tools, and its other powerful LPMS features, by visiting their website.

Get Started with ZillaMetrics Chat: Website Chat for Law Firm Intake

Prompt communication is a hallmark of a good law practice. Often clients aren’t able to judge the quality of your lawyering or possess a great sense of precisely where their outcome ranks on a scale from okay to exceptional. But they know if you’re available when they need you and how long you took to respond. This fact is truest when they’re first looking for an attorney’s help.

Web technologies, remote virtual assistance, and even AI have altered how clients find and interact with law firms, and when they expect to be able to do so. From the law firm’s perspective, this variability adds cost and stress, trying to attract prospective clients when they’re searching for an attorney, providing useful information at the right time.

Reaching Prospects When and Where They’re Ready

ZillaMetrics aims to eliminate the common pitfalls of law firm marketing, producing high-quality leads within a reasonable budget. They give customers a clear picture of what ZillaMetrics is doing on their behalf. All without requiring a contract.

While ZillaMetrics can assist with many parts of legal marketing, including SEO, Google Ads, and website design, their Intake Chat tool is a gamechanger. It offers firms a simple and affordable way to engage potential clients when that prospect reaches out. And, as a chatbot, it’s fully customizable and available 24/7 at a reasonable price.

ZillaMetrics’ Intake Chat Boosts Engagement without Breaking the Bank

ZillaMetrics gives firms of all sizes the ability to engage prospective clients with an affordable, customizable chat experience with risk-free trial and no hidden fees.

Unlimited Chats for One Low Price

Traditional chatbot tools can become costly quickly. Vendors often charge $20-$35 per chat, irrespective of lead quality. ZillaMetrics discards this outmoded model. They charge a flat $29/month no matter how many chat interactions your website generates. ZillaMetrics also allows you to create and maintain an unlimited number of chatbots, meaning you could customize chatbots, presenting one on a webpage about personal injury and different one on a page about medical malpractice. All for one charge of $29/month.

Based on the traditional chat pricing model, if you received only two leads per month, you’d still be money ahead with ZillaMetrics compared to the competition.

Chat Experiences Worth Talking About

Law firms create ZillaMetrics’ chatbots within a simple drag-and-drop interface; no programming or coding experience required. ZillaMetrics promises that you’ll be able to “get started in minutes” and, once built, chatbots “launch in seconds.”

Create different chatbots for different webpages, targeting different lead types. Beyond designing the flow of questions, firms can customize individual chatbots’ video chat bubbles and video introductions, among other options.

Intake Chat features include:

  • Automated booking with Google Calendar and Microsoft 365;
  • Payment support through Stripe;
  • Custom branding to match the law firms website;
  • Embedded images and videos;
  • Support for file and picture upload (e.g., accident photos or traffic tickets);
  • Customizable promptings to transition from the chatbot to a phone call or text message conversation; and
  • Integration for reviews and feedback with Google and Facebook.

Additionally, ZillaMetrics’ chatbots support mobile websites via a Mobile Toolkit to help firms boost lead conversions among smartphone-centric visitors.

Risk-Free Trial

In addition to a simple flat rate, ZillaMetrics dispenses with other stereotypical digital marketing costs. They charge no setup fee, require no contract, and offer a 100% money-back guarantee.

ZillaMetrics and CallRail Offer Unparalleled Intake Insights

ZillaMetrics helps firms know the source of those potential clients, which informs future marketing engagement. To do so, ZillaMetrics partnered with CallRail, creating the first direct integration between CallRail and a chat product.

According to ZillaMetrics CEO Matt Burke, “Not a single chat provider on the market has the ability to track the marketing source of each chat lead—it’s a big blackhole.” Finding the existing market wanting, ZillaMetrics built their own solution: “We needed a website chat that automatically tracked the source of every lead, giving our clients the ability to understand where their best leads were coming from—nothing was out there, so we built it ourselves.”

Connecting ZillaMetrics’ Intake Chat with CallRail gives you visibility into the source of every chat lead, whether it comes from Google Ads, Google Business, SEO, or any other marketing source.

Besides CallRail, ZillaMetrics integrates with other industry-leading legal software products, including Clio, Lawmatics, and MyCase, as well as the workflow tool Zapier.

Get Started with Timely, Trackable, and Engaging Client Outreach

With their flat-fee, risk-free, feature-rich offering, ZillaMetrics leads the way in helping law firms deploy an affordable and customizable chatbot solution. Visit ZillaMetrics website to learn about adding Intake Chat to your website.

Save Time, Boost Efficiency with Virtual Case Managers Powered by Get Staffed Up

In the decade or so since virtual legal help came to the forefront, we’ve witnessed tremendous improvements in what we can expect from remote assistance. Virtual Case Managers Powered by Get Staffed Up raises the bar even higher.

A Virtual Case Manager (VCM) alleviates many administrative burdens that all too often saddle a personal injury (PI) attorney.

The Many Benefits of a VCM Powered by Get Staffed Up

An Employee that’s Effective

At Lawyerist, we encourage our Labsters (members of our Lawyerist Lab coaching community) to make efficient and productive use of their time. Personal Injury attorneys should dedicate as many working hours to case work and business development as possible. Even within those areas, many tasks don’t need attorney-level training. Scheduling components and follow up on medical record requests are examples of PI case work that a qualified, administrative professional can easily handle.

That’s where Virtual Case Managers Powered by Get Staffed Up is can happily assist. Delegating time-consuming administrative tasks to a VCM frees up PI attorneys who can then concentrate their energies on client interactions and case strategy work. A VCM helps you focus on meaningful work that advances your clients’ goals, delivering better outcomes, and in turn, increased referrals. Not to mention the cost savings a remote VCM from Latin America or South Africa affords your firms.

An Employee that’s Affordable

If you already contract virtual assistants then you know the many benefits. But what about those who still believe in supporting high cost, need-to-be-at-a-desk right down the hall, staff? Virtual Case Managers Powered by Get Staffed Up will help change that old school mindset. Relief from costly recruiting and time-sucking HR nightmares is now a click away.

An Employee Ready on Day One

VCMs undergo rigorous training developed by a prominent personal injury attorney. Rest easy knowing medical records and confidential client information will be held in the strictest of confidence as VCMs adhere to stringent data protection protocols. They can hit the ground running on their first day, handling tasks like case management work, communicating with clients, and preparing documents with expertise and professionalism.

How a Virtual Case Manager Works

The VCM provides comprehensive administrative support tailored to the PI practice area and your firm specifically. VCMs are college educated and dedicate 40 hours a week to your firm’s research, collection, and organization tasks. Examples of suitable assignments include:

  • Setting up appointments with clients and conduct the meeting
  • Collecting documents, medical records, and other evidence, building the client’s case
  • Making a first review of legal documents, such as pleadings, motions, and discovery responses
  • Organizing and updating case management systems and documents
  • Generating all manner of case reports

Learn More About Adding a VCM to Your Toolkit

By leveraging Virtual Case Managers Powered by Get Staffed Up, your personal injury firm alleviates the burden of time-consuming administrative work, streamlines your practice, and focuses on what you do best—advocating for your clients. Learn more at https://getstaffedup.com/lawyerist-product-spotlight-vcm/, or give them a call at 1-866-565-5744.

 

Clio Releases Law Firm Accounting Software for Small Firms

Traditionally, one of clearest divisions in web-based law practice management systems was between products that supported billing and trust accounting, and those that offered billing, trust accounting, and general ledger accounting. Products that included general ledger accounting didn’t require synchronization with a business accounting package, such as QuickBooks or Xero, because those features were already incorporated into the law practice management system (“LPMS”).

Impetus for this Product

Most LPMS tools do not offer “full accounting,” providing only billing and trust accounting. Until July, Clio, one of the earliest, best-known, and most successful LPMS products stood in this category. Subscribers to Clio Manage track billable events, send invoices, receive electronic payments, and track trust account activities. But seeing a complete picture of the firm’s financial health required integration with either QuickBooks or Xero. But now that has changed.

This month Clio released Clio Accounting, an add-on product for Clio Manage subscribers that allows firms to see their entire financial picture natively within the Clio system-no need for an integration or sync with a third-party accounting tool.

What Does This Change for Clio Users?

Clio users can expect three things from Clio Accounting: convenience, familiarity, and reliability.

Convenience

With accounting functionality built directly into Clio, users have one source for their entire financial workflow. By connecting their Accounting product to the existing Manage system, Clio eliminates the need for duplicative entry of client contact information, matter information, invoices, payments, and trust accounting activity. All firm finances live in one place, making it easier than ever to see a clear, timely picture of how well the firm’s business is doing.

Switching between the Manage and Accounting modules is as simple as switching between Manage and Grow. Just click the dropdown and select the tool you want to use.

Familiarity

Built-in accounting adds the consistency of not learning multiple program interfaces. Using the same layout lowers the learning curve for users.

Accounting mirrors Clio Manage’s design language of tabs down the lefthand side, representing core functions like Accounts Receivable, Banking, Hard Costs, Operating Expenses, and Reports. Like Manage, Clio Accounting’s home screen is a dashboard view, highlighting key metrics like bank balances, accounts receivable, and current profit and loss numbers.

Plus, Clio approaches accounting with their customary user-first mindset. Getting started with Clio Accounting requires just a reconciliation report from your existing accounting tool, opening balance figures for each account, and the most recent bank statements. Any operating or trust accounts you’ve created in Manage map over automatically.

Reliability

One of Clio’s hallmarks is its ability to serve as the hub of your practice, being the central connection between the programs and services you use . They partner with great companies and build on sound technologies.

For Accounting, Clio relies on Plaid to connect to your bank accounts. Plaid, a leader in banking data and security, supports over 12,000 financial institutions. The partnership with Clio means that Accounting has compatibility and dependability on day one.

Additionally, knowing your business means knowing your numbers. For attorneys, there are no numbers where reliability and precision matter more than trust accounting. “As law firms navigate the complexities of trust accounting and compliance, the need for a specialized solution has never been greater,” states Hemant Kashyap, Chief Product Officer at Clio. “With Clio prioritizing trust accounting compliance, legal professionals can manage their finances with ease and confidence, while remaining focused on the practice of law.”

More to Come for Clio Accounting

As released this month, Clio Accounting is a strong step forward towards Clio users having a “single source of truth” for client, matter, and financial information. Still, Clio Accounting is also essentially a “version 1” product. If you are a power user of your current accounting solution, you will notice gaps.

Cash Basis Only

This first iteration of Clio Account supports only cash basis accounting. Those using accrual accounting should wait.

Permission

Unlike Clio Manage, Accounting does not yet support fine-grain permissions and access controls. If you give a user access to Clio Accounting, they can see everything in the system.

Reports

With the initial release, Clio Accounting supports only six core financial reports: profit and loss statement, balance sheet, cash flow statement, reconciliation, general ledger, and trial balance. Clio understands users want additional report types and customizations. More are on the roadmap, including three-way reconciliation for operating and trust accounts, according to Ryan Ward, group product manager for Clio Accounting.

Starting with Hourly and Flat Fee Practices

Accounting’s financial reporting and recording support only hourly or flat fee arrangements. Contingency-based practice areas, like personal injury, and those using deferred revenue and escrow accounts, like real estate, should wait.

What Does This Mean for Lawyers?

Debbie Foster, CEO of Affinity Consulting, commented that Clio Accounting is a major step forward for small firms: “We worked closely with Clio throughout the development and beta testing of Clio Accounting. We believe the approachable user interface and tight integration with Clio Manage provide solos and small firms an excellent opportunity to improve their accounting system.”

Clio’s accounting package targets firms with between one and four attorneys . Current Clio users, especially those frustrated with sync-based connections and those relying on Excel or paper spreadsheets, should consider Clio Accounting. Its focused approach to simplifying accounting for law firms may appeal to those intimidated by traditional accounting software.

According to Affinity Consulting cofounder Steve Best, “While it doesn’t break new ground with its initial feature-set, being an integral part of the popular Clio family makes it groundbreaking. Clio Accounting’s easy synchronization with financial institutions, glanceable dashboard overview, and connection to Manage should put it on the “must consider” list for current Clio firms.”

How to Get Clio Accounting

Clio Accounting is available to U.S. subscribers on the EasyStart, Essentials, Advanced, and Complete tiers. Those on yearly renewal subscriptions pay $29/user per month. Monthly subscribers pay $39/user per month.

Clio Accounting provides one free user license per subscription. Clio envisions the free license as what each firm would give to their outside accountant. Effectively, this means each firm gets one “free seat” of Clio Accounting if it pays for at least one user.

Learn more about Clio Accounting by visiting Clio’s website.

Less Effort, More Clients with Law Ruler

Clients have more ways to find and communicate with attorneys than ever before. For attorneys, this represents an opportunity and a challenge. As an opportunity, it’s easier to directly target potential clients when they need your help. Compare the potential “right time, right place” effectiveness of a Google Local Services Ad versus an old-school yellow pages or billboard advertisement. As for challenges, attorneys face increased inquiries (which is wonderful!) that they need to manage and work to turn potential clients into paying clients.

The most effective way to track and manage referrals is with tools purpose-built for the task. This type of program is called client relationship management software (“CRM”). A CRM helps you plan, control, review, and report on the entire client intake process, from initial marketing to signed engagement agreement.

A CRM Built for Law Firms

Think about the steps you take from receiving a lead to signing a client. You’ll see several types of interaction. Some may require a personal touch, while others could be systematized and automated, freeing time for other work. Law Ruler is a CRM designed for these types of workflows and how law firms engage prospects.

Capturing and Engaging Leads

While word of mouth remains a powerful recruitment vehicle, digital tools help keep you in mind when a would-be client is ready to engage.

Suppose you are an estate planning attorney and you conduct an educational presentation for seniors in your area, you might collect attendee names and email addresses. What now?

Traditionally, you may set that list aside or keep a record to see if the event generates business. More sophisticated firms may send a follow-up email or letter with a brochure. Law Ruler lets you do much more.

Law Ruler lets you take that list of names and email addresses and start them on a series of informational emails you design—a “drip campaign” in marketing terms. You could design a series of automated emails that Law Ruler sends out, one a week, on the “core” estate documents—will, trust, power of attorney, and healthcare directive. These four emails build on or reemphasize your points. A fifth email is a summary reminder of your services and link to schedule a consultation.

You provide valuable, expert information to the prospect, stay front-of-mind with the attendee, and make it easy to take the next step.

Law Ruler’s drip campaign tools support multiple approaches, including texting with pictures and videos and pre-recorded voice calls. Law Ruler’s platform integrates texting, so messages originate from a central firm number and are stored and visible to other Law Ruler users in the firm.

Tracking and Reporting on Outreach

Marketing emails and text campaigns only work if they’re read by the recipient and that recipient becomes a client. Naturally, Law Ruler provides robust analytics in a dashboard view to see relevant information. Instantly know key metrics like:

  • click-through rates (e.g., what percent of email or text recipients click on a link in a message);
  • conversation rates (e.g., what percent of prospects become clients); and
  • average time to conversion (e.g., how long does it take a prospect to become a client).

Law Ruler lets you schedule these as recurring reports, as well as design custom reports in a “code free” interface.

Managing Lead Qualification

Once your outreach spurs a potential client to act, Law Ruler helps you evaluate and qualify the lead to see if the prospect’s needs match your expertise. With Law Ruler, your intake coordinator could:

  • use Law Ruler’s form builder, featuring on-the-fly, adaptive questionnaires to collect matter facts;
  • feed form-collected data into custom fields in Law Ruler, simplifying staff work to review and filter prospects, while avoiding the error-prone process of retyping previously entered details; and
  • ease key steps of the onboarding process via automated documents, such as engagement agreements, generated with form-collected data, and send for digital signature via email or text message.

Powerful CRM, Made Even Greater with AI

Law Ruler includes the talents of ChatGPT to speed up everyday marketing and client communication. ChatGPT and Law Ruler’s AI Email Assistant streamline routine marketing communication tasks, alleviating burdens while producing better, repeatable results in less time.

Law Ruler users can take advantage of ChatGPT integration to:

  • generate potential social media posts that match custom SEO guidelines;
  • produce first drafts of client communications, like welcome letters, questionnaire instructions, and meeting, deadline, and appointment reminder; and
  • even create initial drafts of actual legal documents for attorneys and staff to review, edit, and revise.

Additionally, Law Ruler users benefit from using ChatGPT within a product purpose-built for law firm customers. Law Ruler designed its ChatGPT integration with security top of mind. When using ChatGPT inside Law Ruler, ChatGPT has no access to client data and is prevented from saving and “learning from” any information you enter as a prompt. This structure lets firms use AI and still maintain compliance, preserve privilege, and fulfill ethical obligations to clients.

Systematize Great Marketing and Powerful Lead Management with Ease

Visit Law Ruler’s website to learn more about how their legal-specific CRM helps law firms save time by eliminating manual processes and streamlining their client intake process. If you’d like a hands-on walk-through of Law Ruler, including its phenomenal AI features, click here to schedule a demo.

Avoiding Trust Account Errors with CosmoLex

Mishandling client money is among the top client complaints about attorneys. When we think of mishandling, we often think first of misappropriation—taking client funds to spend on oneself. But such actions, however sensational, represent a distinct minority of trust account problems. More commonly, problems with law firm trust accounts, also known as IOLTA (“interest on lawyer trust accounts”), arise from errors of expediency and neglect rather than nefarious intent. Still, such errors may prove a serious threat to your firm, your reputation, and even your law license.

Fortunately, legal technology has advanced well beyond ledger books. Today, approachable, feature-rich, web-centric programs make managing law firm trust accounting simpler. CosmoLex, a leader in online law practice management software, includes robust tools that help attorneys address potential trust accounting pitfalls. Furthermore, since these capabilities are built into CosmoLex, you have access to all matter facts and finances in a single, integrated experience.

Guard Against Trust Account Mishaps

Prevent Commingled Funds

Ethical rules require law firms to separate trust account money from operating account money. Money you receive but have not earned, for example, a retainer from Client 1 or a settlement check for Client 2, must go into the trust account. You can move that money from the trust account to your operating account as you earn it, such as working hours on the matter (Client 1) or paying yourself the 30% contingency fee (Client 2). You must also document such movement appropriately.

Each client’s money in trust must be separately accounted for. Using the example above, Client 1’s retainer and Client 2’s settlement amount are not a single pool of money, although they could reside in the same bank account. If your work for Client 1 exhausts the retainer, you cannot continue to withdraw money from the trust account even if there is money in the account from the settlement check. The settlement check money belongs to Client 2. If you continued paying yourself, you’d overdraft Client 1 and misappropriate money owned by Client 2.

Proper trust accounting necessitates coordinating client, matter, and money data. CosmoLex holds all three and automates individual client ledger management to prevent commingling and overdrafting.

Ensure Proper Payments and Timely Disbursements

Building on our example above, when Client 1 signs an engagement agreement and pays your retainer, that payment must be paid into and reside in your trust account until you earn it. Assuming they’re like most Americans, Client 1 may want to pay with plastic.

Your credit card infrastructure must understand the unique complications of trust accounts. CosmoLex’s credit card processing handles tricky situations like chargebacks and disputes, and allocates money, fees, and service charges appropriately for an IOLTA setting.

Similarly, you must timely disburse funds. For some situations, the desire for timeliness is obvious—Client 2 would like his settlement money. In other cases, the need for timeliness is less stark, but no less true. With Client 1, you should move money from the trust account to the operating account as you earn it.

In both cases, you must document the transactions. CosmoLex makes it easy to record disbursements as they are made. Documentation’s value for Client 2 is obvious. But it’s also important for Client 1 because:

  • you have an obligation to separate the firm’s money from client money;
  • regular, timely transfer of earned money to the operating account smooths firm cash flow; and
  • transferring earned money from Client 1’s trust to the operating account promptly informs you when you have exhausted the retainer. It’s then time to send a replenishment request or begin billing Client 1.

Examples of other CosmoLex features that streamline trust account management include:

  • Automatic trust-to-operating account transfers;
  • Tracking and disbursement of third-party lien claims; and
  • Importing of electronic bank statements.

Many of the activities described above affect both the trust account and operating, or general business, account. One of CosmoLex’s great advantages is the ability to present a holistic picture of your billing system (e.g., invoices sent to clients), your trust account (e.g., money you hold on behalf of a client), and your operating account (e.g., your general business ledger). Your view of the business benefits from a compressive portrait possible only with an integrated solution.

Integrated Data Produces Powerful Reports

CosmoLex’s reporting tools make both the tracking of and reporting on trust account activity easy and intuitive. Additionally, CosmoLex provides simplified reporting for recordkeeping and auditing. With CosmoLex, you can run bank reconciliations, including the critically important three-way reconciliation, in just a few clicks, and archive financial data reports for safe-keeping and later review.

Complete trust financial reports include:

  • Account balance reports
  • Ledger activity summary reports; and
  • Ledger transaction reports.

CosmoLex’s effortless trust reconciliations and audit-ready tools ease mandatory trust accounting obligations. Having these trust reports on hand ensures attorneys are prepared in case of an audit.

Avoid Errors and Alleviate Trust Account Burdens with CosmoLex

With comprehensive trust accounting baked into its law practice management software, CosmoLex provides a complete picture of your firm’s matters and activities, helping to:

  • Preventing common trust account errors;
  • Simplify precise online payments;
  • Facilitate prompt distributions;
  • Properly record transactions; and
  • Effortlessly produce the reports you and your accountant require.

To learn more about using CosmoLex’s legal-specific accounting tools to stay ethically compliant with client money, visit their website.

Efficiency, Security Made Easy with ShareFile for Legal

ShareFile is well known for secure document sharing and external collaboration capabilities. It provides an easy and secure way to send and receive client or third-party files. Built on that strong foundation, the newest ShareFile for legal innovations give law firms the power to create unparalleled document and client-centric efficiencies.

ShareFile for legal builds on the core features you’re familiar with, adding capabilities that expedite client onboarding, ease document workflows, and better protect business and client information without the need of complex, IT-managed security protocols.

Many legal professionals (75%) spend more than 20 hours a week on non-client-facing work. Reclaim some of those hours with the powerful features of ShareFile for legal.

Share Files Securely

When we think of exchanging documents over email, we often think of file size, but not always file security. ShareFile for legal handles both easily. There is no file size limit like email has for attachments. The Outlook or Gmail plugin makes attaching documents and entire folders to an email easier and more secure. The attached documents are uploaded to and are secure in ShareFile, and you can send links to only download the file. You can monitor the downloads, password protect them, and limit the number of times and how long the download links work. Receiving files works similarly. Provide the client with a secure link and they can upload documents via a web portal. ShareFile notifies you of newly received documents.

  • Projects: When you and the client collaborate on files, ShareFile for legal offers a centralized client management space for each case or matter that helps simplify, organize, and secure common document workflows. This helps give more visibility and control on who has access to what and when they last accessed files, all in one spot.
  • Document Requests Lists: For a list of documents you collect frequently (e.g., the same five documents for each deed you prepare), ShareFile for legal includes digital document collection to create and send requests to clients, explicitly listing each document and the date you want to receive it by. A blanket “upload everything here” link often works, but for specific or discrete items, document requests tell the client what you need. You can review what the client uploaded, comment, and even reject a given document, state why, and request the correct files (e.g., if the client uploaded two years of tax returns but not the most recent two years).

Keep Track of Tasks

Even when you tell clients exactly which documents you need from them to proceed, you or someone at the firm often has to follow up repeatedly. You may be able to bill for the time, but it’s neither effective nor rewarding. ShareFile for legal provides two helpful tools.

  • Task Tracking: You can configure ShareFile for legal to track matter-related tasks. Statuses include “yet to start,” “in progress,” “overdue,” and “completed.” You can create tasks for individual documents (as in estate plan drafting), or entire classes of documents (as in discovery or due diligence work).
  • Keep the Client Informed: As part of task tracking, you can easily share task access with clients. When granted access, which is discretionary, clients can receive prompt status updates that detail all work for their matters.
A screenshot of the ShareFile web portal showing a breach of contract matter with tasks in different stages of completion

Security First

Although document scanning and safety have improved in recent years, they can still be a vector for malware and infection. This fact is even more pronounced among lawyers, where 2023 statistics reveal that 69% of attorneys rely on email, often unencrypted, for client communication and document exchange. ShareFile for legal proactively scans document contents and provides suggested actions or automated actions for mitigating threats.

ShareFile’s security capabilities include alerting you to unusual sign-in and authentication attempts and monitoring file uploads for malware.

Works within Your Tech Stack

ShareFile knows that firms rely on multiple programs to perform different functions. That’s why ShareFile for legal integrates with key tools like Microsoft 365, Google Workspace, Salesforce, and more to reduce tech complexity and help your firm boost efficiency.

Digital documents workflows can help improve your firm’s speed, accuracy, and security. ShareFile for legal makes transmitting and collaborating on documents easy and secure. Whether your clients upload dozens of discovery documents, a discrete list of enumerated files, or a collaboration space for ongoing engagement between the client and the firm, ShareFile has you covered. Learn more about ShareFile for legal by visiting their website.

Measure Your Time, Don’t Just Track it with TimeSolv

A product that makes time tracking simple benefits attorneys irrespective of practice area or fee structure. For attorneys who bill by the hour, easily entering, editing, and reviewing times holds obvious advantages.

But what about flat fee and contingency firms? While those practices need not always record time (unlike hourly attorneys, time is not directly the product you’re moving), it’s still worth doing. Why? Recording time reveals profitability. Hourly billers get a sense of profitability with every pre-bill, discount, or write-down they give a client.

Flat fee and contingency firms lack that regular “check-in.” By recording time and knowing, for example, that a $10,000 flat fee estate plan takes $5,000 to prepare (i.e., comparing the fee charged against staff salaries and other expenses), the firm gains a profit margin “snapshot.”

TimeSolv, a web-based law practice management system (LPMS) with deep roots in the business of law understands the importance of time tracking. TimeSolv understands that making time entry simple and quick ranks of first importance.

TimeSolv Delivers Comprehensive Time Tracking Tools

Track Multiple Events

With TimeSolv, users can have multiple timers available simultaneously. Starting one timer automatically pauses the currently-running timer. For example, if an attorney is drafting a document, and a client calls on an unrelated matter, clicking to start a new timer for the phone call automatically pauses the document-drafting timer. When the call ends, the attorney can stop the phone call timer and enter it. Or perhaps the attorney expects to look something up and make a return call to the client later that day, they can pause the phone call timer and resume the document drafting timer.

Track Time Anywhere

This feature is key. A great solution works on the web, laptops, tablets, and especially smartphones. TimeSolv meets this need. It even works offline; no internet connection necessary! And, of course, TimeSolv includes powerful sync capabilities. If you make a time entry in the desktop app, it syncs with the TimeSolv servers so that entry saves to the cloud and is visible to others. If you’re away from the internet when you make a time entry, TimeSolv automatically syncs the next time you launch the desktop app when connected to the internet.

Draw Meaningful Conclusions

There’s no value in entering a bunch of information if you can’t use that data to make decisions. TimeSolv excels here too. Users and firm administrators see metrics on time entry and time entry behavior (e.g., contemporaneousness) for each timekeeper.

Speed Up Time Entries with Abbreviations

When creating time entries, speed and consistency rank among the top requests. TimeSolv addresses both concerns by supporting custom abbreviations for text fields, including time entries. Rather than sending a client a bill where some phone calls read “call with client,” a few read “phone call with client,” and still others “called to [or from] client,” create a simple TFWC abbreviation. When a user types “TFWC,” TimeSolv expand that shortcut to “telephone call with client.” The same activity reads consistently on bills, across all users and clients. Plus, it saves a bit of time too.

Manage Matter Budgets

While many LPMS vendors offer matter budgets, these are often overall dollar amounts for the matter. TimeSolv provides a more effective, timely, and granular version of budgeting. With TimeSolv, you can set limits on the hours billed on tasks. Such finely tuned control and tracking of expended effort means that no bill or overage surprises you or the client. If someone views a matter with overbudget tasks, TimeSolv displays a prominent banner alerting the viewer that “Plan Task Assignment fees and hours budget exceeded.” By using matter plans to set task budgets, both you and the client can keep a close eye on the meter.

Start Tracking Time for Productivity and Profitability

If you bill hourly and hate tracking time, you’re probably working for free, at least part of the time. If your work is flat fee or contingency, knowing your “cost of goods sold” requires knowing how much you expend in providing a service. TimeSolv gives you the tools to painlessly record and review time entries. Learn more about this feature and everything TimeSolv offers by visiting their website.

Seize Your Day with Rocket Matter’s Office Management Tools

One of the strongest cases for law practice management software (LPMS) is that it understands how legal professionals work. Practice management software excels where Outlook or the Google Suite fails because an LPMS works within the concept of a “matter,” something unique to the legal market. An LPMS combines a host of otherwise disparate data—emails, notes, documents, phone messages, calendar appointments, and more—under the umbrella of one collective (e.g., Smith v. Jones or the Thomas estate plan).

If an LPMS stopped there, it would nonetheless be a boon to legal professionals. But great, innovative practice management software like Rocket Matter reaches beyond the mere recreation of a casefile folder. Rocket Matter includes comprehensive LPMS features and supercharges those features with robust project management and reporting, available to Rocket Matter Pro and Premier customers.

Manage Matters Visually with Kanban Boards

For example, in a family law practice, one might have the following stages (i.e., columns) arrayed left to right across the screen:

  • Prepare Initial Filings
  • Temporary Relief
  • Discovery
  • Mediation
  • Pre-Trial Discovery
  • Trial
  • Closing
A family law focused Kanban board on Rocket Matter

As you work each family law matter, you move the card from left to right across the Kanban board columns as the matter progresses toward a conclusion. Experienced family law practitioners may notice a couple of things immediately: (1) these seven stages are excessive for some cases (e.g., an amicable “no kids, no property” dissolution) and insufficient for others, and (2) matters may “bounce” back and forth between stages—it’s not a linear path forward. Rocket Matter’s Kanban boards address both concerns.

You can customize the respective stages for each matter type. A family law attorney likely has several matter types, such as divorce, dissolution, custody, post-decree, and more. Each matter type possesses its own unique set of statuses, all customizable by the firm to meet how they work. Additionally, the Kanban view accommodates a matter card moving from any one status, which Rocket Matter calls “swimlanes,” to any other status. You could move a matter’s card directly from discovery to trial or flip back and forth between discovery and mediation a dozen times, if necessary. Rocket Matter built its Kanban boards with the flexibility to manage matters how you work.

In addition to managing your matter workflow visually, Rocket Matter’s Kanban view also lets you:

  • filter the displayed matters by primary the attorney;
  • view the total days a Matter has been in its current status;
  • filter the board to see matters by client;
  • filter the board by matter health (has “sat” in a status too long, based on timeframes you set); and
  • jump directly to a matter’s dashboard by clicking its card.

These boards, part of Rocket Matter’s robust legal project management platform, offer a visual snapshot of case statuses, promoting efficiency and collaboration with their easy-to-use, customizable layout.

Project Management and Powerful Reporting

Kanban boards are but one part of Rocket Matter’s strong toolbox of legal project management capabilities. Other project management-specific features available to Pro and Premier customers rely on the matter status to:

  • make calendar calculations unique to each status;
  • add custom tasks that appear when a matter reaches a status; and
  • display specific custom data based on the matter status.

These and other powerful automation capabilities rest on understanding and using matter templates.

Rocket Matter pairs advanced reporting and business intelligence along with these status-based workflows. As a Premier customer, dive even deeper into your matter and project management data with Rocket Matter’s Business Intelligence Module (BIM). With the BIM, your firm can review all types of data across matters, activities, contacts, and billing information. Using simple “drag and drop” steps, you can easily create reports that offer remarkable insights into your firm, its processes, case handling, and financials. Read this earlier article on Lawyerist to understand more about the BIM and how it can help you see more clearly.

Get Started with Kanban, Project Management, and Advanced Reporting

Rocket Matter offers an unrivaled combination of robust LPMS functions, project management tools, featuring user-friendly Kanban boards, and highly capable business intelligence reporting to draw meaningful, actionable conclusions to boost your business. If you want to build a better practice by elevating your firm’s productivity and strategic insight, visit Rocket Matter’s website to learn more about their comprehensive solution.

Measure What Matters with Lawmatics’ Custom Dashboards

Your legal practice produces abundant data from many sources. What happens when you have to search two or three places within a program or website to find what you seek? Or worse, when you must combine and massage information from various locations to see a complete picture of your business? Frankly, you’re less likely to retrieve and act on that information. Instead of illuminating and helpful, the experience becomes frustrating and time-consuming. And you can’t make informed decisions on data, even if you have it, because it’s not presented conveniently or timely.

Previously, a law firm needed a database or tech guru to sort through its data to craft meaningful, visual reports. Hiring such a person, or tasking the techiest staffer with that responsibility, leads to inefficiently cobbling together disparate data, eating time and money that could have been better spent serving clients.

Lawmatics knows this pain and created its Custom Dashboards feature to address the problem. With Custom Dashboards, you now have a way to see meaningful data, make an informed decision, and act promptly.

Custom Dashboards are the Place for Your Data

Custom Dashboards allow Lawmatics users (on the Team tier and above) to consolidate their firm’s metrics. Furthermore, customization tools let you pick the information that matters to your firm and display it in relevant ways.

Custom Dashboards serve as your firm’s new homepage, putting key data at your fingertips. System administrators, and authorized users, can view, create, and edit as many dashboards as they’d like. There’s no limit!

Building a dashboard is an easy and flexible “point and click” process. Lawmatics knows that each firm, and practice areas within a firm, rely on various data points to gauge business health. They haven’t tried to guess what yours are. Instead, they’ve taken a toolbox approach, allowing you to display what you want, how you want it.

Here’s a sample Custom Dashboard with data panels displaying values in several formats and a header dividing “top-level” numbers from marketing-specific numbers.

Users can easily drag Panels and Groups to relocate and resize them. Simply click, hold, and drag to move. Resize a panel by clicking on the panel’s corner, holding down the mouse button, and dragging to expand or contract the panel.

Building Dashboards Customized to Your Firm

Custom Dashboards can provide firm leadership with views on how areas of the business are operating, such as marketing, client intake, and billing. Depending on who creates a dashboard, that user may want to review marketing success, such as referrals and return on investment, team performance, or countless other metrics.

Examples of business metrics you could track on a dashboard include:

  • E-signature completion statistics
  • Upcoming tasks
  • Staff performance and productivity
  • Upcoming appointments
  • Progress towards established goals

Dashboards’ options and flexibility give you a holistic and clarifying view of what’s happening at your firm. All dashboards are visible firmwide to users with permission to create and edit dashboards.

A user builds a dashboard with four types of panels:

  • Text: This panel is the easiest to understand. It’s a simple note area. Use it for teamwide memos, inspirational quotes, or other messages.
  • Data: This panel displays information from myriad data sources. It could pull records from standard metrics (e.g., appointments, esigning activity, invoices, tasks, or time entries) or from a Lawmatics custom report.
    • Standard metrics behave similarly to Lawmatics’ existing analytics page, and offer basic calculations like new leads, conversion rate, cost per lead, and cost per client.
    • A custom report data panel can draw from either a custom report you create specifically for the dashboard or from custom reports your firm previously created; ones they already know and use.
    • Dashboards visualize data panels as number values (e.g., the total number of matches from a given custom report), pie charts, bar charts, and gauges. The choice of presentation rests with the dashboard’s creator.
  • Headers: This panel type divides a dashboard into sections with helpful labels for collections of text and data panels
  • Groups: Use this panel type to cluster several data panels together. Combine as many data panels as you like. Move them around as a unit for the perfect dashboard layout!

Get Started with Custom Dashboards for Your Firm

Custom Dashboards help keep everyone in the firm on the same path toward the same goal. How might you use Custom Dashboards?

  • A marketing specialist follows how many new leads the firm has and their potential value.
  • An intake specialist tracks new cases opened by practice area and engagement agreements returned.
  • An attorney keeps track of upcoming matter appointments and tasks.
  • A bookkeeper follows paid and outstanding invoice amounts for the month.

Whatever your practice area, you have numbers that mean success to you. Lawmatics’ Custom Dashboards make it easy to create and review the data that powers profitable results. Visit Lawmatics’ website to learn more about making the most of this new feature.

CosmoLex Trust Accounting is Anything but Basic

Do you know the largest source of client complaints about lawyers? Communication—unreturned calls, unanswered emails, etc. The second largest source of complaints? Money. More specifically, how attorneys handle their clients’ funds.

Law Firm Accounting Complexities

Accounting plays an essential role in any business. No matter the industry, a business tracks profit and loss, tax events, and other financial measurements. Law firms do all of that while also precisely accounting for receipts and disbursements on a per-matter basis.

In some respects, trust accounting—tracking the funds we receive from or on behalf of clients, but haven’t earned for ourselves yet—is easier than standard business accounting:

  • We don’t have to monitor profit or loss;
  • We don’t record depreciation of physical assets or amortization of intangible assets; and
  • We don’t worry about interest earned or tax events.

If law firms only had to worry about their trust account (also called an IOLTA, IOLA, or escrow account, depending on your jurisdiction), they might have it easier than a generic business or non-profit. Unfortunately, a lawyer’s trust account burdens exist in addition to general business accounting requirements.

Software Simplifies the Situation

Fortunately, the additional needs of trust accounting match what computers are good at:

  • Tacking client funds on a per-matter basis;
  • Matching each receipt or disbursement to supporting documents; and
  • Painlessly reconciling numbers between the firm’s electronic ledger, the bank’s reported amounts, and the trust balances for each matter.

General purpose accounting can do some, but not all, of this. Maybe it could hold “audit-important” documentation and reconcile between itself and the bank, but it lacks the core tools lawyers need. In the same way firms benefit from law practice management software to keep matters organized, firms need accounting software that understands trust accounts, matters, and their unique roles in legal.

The right legal-specific accounting software alleviates much of the stress.

CosmoLex Offers the Right Trust Accounting Tools

CosmoLex’s robust, approachable trust accounting makes it easy to record and report your trust account activity properly.

Leverage Tools to Do it Right the First Time

The money-centric client and disciplinary complaints mentioned above don’t stem from attorney malfeasance. Most disciplinary complaints result not from deliberate misappropriation but from negligence. A solution, like CosmoLex, that encourages (and can compel) good recordkeeping, promotes compliance and prevents problems.

If your firm relies on a “general purpose” accounting program and a separate matter management program for case information and billing, that split introduces unnecessary complications. Using separate programs creates a gap for human error to seep in. If you maintain both an electronic and paper calendar, and they disagree, you lose time determining which is correct. Similarly, no one should play a “financial telephone” game, relaying numbers between products and hoping no errors arise.

CosmoLex provides practice management and full, general ledger accounting in one place. Manage case details, bill clients, and track and reconcile business and trust accounts in one web-based, mobile-friendly product.

Beneath that single-source umbrella, CosmoLex:

  • Collects all necessary transaction reference information in an audit-ready fashion;
  • Separates trust account money and transaction activity by matter and client, preventing commingling of different clients’ funds;
  • Supports computer-printed checks to prevent duplicative check numbers or writing checks from the wrong account;
  • Guards against overdrawing not only the overall trust account, but also overdrawing any individual matter’s trust balance;
  • Allows you to “close the books” on a matter or time period to prevent further edits or alterations; and
  • Connects to your bank or financial institution to directly import transaction data for you to review and confirm.

Quickly Run Reports to Verify Accuracy and Completeness

Meaningful, actionable reports begin with good data. Quality reports depend upon quality bookkeeping. CosmoLex produces reports that keep you informed and compliant with jurisdictional obligations. Core, insightful reports include:

  • Trust Ledger Balance Report: This report, known to Canadian practitioners as a Trust Listing, shows trust balances for each client by matter, the last date of any activity, and whether the matter is open or closed.
  • Client Trust Ledger: This report is a mini bank statement for each matter. It shows credits and debits for the matter, complete with a running balance. If you have a single matter’s funds in multiple trust accounts, it also accommodates that variation.
A picture of a client trust account ledger showing transactions and a final zero balance
  • Reconciliation Report: This report compares the bank’s ending balance to your recorded ending balance. It also reveals uncleared transactions, such as uncashed checks.
  • 3-Way Reconciliation Report: This report builds upon the reconciliation report, showing the bank’s numbers, your trust account’s overall numbers, and client ledger numbers. 3-way reconciliation reports ensure that bank totals match trust account totals and that both totals agree with what matter-level ledgers report. Auditors love this report.

Best Practices Produce the Best Results

The fundamentals drive stress-free trust accounting.

  • Run the reports monthly and act on issues. Closed matters shouldn’t have trust balances. Investigate dormant accounts and uncashed checks. Relocate unassigned funds to their proper matter.
  • Know your audit requirements.
  • Keep records, including copies of deposit slips, canceled checks, and statements, for the relevant time period.

Make accounting more effortless by doing the right thing promptly with easy access to relevant, verified financial information. CosmoLex helps your firm’s trust accounting keep the proper records, meet jurisdictional and audit requirements, and generally run smoothly. Learn more and schedule a demo at CosmoLex’s website.

More Intake, Less Headache with Smarter Staffing Solutions from Get Staffed Up

Running a small law firm is hard. Between client work, administrative tasks, and business growth efforts, managing limited time and resources can be a challenge for even the best practitioner. That’s why law firm owners are turning to Get Staffed Up. Offering remote assistants ideal for client-facing administrative tasks, Get Staffed Up (GSU) finds the fit from the top 1% of degreed, professionals from Latin America and South Africa. Since Get Staffed Up was founded by two attorneys, they understand the unique staffing needs of law firms. GSU sets its services apart with their propriety match making process.

For any lawyer, getting the phones to ring and then the phones ringing is a challenge. That is why GSU offers Marketing Assistants and Intake Specialists.

Generating Leads

The time and energy you spend practicing law is time and energy you don’t have to run and grow your business. Adding a Get Staffed Up Virtual Marketing Assistant (VMA) to your team increases your bandwidth for marketing strategies. These proactive problem-solvers provide needed support and can work on a variety of tasks to bolster your marketing campaigns.

Reaching modern audiences requires creative, tech-savvy minds thinking on your behalf. Get Staffed Up’s VMAs are equipped with a wide range of digital marketing skills, and can help with anything from sending email newsletters to managing your podcast. Other potential marketing hats include:

  • Content Creator
  • Social Media Coordinator
  • Video Coordinator
  • Graphic Designer

Growing Your Firm

Even with the best marketing, a lackluster client intake process can ruin your efforts. New clients want to feel valued, without sacrificing attention to current ones. A Get Staffed Up Intake Specialist can help shoulder the burden by employing a customer-first onboarding process.

A Get Staffed Up Intake Specialist will work directly with you or your office manager, learning your existing procedures for client intake and helping streamline them. After mastering the details of your firm’s policies, they can address potential clients’ questions and concerns with a smile. Intake Specialists help with these crucial tasks:

  • Screen out bad prospects
  • Retrieve medical records
  • Refer incorrect prospects to your referrals and keep track
  • Keep your referral partners updated on matters they’ve sent you
  • Set paid consultations and take the money
  • Follow up with all prospects who are a great fit
  • Prep for each consultation
  • Keep track of all calls and prospects in the CRM

Confidently Delegate to Top Talent

Modern remote and hybrid work models allow you to hire diverse, qualified candidates wherever they are. Get Staffed Up makes the process even easier, bringing you top talent from around the world while managing HR and payroll for your virtual positions. Their meticulous vetting process identifies important qualities that ensure these professionals exceed expectations.

Get Staffed Up focuses on specialization in their recruitment strategy. Each assistant comes to you with a deep knowledge of their job responsibilities. As a result, you receive the highest quality candidates, dedicated exclusively to your firm and working the same hours as everyone else.

Get Back to What Matters

Get Staffed Up brings top talent to your doorstep and alleviates added stress on your firm. With their legal-specific Marketing Assistant and Intake Specialist positions, they have made it easier than ever to acquire and impress new clients. Learn more about what Get Staffed Up can do for you by going to the Get Staffed Up Website. See why customers call Get Staffed Up a “game changer” for their firms.

FirmPilot Pioneers a New Era in Legal Marketing with AI

If you have engaged a “law firm marketing agency,” you know that phrase can encompass everything from defining your firm vision and ideal client, to font and logos, to the technical mechanics of website building and ad buying. Maybe you’ve felt that the end goal—more prospects and, ultimately, more clients and more revenue, gets lost in the shuffle.

FirmPilot understands that feeling and has “flipped the script” on law firm digital marketing. They start with data instead of design.  By synthesizing data and marketing, FirmPilot provides law firms two benefits: hard numbers that give you a framework for decision-making and the ability to  turn reams of facts and figures into actionable marketing intelligence.

FirmPilot’s AI and Marketing

One AI strength lies in data analysis and summary. FirmPilot takes advantage of AI’s data audit and summary capabilities to analyze your competitors and automatically improve your firm’s marketing to attract clients. Traditional marketing firms rely on basic tactics, gut feelings, and many “manual adjustments” to tweak marketing campaigns. In contrast , FirmPilot uses cutting-edge AI to automate law firm marketing.

FirmPilot’s decision engine, which can modify search engine optimization (SEO) keywords, pay-per-click (PPC) ads, social media ads, and more, synthesizes two valuable data sources. FirmPilot not only looks at your own marketing data, it also looks at your top competitors’ data. The combined sources drive FirmPilot’s software to predict and deploy effective marketing to reach your ideal client. That data-driven, predictive algorithm is FirmPilot’s “secret sauce.” Instead of simply writing a website post, publishing it, and hoping for the best, FirmPilot precisely targets prospective clients with the highest conversion likelihood.

How FirmPilot Produces Results

Your existing client data powers FirmPilot’s AI. Think about what you know about your past and present client population. You know where they live, what concern brought them to you, the resolution they sought, and the resolution they got. Depending on the practice area, you may have insightful demographic data—married or single, number of children, financial well-being, etc. FirmPilot relies on this sort of data to profile and identify ideal, high-value clients.

Once FirmPilot’s software knows who it’s trying to find, the AI then reverse engineers where these lucrative prospects are searching online by studying the content and keywords of competitor law firms already attracting them. FirmPilot algorithms then suggest website edits, content optimization, and other steps you can take so that your firm appears prominently in search results when these would-be clients perform a web search.

These three legs of the stool—your data, FirmPilot’s intelligent recommendations, and the results they produce, work as a continuously improving system. The client-result data from your first set of changes informs future changes and so on. The AI makes ever-better recommendations by learning which content and tactics performed best. As you use it, FirmPilot constantly refines as retargets so that, over time, its lead generation delivers for your most profitable segments. Ultimately, FirmPilot’s AI-powered marketing engine starts with your existing client data and, through a series of finely-tuned iterations, attracts and converts prospects that drive law firm growth.

A New Marketing Approach to Law Firms

Many people think that marketing is all hunches and instinct, and there’s certainly some of that, particularly with visuals and word choice. But there’s plenty of data too, more now than ever before. Data tells marketers to air commercials for “product A” during evening news programs and “product B” during college football games. Data ties your web search for a product to the subsequent ads you see for that product, its accessories, and its competitors. FirmPilot’s technology marries sophisticated, AI-powered analysis to the needs of your firm’s marketing.

FirmPilot’s AI creates and optimizes marketing assets to achieve profitable results. Furthermore, its performance tracking mechanism, powered by continuous results analysis, gives unmatched visibility into the return on investment that FirmPilot brings to your firm.

Visit FirmPilot’s website to learn how modern, data-driven AI marketing benefits your firm.

Understanding Local Services Ads for Lawyers with Postali

Google launched Local Services Ads (LSA) in 2015, starting with home services-type businesses. Google made LSAs available to attorneys in 2021. Jim Christy, President of Postali, spoke with Zack Glaser, Legal Tech Advisor, about how law firms can use LSAs and their potential rewards and risks. 

LSA Primer 

LSAs differ from Google’s primary advertising tool, pay-per-click (PPC), in two ways. First, instead of displaying in line with organic search results, LSAs display above the traditional results list. LSAs are prominently set apart. Second, Google prices LSAs on a “pay-per-lead” model. 

Under a PPC model, which Google still offers and should have a place in firm advertising budgets, clicking the ad costs money, irrespective of what the user does afterward. Clicking the ad and closing the browser tab costs the same as a user clicking the link, spending an hour on the attorney’s landing page, and completing a contact form. 

The LSA model is different. Google does not charge the advertising attorney merely because a user clicked on the LSA. The user must contact the law firm. Only a successful connection costs money. 

Making LSAs Successful for Your Firm 

The LSA algorithm also differs from PPC in how Google chooses which LSA to display for a search. With PPC advertising, prominence flows from spending. Paying more puts the firm’s ad higher. In contrast, Google selects LSAs based on many factors, including user (i.e., star) ratings. A firm must have a particular number of Google reviews to be eligible for LSA inclusion (Google requires up to 5 reviews depending on profession & practice area). Beyond that, location, business hours, responsiveness, profile quality, and, of course, marketing budget, play a roll in an individual firm’s LSA ranking.

Pay Only for Leads, Not Clicks 

Google charges firms for contacts, not clicks. When configuring its LSA profile, the firm sets practice areas and geographies. If a user reaches out through the LSA but doesn’t match your practice area and geography, the firm can dispute the charge with Google and seek a refund. 

Unlike PPC ads, Google offers limited specificity concerning practice areas and keyword matching. Jim gave the example of a personal injury firm that only represents wrongful death matters. While PPC ads could tightly target this niche, LSAs could run too broadly (e.g., all personal injury searches). 

With LSAs, a firm may get calls that aren’t disputable but not a great fit, so they might pay the higher LSA cost. With PPC, Google charges the firm for every click, but the ad may get more desired exposure because of the additional specificity and targeting tools PPC has. 

Costs of LSAs 

When LSAs initially launched for attorneys, ad prices were relatively inexpensive and predictable. Both benefits are fading. For example, some specific personal injury locations, LSA prices have climbed 300% since 2021. In some categories, the return-on-investment of PPC ads may now exceed that of LSAs, even though LSAs promise higher quality leads. 

Using LSAs as a DIYer 

While Jim encourages firms to engage professional assistance when running PPC ad campaigns, LSAs are something a solo or small firm can experiment with on their own. For the inspired DIYers, Google’s LSA profile provides three tools. 

  • Category: The firm tells Google its areas of practice. Family law is a category, for example. The firm must have at least one category and can have more than one. Google also permits excluding categories, mediation, for example. That’s about the extent of LSA granularity. An attorney could seek auto accident injuries, but if the firm specialized in auto accident head injuries, LSAs could not be that specific. 
  • Budget: The firm must set its LSA budget weekly; that’s the only option. Google presents two options: Maximize Leads and Manually Set a Max Bid. Setting the budget to Maximize means the campaign uses the current market rate for that LSA placement to serve the LSA to the most viable users at the most viable time to optimize for getting leads. Setting the budget to Manual means that the firm controls the amount they are willing to spend per week, the price is still as variable as with Maximize, but fewer or no users may see it due to the price cap. 
  • Geography: This option controls who sees the ad based on a user’s state, county, city, or ZIP code. Users see LSAs based on their location when searching, so it’s possible firms may receive “out of area” contacts (e.g., if someone searches while at work versus home). 

Getting Started 

Jim advises that LSAs involve some strategy, and he’s happy to discuss strategy with you. Once the firm decides on a direction, “pulling the levers” is much simpler than Google’s PPC tools. The LSA area of Google search results is prime real estate. If you have not set up Local Services Ads yet, Jim encourages you to do so, even if you don’t intend to run ads immediately. 

To learn more about Postali and why you should use LSAs, visit their blog. 

Omnizant Makes Quality Websites Affordable with OneFirst Legal

Legal websites run the gamut from simple “electronic business cards” to richly interactive sites. However, building the site is not enough. A website is not a Field of Dreams; it’s not enough to build it and they will come. Success means site visitors ultimately become clients.

A Website to Meet Your Goals

Building and promoting a website often seems complex, expensive, and unnecessary to firms that earn most of their business from referrals. Understandably, if the firm derives over 90% of its business from referrals, leadership hesitates to spend $1,500 per month, or more, on a website, digital marketing, or search engine optimization (SEO).

Victoria Silecchia, chief marketing officer at Omnizant, sat down with Zack to explain why all firms need a professional website and how to create one affordably. OneFirst Legal, a new division launched by Omnizant on September 1, is the key to an affordable, modern website.

Fundamentally, a firm without a website or one that puts no effort into SEO finds itself at the mercy of chance and competitors. Attorneys running referral-based practices still need a professional web presence. It need not be elaborate, but it must exist. Nor does the site and its essential marketing need to cost thousands to create or maintain.

Prospects Do Research

Even referral-based practices must consider what information prospects find online when searching for a firm or attorney. Having a website means the firm controls its image, its first touchpoint with would-be clients.

Referrals will research the firm. The question is who controls the information they see. The firm may not care about its Google Business profile or reviews, but others will.

Affordable SEO Marketing Achieves Defined Goals

In addition to the website, OneFirst Legal collaborates with the firm on what Victoria termed “branded visibility,” a targeted form of SEO.

In this context, “good SEO” is not optimizing for better Google rankings for highly desirable and expensive keyword combinations like “car accident” and “New York City.” Instead, OneFirst Legal’s branded visibility concentrates on simpler and more meaningful goals, like ensuring the firm’s site is the top hit when someone searches specifically for the firm or attorney’s name.

Without a website and absent branded visibility, the top hit for a firm or attorney is often an aggregated attorney directory showing both the firm and its competitors side-by-side. In some cases, unscrupulous law firms may bid for their competitors’ names, paying web search engines to show the result “Smith Law Firm” higher in the list than “Jones Law Firm,” even when would-be clients expressly search for “Jones Law Firm.”

While Omnizant has helped law firms with full-service digital marketing capabilities since 2006, OneFirst Legal delivers the essential website tools a firm needs at a budget-friendly price.

OneFirst Legal creates and hosts solutions for solos and small firms wanting a modern, secure, and accessibility-friendly web presence. For firms of five attorneys or fewer, OneFirst Legal charges a one-time $199 setup fee and $199 per month after that.

OneFirst Legal designs its WordPress-based templates with flexibility and modularity in mind. Victoria likens their templates to prefabricated home blueprints. The design is tested, perfected, and quickly deployable. Website “floorplans” may be similar, but customization remains key. Continuing the analogy, each firm’s site has unique paint colors, siding, landscape, and furnishings.

OneFirst Legal understands that attorneys desire speedy results with minimal meetings. A firm can go from zero to launch in under three weeks, in five simple steps:

  1. Use the self-scheduling tool on OneFirst Legal’s website to grab 15 minutes. Learn if the OneFirst Legal approach suits your firm.
  2. Complete a single enrollment form to sign up.
  3. At the kickoff call and design meeting, 3-to-5 business days after enrollment, you select the site blueprint, practice areas, colors, and images.
  4. OneFirst Legal professionals customize your chosen blueprint with layered colors, retina image-grade photos, moving elements, and text.
  5. You review the website’s first draft 3-5 business days after the kickoff meeting, make any changes, and launch.

Creating Visibility for Your Modern Site

Once launched, OneFirst Legal handles monthly updates. They continually refine Google Business Profile optimization and branded visibility SEO. They work with the firm on review generation, ongoing postings, and site maintenance. OneFirst Legal does not limit support or update time.

Getting Started

Visit http://onefirstlegal.com/getstarted to see how affordable, vibrant layouts bring legal websites to life and how versatile templates work for different practice areas.

Keep Clients Plugged-in with the Case Status App

Clients have many options for contacting their attorney: phone, email, text, client portal, and more. This situation creates more places to check, eating time and delaying responses for the firm. 

Case Status solves this problem with tools to channel client communication through a focused mobile app. How does this differ from a practice management client portal? Immensely successful client adoption. While most portals go unvisited by clients (30% usage), Cases Status firms see 80% adoption of their mobile app. 

Six Benefits of an App-Based Client Communication Tool 

Paul Bamert and Jose Figueroa outlined six challenges facing law firms and how Case Status addresses them. 

Client Portals 

Most web-based practice management systems offer a client portal, but most are web-based. In contrast, Case Status provides a native mobile app for iOS and Android, which earned a 4.9 out of 5 rating from thousands of user reviews. With a mobile app, firms meet clients where they are; 93% of the five hours a day the average person spends on a smartphone, they spend in apps. 

Offering a client portal that clients use reduces scattershot client interaction and prevents time-consuming “case update” phone calls. Additionally, Case Status integrates with many practice management vendors, providing a single source of truth for information. 

Time 

With Case Status, a firm can automate repetitive tasks and communications. Jose demonstrated how a customizable in-app experience walks clients through their matter stages. With automated triggers, the firm provides client updates in-app. This includes scheduled “no-update updates” telling the client that the matter is in process, but nothing changed recently. Background updates boost firm efficiency, with one mid-size firm saving 366 hours in nine months and decreasing related inbound phone calls by 51%. 

Client Communication 

Clients choose their preferred approach—phone, email, text, or portal—causing craziness. The average firm takes 48 to 72 hours to respond to a client’s outreach. With Cases Status, the delay drops to 6.5 hours. How? Case Status firms channel all client communication to the mobile app. Funneling allows the firm to respond faster to client requests, improve its client communications, and exceed client expectations. 

All employees can read and respond to in-app client messages and send the client files and do this in a way that syncs with the firm’s existing practice management system while providing better security than email or SMS offers. 

Language Barriers 

8-9% of people needing legal services don’t speak English. In some client communities, the number exceeds 40%. Case Status uses Google’s Neural Machine Translation (GNMT) system to translate in-app messages in 138 languages. This works in both 1-to-1 messages, between a client and a firm employee, and 1-to-many, such as a templated message sent to many clients. GNMT allows an English-only attorney to read foreign language messages translated in real-time. GNMT translates both inbound and outbound messages. 

Client Satisfaction 

Law firms often guess what the client thinks. One-half of legal services providers fail to measure client satisfaction at all—the other half measure only at a matter’s conclusion. Systematizing client feedback, especially early in the representation, brings big wins in client referrals and reviews. 

With Case Status’ tools, the firm can ask the client to rate the representation on a scale of 1 to 10. Think of a bad rating as a “check engine light” for the matter. Learning of an unhappy client early gives the firm time to fix the problem. By analyzing client surveys, the firm discovers where its processes or communications failed and revises procedures to create a response playbook. For clients who rate the firm a nine or ten, that list tells the firm whom to solicit for online endorsements. 

Sustainable Growth 

A great reputation flows from providing great service. Case Status helps firms build sustainable growth by identifying happy clients, being front-of-mind with clients, and asking satisfied clients to write reviews or refer friends. Efficient communication leads to good client surveys that the firm can ask for reviews on Avvo and Google. The app also contains a referral button to send the lawyer’s electronic business card to friends and family. 

Getting Started 

If your firm wants to transform client engagement and meet clients where they are, visit www.casestatus.com to schedule a demo. 

Data Tables Make PatternBuilder Even More Versatile 

Scott Kelly, product manager at NetDocuments, sat down with Zack to discuss how PatternBuilder integrates with NetDocuments and to demonstrate a new customizable database feature called data tables. 

Scott emphasized that PatternBuilder is a toolkit for building and automating your firm’s needs. Traditionally, automation meant creating documents. Of course, PatternBuilder can do that. But it can do much more, such as collecting, storing, and manipulating data via data tables. It’s a toolkit your firm can leverage to create solutions that might otherwise require a separate product and fee. 

Watch the video below to see how PatternBuilder helps organize the data at the heart of your law firm. 

Workflow and Document Automation with PatternBuilder 

Scott gave the example of hiring an employee. When a company wants to hire a new employee, the law firm creates three documents: an employment offer, an I-9 immigration form, and a proprietary inventions agreement. Instead of doing each document manually, with a PatternBuilder app, a user walks through a custom workflow (a series of questions) and the app produces those three finished documents. 

PatternBuilder leverages its integration with NetDocuments to go beyond just offering to download final documents to your desktop. As part of the app’s workflow, PatternBuilder both creates the documents and files them within the appropriate client and matter in NetDocuments. As a result, you save time and all firm users can quickly access documents. 

Building a PatternBuilder App 

You can build workflow apps with PatternBuilder’s “no code” editor, create the questions you want, and place those fields in document templates. Question types include: 

Short textMoney
Long textDate
Number (Decimals)Time
Number (Whole)Upload image/file
Radio ButtonsRange
DropdownEmail Password
Yes/No (Boolean)Combobox
CheckboxesList Selector
Row Selector

PatternBuilder permits dynamic logic in its workflows too. This means workflow questions and the resulting final document include only relevant information. Scott’s example was the employment agreement. If a prospect were offered stock options, you would select that option in the guided interview. Only then does the app prompt the user to enter stock options information. Similarly, if the company doesn’t offer the prospect stock options, those provisions are absent from the final employment agreement. 

Use Loops to Collect Repeating Data 

Another powerful feature is loops. Think about collecting information from your clients. Sometimes you know the “maximum” amount of data there will be. For example, a person will have only one social security number. Other times, you have no idea of the maximum. How many children does a client have? How many properties does a business own? Loops exist for situations where the maximum is unknown. Scott’s example is the proprietary inventions agreement. The prospective hire may have no prior inventions, a few, or dozens. You can set up the PatternBuilder app to collect unlimited inventions. All inventions entered appear in the document. If there are no inventions, the app removes that entire section from the document. 

Additionally, all NetDocuments’ management, permissions, and version tools integrate seamlessly with PatternBuilder. Upon creating and filing the documents, the app applies the proper NetDocuments metadata and security to each. These new documents appear in relevant searches and filters without manual data entry. 

Screenshot of NetDocuments Data Tables

Sample Data Collection with Data Tables in PatternBuilder 

While documents are at the heart of PatternBuilder, the program isn’t limited to them. Data tables make collecting, storing, and using data effortless. 

Scott’s example is completing a “new real estate client” form via a PatternBuilder app. The app asks questions like in his document example above. The difference is that rather than producing documents, finishing the workflow creates both a new client and new matter in NetDocuments. 

Furthermore, collected data, like company name and address, and loops, like the client’s real properties, are stored in data tables. That information is then available for automating documents. You can create as many data tables as you like. You can edit them directly instead of through a form or interview. They hold the same question types as workflow apps described above. Finally, data tables are accessible via an open API to receive data from your law practice management system, Salesforce, and elsewhere. 

Get Started with Workflows and Apps 

Find out how PatternBuilder can replicate and automate your firm’s unique templates and processes, resulting in faster, higher-value client service by seeing a personalized demo. Book here: https://www.netdocuments.com/products/patternbuilder.  

CosmoLex Extends its All-in-one with CosmoLex Websites 

Every business needs a website. Unfortunately, many law firms lack one, or if they have one, it serves no purpose beyond being a digital business card. Most firms want more, but time and other commitments preclude it. Fortunately, CosmoLex Websites makes creating and updating a powerful business website simple. 

It’s “Done for You” 

CosmoLex Websites operates on the “done for you” model. Your firm works with experts at CosmoLex to design and implement a modern, feature-rich website. There’s no need to hire or be a web developer, marketing strategist, or WordPress administrator. 

As Erica Birstler, VP of Product Communications & Support at CosmoLex, puts it, CosmoLex Websites, “take[s website development] off your plate and [you] have a great end result that can impact the growth of your business.” 

Watch the video below to see Erica walk Zack through a beautiful sample site demonstrating valuable website features and tight integration between the CosmoLex LPMS and a CosmoLex-created website. 

The Three Cs of a CosmoLex Website 

The value proposition of having an LPMS vendor build and maintain your website becomes apparent when you remember that the LPMS is a core source of contact information. Good customer relationship management is integral to effective legal marketing. Good marketing naturally involves the web. Having a website that feeds prospects into your LPMS is advantageous. 

CosmoLex Websites rests on the fundamental principles of clean design, credible content, and convenient features. 

Clean Design 

Say goodbye to bland, cookie-cutter law firm websites featuring people in suits and icons of courthouses and gavels. CosmoLex Websites ditches those stereotypes in favor of a clean, modern design that the firm selects to fit its image. 

CosmoLex employees work with your firm to distill your desires into a fresh business website with top-notch features like: 

  1. Mobile-responsive webpage layouts; 
  2. Easily found and click-friendly links for phone numbers and emails; and 
  3. Inclusive, accessibility-focused widgets for text size and spacing, tooltips, color, saturation, and on-the-fly language translation. 

Credible Content 

Your firm’s website is where potential clients learn about you without ever speaking to you. As prospects peruse your site, they form judgments about whether your firm fits their needs. CosmoLex Websites offers a library of website content, like blogs, articles, and explanatory pages, for you to choose from. 

You work with CosmoLex to select and customize content relevant to your target audience. CosmoLex makes available easily modifiable templates and sources of information. They have fine-tuned their curated content for heightened visibility through keyword and search engine optimization, improving your site’s placement in search results. 

Finally, no matter how perfect a firm’s website is on launch, all firms face the challenge of keeping their website current and relevant. CosmoLex addresses this issue with quarterly content update meetings to address site changes. 

Convenient Features 

A firm’s website is not only a marketing tool.  It can also help you serve existing clients. Because your website links directly to your CosmoLex LPMS, you can offer client convenience features: 

  1. Contacts: Create a web form that feeds information directly into CosmoLex. 
  2. Consultation: Set up a consultation button on your site so clients or prospects can schedule appointments via integrations with Calendly and Microsoft Bookings. 
  3. Pay Now: Offer clients the ability to pay via credit cards. Payments feed directly into CosmoLex.  You can classify the payment type (e.g., retainer or invoice) and link them to the appropriate client and matter. 
  4. Client Portal: Make available matter information you choose to clients, who can log in and review it when convenient. Sharable information includes invoices, documents, and calendar information. 

A Better Law Firm Website with Less Burden 

CosmoLex Websites alleviates the burden of designing, building, and maintaining a website. Its streamlined integration with a top LPMS vendor keeps vital information handy. Erica said her biggest passion is “to help lawyers run a better business.” As attorneys, you want to practice law and serve clients, not bury yourself in HTML, APIs, or SEO. 

Visit cosmolex.com for a demo and free trial to see how a CosmoLex-based website helps your firm reach prospects, boost profitability, and focus on being a competitive player in the legal field. 

Thoughtful Attorney Marketing with Omnizant 

The phrase “digital marketing” encompasses many things and has changed over the last decade. 

Digital Marketing for Attorneys Evolves 

Marketing for legal services has a short history compared to other products and services. Before the 1970s, rules prohibited attorney advertising. And once permitted, many people saw things like TV ads and billboards as crass, even desperate. But public opinion changes, as do the methods for attracting its attention. While an ever-diminishing number of attorneys buy ads in the Yellow Pages, digital marketing spending grows by leaps and bounds. Every new or growing law firm needs a website to attract and inform potential clients. 

Fred Cohen, Founder and CEO of Omnizant, recalls that, a decade ago, when attorneys thought of their website, they imagined an online business card. More recently, they noticed that their firm website could be a powerful tool for client generation. But, in some ways, firms have now over-corrected, seeing all marketing as digital and neglecting traditional tools. 

Omnizant’s approach balances the traditional and digital functions of a marketing agency. Omnizant helps with positioning, messaging, and differentiation—traditional marketing functions, while blending in powerful digital capabilities for maximum visibility. As Fred puts it, “[Attorneys] have gotten past the idea that lawyers shouldn’t market or have an active web presence seeking clients.” 

Goals of a Law Firm Website 

When working with a firm on its website, Fred and his team aim to build a site that answers three foundational questions: 

  1. What unique value proposition and experience does the firm offer prospective clients? 
  1. How does the firm view its relationship with the client? 
  1. What is the firm’s approach to a matter? 

In answering each of these questions, the firm, with Omnizant’s help, tells a compelling story. The goal is to create a website that serves as a learning experience. Potential clients can then determine whether the firm is a good fit. 

In addition to a robust and purposeful website, Omnizant works with the firm to determine its target client and how to identify those prospects. As Fred says, a marketing agency should help drive relevant traffic to your website, not sheer numbers. Success is more than a high search engine optimization (SEO) rank. Law firms need a holistic approach to get your message in front of the right people to let them know you can help them. 

People shopping for legal services today are sophisticated consumers and know they have many options. When they select an attorney, it’s both an overt assessment (e.g., does the firm meet my stated needs) and subliminal, a practical and emotional decision. Communicate a cohesive branding message with words, imagery, and color to reach both sides. 

Automation is coming for marketing. This alarms some, given the rudimentary state of firms’ marketing efforts. While artificial intelligence (AI) grabs the headlines, many firms don’t have sound marketing fundamentals. Too few firms use customer relations management (CRM) software, pipeline tracking, or lead attribution software. These long-standing technologies are nascent, even in mid-sized firms. 

Once your firm has the basics in place, Fred says, then it’s time to think about marketing automation. The purpose of automated marketing efforts, such as “drip” campaigns specialized for a persona or client profile, is to keep the law firm “top of mind.”  

It’s hard enough to be a good lawyer without worrying about the minutia of what good marketing entails. Omnizant is a great partner for growth-minded firms, which it defines not as simply “more clients,” but rather “better clients” or “specific clients.” Their approach harkens back to tailoring the firm’s website and overall branding to attract clients that match its value proposition. 

Where to Start 

Holistic firm marketing may seem overwhelming, but Fred offered advice to get started even before you engage Omnizant or another agency. 

  1. Know what you are good at and passionate about. 
  1. Figure out what information you have available to share with prospects. 
  1. Don’t become obsessed with search engine ranking scores. Ranking improvements come with high-quality content. Long-form content, in the range of 4,000 to 6,000 words, generates more traffic. This is especially true with the advent of AI, which can flood search engines with short content. 
  1. Although long-form writing is advantageous, one should give finite responses to finite questions where possible. Be concise where appropriate. 
  1. Attribute website content to a specific author whenever possible. Search engines value authorship, proof that a human wrote the piece because it adds credibility and defends against a flood of AI-written dreck. Bylines add to the “authority of authorship” and improve the firm’s visibility in search results. 

Learn more from Zack’s chat with Fred by watching our video and visiting Omnizant’s website to grab their guide on search engine optimization for lawyers, or go ahead and get an SEO Audit.