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Tabs3 Brings Hard-to-Find Legal Management Features to the Cloud 

Small to mid-sized firms often struggle with outdated, inefficient, and ineffective systems that fail to meet their needs. Many firms find their current law practice management software (LPMS) lacking in depth of functionality, particularly in case management and financial reporting. These pains can lead to frustration, lower productivity, and potentially, dissatisfied clients. 

Robust Software in the Cloud 

Enter Tabs3 Cloud, a comprehensive browser-based LPMS that addresses these issues head-on. Tabs3 Cloud offers the freedom and flexibility to manage your legal practice from anywhere, anytime. With its robust feature set, advanced functionality, and seamless integration, Tabs3 Cloud is the perfect solution for firms looking to enhance their digital presence and improve client satisfaction. 

Easy to Use, Wherever You Are 

One of the standout features of Tabs3 Cloud is its ease of use. The intuitive interface and user-friendly design make it simple for attorneys and staff to navigate and effectively use the software. What does ease of use mean? Efficient and productive people spending time serving clients rather than battling software limitations. 

Client satisfaction is at the heart of Tabs3 Cloud’s mission. Nine out of ten clients recommend Tabs3, and the company continually receives more than a 98% satisfaction rating for its support. This high level of client satisfaction testifies to the software’s reliability, functionality, and the exceptional customer service provided by the Tabs3 team. 

The Features You Need and Your Practice Demands 

Tabs3 Cloud is comprised of Tabs3 Billing, Financials, and PracticeMaster in a seamlessly integrated practice management solution. It features a full general ledger product and add-ons including Tabs3 CRM for managing leads and Tabs3Pay for credit card and ACH processing. Tabs3’s comprehensive nature ensures that one suite of tools from one vendor covers every aspect of your practice, from time tracking and billing to meticulous accounting features. 

PracticeMaster 

The integration of PracticeMaster along with Tabs3 Billing and Financials is particularly noteworthy. PracticeMaster enhances the software’s case management capabilities, providing firms with the tools they need to manage case details effectively, critical things like matter facts, client intake, conflict checking, document management, and more. This integration allows for seamless communication and collaboration between departments, ensuring that everyone is on the same page. 

Tabs3 CRM

Law firms are quickly learning the value of thorough referral and lead tracking with customer relationship management (CRM) software. Tabs3 Cloud rounds out its suite of tools with this optional add-on to PracticeMaster to help your firm stay organized with tools and customizable templates. 

Tabs3Pay 

Every study on the topic shows that firms who accept credit card payments are far more likely to get paid (1) at all, (2) promptly, and (3) in full. Tabs3Pay offers small firms a streamlined payment process that accelerates payment receipt and minimizes manual errors. Electronic payments via Tabs3Pay reduce time spent on past-due collections and write-offs, while ensuring PCI compliance and security. 

A Partner You Trust with the Modern Features You Need 

Tabs3 Cloud is designed with small to mid-sized firms in mind. The software’s advanced functionality and reporting capabilities make it an ideal choice for firms looking to upgrade their systems and improve their LPMS. Whether you’re dealing with complex financial reporting or need a more efficient way to track case details, Tabs3 Cloud has you covered. 

Get Started with a Demo Today 

Tabs3 Cloud is the ultimate solution for small to mid-sized firms seeking feature-rich software with advanced functionality and reporting capabilities. By addressing the pain points of inefficient and ineffective systems, Tabs3 Cloud empowers firms with a robust, cloud-based solution. And it shows. Tabs3 Cloud is the same product as on-premises Tabs3 Software. It is recommended by 9 out of 10 clients, and has a 98% satisfaction rating for support. Anywhere access to excellent time tracking, billing, accounting, and practice management features could boost your firm too. Visit Tabs3 Cloud’s website to learn more and schedule a demo today. 

Spotlight Marketing & Branding Offers a Solution For Law Firms at Every Stage of Growth

Lawyers and law firms have trusted Spotlight Marketing & Branding for over a decade. As the firms’ trusted partner, Spotlight provides a range of services, including websites, blogs, social media, newsletters, podcasts, and videos. Spotlight’s expertise in content marketing helps law firms stay connected with clients, attracting referrals and increasing the number of high-quality prospective clients.

Recently, Spotlight added lead generation services – including Facebook Ads, LinkedIn ads, drip campaigns, and more. With this expansion, Spotlight provides a complete marketing solution for law firms at any stage of growth.

Comprehensive Lead Generation Services

Successful lead generation combines four key ingredients. First, know who you are trying to reach (i.e., who is your ideal client). Second, know where to reach these people (e.g., for digital, which platforms do our ideal clients use). Third, what message do you want to send (i.e., what would our target audience respond to). Fourth, when and how often do you reach out (e.g., with a single message or multiple messages, and with what timing).

Spotlight’s lead generation service targets would-be clients with paid social media advertising, focused on the law firm’s ideal client. They provide lead generation services on all major platforms, including Facebook Ads, Google Ads, and LinkedIn Ads. Spotlight also creates custom-built landing pages and drip campaigns.

These services are designed to generate warm, qualified leads on a predictable and reliable basis. Spotlight understands and emphasizes the importance of recurring touchpoints, relevant content, content multiplication, and evergreen consistency to ensure long-term success in lead generation.

Better Clients – Not Just More Clients

Their goal is to attract the type of clients that law firms actually want to work with. This means attracting clients with the right needs and expectations. And it means attracting clients who will pay their bills on time, treat the team with respect, and won’t haggle over rates. Where most marketing agencies are focused just on attracting a higher quantity of clients, Spotlight Marketing & Branding is focused on attracting quality clients. 

Custom-Built Landing Pages

Custom-built landing pages play a key role in Spotlight’s lead generation services. These pages are designed to drive conversions (i.e., turning a visitor into a client or potential client) by providing a seamless and engaging user experience. With optimized design and compelling content, these landing pages capture prospects’ attention and encourage them to act.

Drip Campaigns for Lead Nurturing

Spotlight understands that not all leads are ready to convert immediately. To address this, they offer drip campaigns that nurture leads over time. These automated campaigns deliver relevant and valuable information to potential clients, keeping your law firm top of mind and building trust. By nurturing leads, you increase the likelihood of conversion when they are ready to decide.

Proven Results and ROI

Spotlight has built a track record of delivering measurable results for clients. Spotlight designed its lead generation services to provide a strong return on investment (ROI) by generating high-quality leads that are more likely to become clients. By investing in their services, you can expect an increase in referrals and higher-quality clients.

A Solution for Law Firms at Every Stage of Growth

Spotlight Marketing & Branding serves as a complete digital marketing solution for law firms at any stage of growth. Combining content marketing with paid ad strategies, they help firms strengthen their brand, increase referrals, and attract new clients. Spotlight remains committed to cutting-edge legal marketing strategies that drive measurable results.

With their expertise in legal marketing, comprehensive strategies, custom-built landing pages, drip campaigns, proven results, and partnership with industry experts, they provide a valuable service that can help your law firm grow and succeed in today’s competitive market. Schedule a discovery call to learn more about how Spotlight can help your law firm enhance its digital presence and improve customer engagement.

Beyond black boxes: data security with AI-powered redaction

Ever found yourself spending hours drawing black boxes over sensitive information in legal documents, only to discover later that the data wasn’t actually removed? Or perhaps you’ve experienced that sinking feeling when realizing a redacted court filing still contained sensitive client information in the file metadata? You’re not alone.

With the explosion of digital court filings and public access to legal documents, the stakes for proper redaction have never been higher. Jurisdictional redaction requirements continue to tighten, yet the tools most law firms rely on remain frustratingly inadequate. Every practice area faces these challenges daily—whether handling pleadings, medical records, client data, or financial information.

Sure, some practice management software might include basic redaction functionality. But let’s be honest: manually processing each document is a time-consuming band-aid for a problem that demands a more sophisticated solution. The risks of improper redaction aren’t just theoretical—they’re resulting in sanctions, malpractice claims, and damaged client relationships across the legal industry.

This is where Redactable enters the picture. As a leading web-based automated redaction platform, Redactable is transforming how law firms handle sensitive information in their documents.

What is Redactable?

Redactable is an AI-powered document redaction platform that makes permanently removing sensitive information from documents truly effortless. While traditional redaction methods rely on expensive desktop software and error-prone manual processes, Redactable takes a fundamentally different approach. The platform leverages advanced AI technology to automatically identify and permanently remove confidential data—not just hide it behind black boxes that can be recovered later.

Law firms using Redactable are experiencing up to 98% time savings while gaining the confidence that redacted information is genuinely gone for good. No metadata leaks. No recoverable information. Just properly secured documents ready for filing or sharing.

Key features

  • AI-powered automated workflows: Redactable streamlines document security through intelligent automation. The system can fully scan your document, instantly identifying sensitive information from client details to financial data for quick review and approval. Alternatively, you can select specific categories like SSNs or addresses and let the AI locate all matching instances throughout. These automated approaches eliminate tedious manual searching while making thorough redaction accessible to everyone on your team. The system activates automatically when documents are opened, transforming a once-laborious process into a straightforward task.
  • Permanent redaction & metadata removal: Unlike traditional redaction methods that simply place black boxes over text but leave the underlying data intact, Redactable ensures complete and permanent removal of sensitive information. The software also automatically strips all hidden sensitive data, and metadata from documents—eliminating a common security vulnerability where confidential information is covered by objects, or remains embedded in properties, comments, and revision history that standard redaction tools often miss.
  • Collaboration tools: Redactable transforms document redaction from isolated work to streamlined teamwork through its cloud-based platform. No more email chains with multiple file versions—team members access the same document simultaneously from any browser, with defined reviewer and editor roles. The platform includes in-document comments, version history tracking, and the ability to document redaction reasons. This coordinated approach eliminates file handoffs and significantly speeds up complex redaction projects that previously required multiple review rounds.

The Redaction Wizard: a closer look

At the heart of Redactable lies the intuitive Redaction Wizard—a feature that transforms the traditionally complex redaction process into a straightforward, guided experience. The Wizard automatically appears whenever you open a document, offering four powerful modes to match your specific needs:

Auto: The most popular option uses advanced natural language processing to instantly analyze your document and identify potentially sensitive information. The Wizard intelligently highlights client names, financial details, medical information, and other confidential data for your review. You simply select which items to redact from the suggested list—perfect for quickly processing unfamiliar documents.

Categories: This frequently-used approach lets you select specific types of sensitive information to find throughout your document. With a few clicks, you can locate and redact all instances of emails, phone numbers, SSNs, addresses, credit card numbers, and more—ideal for documents where you know exactly what types of information need protection.

Manual: For situations requiring precision, manual mode lets you highlight specific text for redaction. This gives you complete control over exactly what gets redacted, especially useful for unique or context-specific information that automated systems might not recognize.

Search: When you need to find and redact specific terms throughout a document, the search function lets you enter exact words or phrases and redact all matching instances in one operation.

After selecting your preferred method, the Wizard guides you through reviewing the identified information, confirming your choices, and permanently removing the selected content.

Why choose Redactable?

Redactable offers several advantages over traditional redaction methods and software:

  • Time savings: Redactable’s automated workflows can slash redaction time by up to 98% compared to manual methods. Your firm can thus handle larger volumes of documents quickly and efficiently.
  • Accuracy: Redactable’s AI-powered detection identifies sensitive information with superhuman accuracy, reducing the risk of accidental exposure.
  • Security: Redactable ensures that information is permanently removed and cannot be recovered, providing peace of mind for users handling sensitive data.
  • Ease of use: Redactable’s intuitive interface and Redaction Wizard make this vital function accessible to users of all skill levels, ensuring that everyone can perform redactions accurately and efficiently.

Try it today

Redactable offers the professional-grade security that modern document handling demands, with capabilities beyond traditional PDF tools. Rather than just masking sensitive content, it fully removes confidential information—including the hidden metadata and non-visible elements that often get overlooked.

For organizations navigating today’s privacy requirements, proper redaction has become a necessity, not a luxury. See how a purpose-built solution streamlines this critical workflow while providing greater protection. Try it for free today and discover a more efficient approach to document security.

Everything in One Place with CosmoLex’s New Document Generation and Management

Firms must invest in a law practice management system (LPMS) with robust document creation and management tools to move from their current chaos to a future of fluid workflows. 

CosmoLex Knows Documents are a Lawyer’s Lifeblood 

Nearly everything we do as lawyers and legal professionals gets memorialized in a document. An estate plan results in powers of attorney, wills, healthcare directives, and perhaps trusts. Family law could produce many documents related to separation or custody. Mediators memorialize their resolutions in settlement agreements. Business attorneys draft everything from routine corporate filings to merger agreements to new entity formation paperwork. And those are just a few examples! 

CosmoLex provides powerful features, built into its industry-leading LPMS, to help lawyers store, create, and modify documents, from wherever they work. Find client documents quickly with intuitive folder structures. With mobile cloud-based access, retrieve and work on files from anywhere, using iPhone or Android devices, providing 24/7 accessibility. 

Streamlined Storage that Works Your Way 

CosmoLex offers firms two documents storage approaches. 

Built-in Storage 

CosmoLex gives each firm unlimited storage as part of its subscription. You access this native storage easily from a matter’s dashboard, by clicking on the Documents tab, or via the lefthand navigation panel by clicking on Documents. Users can add documents to CosmoLex or download them to their computers via the web browser, including drag-and-drop functionality. While storage is unlimited, individual files are limited to 100MB per file. 

Integration Partner Storage 

CosmoLex supports connections to several document storage solutions from third party companies, including Box, Dropbox, Google, LexShare, Microsoft, and NetDocuments. Benefits of this approach include: 

  • desktop file access (usually) instead of browser-based uploading and downloading; and 
  • a higher file size limit (typically well above 100MB), making it a better solution for videos or other large files. 

Limitations of this approach include: 

  • the cost of external storage; and 
  • the need to manage document sharing and permissions separately from CosmoLex. 

Regardless of which option your firm prefers, CosmoLex gives you a first-rate document management experience in-app. 

Speedily Create Documents from Your Templates 

CosmoLex works to speed up document creation by streamlining your document assembly workflows. Create original templates, such as letterhead, cover letters, as well as full documents, both simple and complex. Design each document once in Microsoft Word. Then download the matter’s merged fields from your database, add the relevant feels to your document template and upload it to CosmoLex. Creating a matter- or contact-specific document becomes a simple point-and-click affair with CosmoLex templates. 

Securely Share and Send Documents for eSignature 

Robust security measures, including matter-level permissions and privilege settings, ensure that only authorized team members access sensitive case files. 

Quickly and simply share documents via the CosmoLex client portal, irrespective of your storage choice, by clicking on the three dots to the right of a document’s name. 

Relax, knowing that privacy and security are core to CosmoLex. Clients can only access documents that belong to them, and they don’t have editing permissions. If necessary, you can revoke access to a single item, a group of items, or even the entire portal. 

In addition to smoothing document exchange, CosmoLex eases document execution. Effortlessly share documents and collect electronic signatures using LexShare and LexSign, fully integrated with Outlook for smooth client interactions. 

Get Started Speedily Serving Clients Today 

Take advantage of the speed, convenience, and efficiency that CosmoLex brings to your document creation, review, and storage. From storage options to quick-use templates, document sharing, and more, CosmoLex helps your firm manage documents effortlessly, to say nothing of its many other excellent LPMS features. Visit the CosmoLex website to learn more and schedule a demo today. 

Tabs3 Cloud Integrates PracticeMaster with Billing and Accounting

As an established, successful, and well-regarded desktop-server product, Tabs3 understands that legal professionals are more mobile than ever and need convenient “everywhere access” to their matter information. For this growing audience, they created Tabs3 Cloud, a complete cloud billing, accounting, and practice management solution. And, understandably, the heart of their message speaks to the betterment of existing strengths: “100% Tabs3 Software in the cloud.”

A Complete Solution in the Cloud

With Tabs3 Cloud, you can access your firm’s Tabs3 data from any internet connection, on any device, at any time. You enjoy Tabs3’s full functionality without worrying about VPN connections, servers, do-it-yourself backups, or finding a vendor to host and maintain it for you. Tabs3 Cloud takes care of it all. Enjoy the freedom to securely work from home, the office, or elsewhere, with all the tools you’d expect from Tabs3 Billing, Financials, and PracticeMaster.

Tabs3 Billing

This tool sets the standard for legal time and billing software. It’s packed with robust features, including comprehensive reporting and email statements.

Tabs3 Financials

This module handles your firm’s accounting needs, such as trust accounting, accounts payable, and even general ledger. And, of course, it integrates with Tabs3 Billing to eliminate duplicative entry and similar manual work.

PracticeMaster

There’s obviously more to a case or matter than time entries and accounting. That’s where the optional PracticeMaster module comes in. PracticeMaster serves as the firm’s one-stop-shop for matter facts, like client intake, conflict checking, document management, and more.

Tabs3 CRM

Law firms are quickly learning the value of thorough referral and lead tracking with customer relationship management (CRM) software. Tabs3 Cloud rounds out its suite of tools with this optional add-on to PracticeMaster to help your firm stay organized with tools and customizable templates.

A Secure Cloud with your Familiar Applications

Tabs3 Cloud works with any modern web browser, including Chrome, Edge, Firefox, Opera, and Safari. To access the program, users navigate to secure.tabs3.cloud and login. That’s it!

Tabs3 Cloud hosts your data in its own private cloud environment. You don’t have to experiment with unfamiliar applications, migrate years or decades of data to a new tool, or even retrain staff on how to perform their duties. Rather than that upheaval, the folks at Tabs3 Cloud take care of the transfer and setup. You and your staff get the applications you’re accustomed to with the modern benefits of cloud accessibility and maintenance by professionals who know Tabs3 better than anyone. Experienced engineers handle data backups, software updates, and any other required service.

Screenshot of Tabs3 Cloud, showing the dashboard of a matter

Unparalleled Support for Your Tabs3 Software

Should any questions arise, rest easy with access to knowledgeable, U.S.-based support personnel. Tabs3 Cloud’s help desk boasts a 98% satisfaction rating. And what about training for new hires or refreshers for current staff? Your Tabs3 Cloud support includes technical assistance, training resources, and a dedicated team to address your needs.

Get Started with a Demo Today

Tabs3 is a time-tested, powerful law practice management software, now securely cloud-enabled for modern mobility. Tabs3 Cloud provides a comprehensive, cloud-based solution, enabling anywhere, anytime access to comprehensive time tracking, billing, accounting, and practice management features. Visit Tabs3 Cloud’s website to learn more and schedule a demo today.

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.

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. 

Automate Beyond Algorithms with PatternBuilder MAX

While ChatGPT and other “consumer grade” generative AI tools fail to meet the needs of legal users, AI still plays a powerful time-saving role in law firm workflows. AI represents a tremendous opportunity for legal professionals to scale up their work. 

Scott Kelly, senior manager at NetDocuments, spoke with Zack about PatternBuilder MAX, NetDocuments’ first product in its ndMAX suite of generative AI tools. According to Scott, the purpose of PatternBuilder MAX is to take generative AI and build a “fit to purpose tool for legal.” 

Secure AI for Law Firms 

Hosted on Microsoft’s Azure platform, PatternBuilder MAX respects data privacy and meets compliance requirements like data sovereignty and GDPR. PatternBuilder MAX then builds upon this “standard issue” NetDocuments security with AI-specific protections. 

  • No company uses data entered into PatternBuilder MAX to train an AI model; 
  • Microsoft employees do not monitor and cannot access PatternBuilder MAX data; and 
  • PatternBuilder MAX enforces a zero-day retention policy on any information entered into it. 

For these AI actions, no data enters the public sphere. The team designed PatternBuilder MAX to put the needs of legal professionals first. 

Time-Saving AI for Law Firms 

Having established PatternBuilder MAX’s security bona fides, Scott walked Zack through a real-world scenario where PatternBuilder MAX saves a legal user an impressive amount of time. Even simple use cases bring tremendous value when pairing generative AI with your documents. 

AI summarizes a deposition. 

Scott played the role of a firm associate who called to prepare a deposition summary memo. Traditionally, this task required reading hundreds of pages and manually extracting key data points and facts. The process could take weeks. 

PatternBuilder MAX’s Deposition Summarizer Studio App cuts weeks to minutes. The app replaces hours of slogging with three simple steps: 

  1. Upload the deposition from your computer or select it from within NetDocuments. 
  1. Pick how long you’d like the summary to be from a list of options. 
  1. The Deposition Summarizer app produces a summary for your review. It notes facts like the deponent and deposition date. Most importantly, and more impressively, it summarizes the deponent’s actual statements, complete with citations to the source text (e.g., page 72, lines 1-4). 

Scott demoed one deposition document, but he said you could upload an entire folder of files from your computer or point the app at a folder in NetDocuments. The Deposition Summarizer would do each deposition in the folder. 

PatternBuilder MAX is more than a solution for a fixed set of problems.

The software market, even narrowed to legal software, overflows with vendors proclaiming new AI products and solutions. That’s part of the problem. As Scott stated, so much AI technology in legal is “just a solution.” A company creates it to meet a single identified need or a set of needs, and any customization or enhancement happens at the developer’s whim. 

PatternBuilder MAX provides pre-built apps to address common use cases, but also makes the full set of tools available to firms and departments to customize those apps to meet their specific needs and even create powerful applications of their own, all in a no-code environment.

Scott built the Deposition Summarizer app in 30 minutes. The build process is simple, much of it point-and-click. The “magic” lies in the prompt one gives the AI. Think of the prompt, in Scott’s words, “as like a set of instructions to a smart intern.” 

The tools Scott used to create his app are available to all PatternBuilder MAX customers. PatternBuilder MAX provides templates and templated apps, like the Deposition Summarizer, that you can use and modify out of the box. 

Approachable AI for Law Firms 

One of the key benefits of PatternBuilder MAX is that it enables you to securely and responsibly leverage documents your firm or department already stores in NetDocuments. If you have templates, samples, or model documents, PatternBuilder MAX can use those as guidelines for what a new document it creates should look like. This is critical to driving accuracy and ensuring outputs from AI are valuable.

Scott’s example starts with a new commercial lease agreement and asks PatternBuilder MAX to create a lease summary that follows the firm’s model lease summary. One can state the prompt PatternBuilder MAX relies upon as “do this to that.” Take the summary sample and summarize this new commercial lease, filling in the data requested in the summary with data from the new lease received. 

Much of what you’d like to automate with traditional document automation is fact-intensive, making predetermined logic extremely difficult. But you can predetermine the instructions you would give a smart human: “Here are examples from the past. Here are the new facts.” 

PatternBuilder MAX, the first of NetDocuments’ suite of ndMAX tools, lets you do “this” to “that” in every area of law. 

Getting Started with AI for Law Firms 

Visit www.netdocuments.com to learn more about ndMAX and PatternBuilder MAX – plus see nine studio apps (pre-built apps included with PatternBuilder MAX) by requesting a demo. Some of the world’s largest law firms are utilizing PatternBuilder MAX and seeing incredible results. PatternBuilder MAX is now available globally.