ProLaw Ready - Jun/Jul '03

ProLaw Ready

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I reviewed ProLaw a few years ago. While the original product was powerful, stable and comprehensive, the price tag made it unattainable for many smaller firms. ProLaw Ready seems to be Thomson’s response to the practice management needs of small firms — a product that closely mirrors the capabilities of the parent product with a price tag that will not consume the annual software budget.

The smaller version of ProLaw is anything but scaled down. It has all the same “front and back office” features of the big version of the product, and the user-interface between the two packages is identical. That said, what exactly does ProLaw Ready do for you? It’s indeed a monumental office manager, capable of managing your cases, timelines, contacts, communications, documents, billing and collections.

The most significant difference between ProLaw Ready and ProLaw Enterprise is the support that is included with the package. Recognizing small firms can’t make the time or financial commitment required for the implementation and training necessary for an installation of ProLaw Enterprise, Thomson instead introduced its VPLU — the Virtual ProLaw University. The university consists of Web-based live class sessions, together with past lessons already stored online, covering virtually every area of ProLaw. In theory, this eliminates the disruption caused by the in- and out-of-office training required for the Enterprise version.

However, the reality is, implementation of ProLaw Ready into your office environment will require a time and energy commitment from all users and timekeepers.

ProLaw Ready’s roots as a relational database are evident in that much of the program’s front-end skills help focus on queries of the information in the database. That works just fine, because there is a lot of information stored in there, including dates, events, files, documents, contacts and related matters. The query and find functions make the data available to you.

Again, there is a learning curve in understanding how to find the information, but once the users become familiar with the product, I can’t imagine wanting to come back from having all that information at your fingertips. Of course, you can set security levels throughout the program so not all information is available to all users.

There are a number of built-in features that make ProLaw Ready more attractive. For example, there is integration with Westlaw, with client IDs assigned at sign on. There is also LegaLex Court Rules, integrating court rules right into your calendar. The program includes WestWorks, dynamic practice libraries that provide practice-specific custom tabs for matters, contacts and more.

The usual bells and whistles any good practice manager has are here too — telephony and e-mail integration, including Novell GroupWise and Microsoft Outlook. Within Microsoft Word, you can back into a ProLaw matter as part of the Save feature. You can transfer events and matters between professionals.

One of my favorite features to examine in a practice manager is the ability to customize it to the needs of your practice. This is an area where ProLaw Ready shines. With the ability to create custom fields and custom tabs at every level of the program — events, contacts, matters — you can make this product work as an information central for your office, putting the information in front of you in a significant manner.

The back-office features of ProLaw again confirm its foundation as an original back-office product. This program can produce many reports for you to analyze the productivity of your firm.

The query function is useful for getting the information in hand. I was thrilled to see you actually can view the bill on your screen before it prints, and that it’s easy to edit text within a bill before it’s finalized

All in all, this is a strong product, and its competitors should expect it to impact their markets. Although Thomson has made this product significantly more affordable than the Enterprise version, it’s still not an inexpensive product and involves real commitment from the purchaser.

ProLaw Software
(800) 977-6529

www.prolaw.com

Price: $99 per month for single user; $129 per month for two users. Contact company for other pricing options.

Windows 98/Me/NT/2000/XP

Reviewed by Denise P. Ward, Esq., Grean & Ward, Port Chester, N.Y.

Jun/Jul '03 Issue

PROS
Comprehensive case management system.

CONS
It’s expensive.

VERDICT
If you can afford it, I recommend it.