Practice Manager - Jun/Jul '04

Practice Manager

Perhaps the greatest challenge in setting up a computerized law office is selecting the right case management program. With so many programs available, it’s hard to know which offers the most features for the best price. This question drives many firms into inaction. Once an office decides on a program, the die is cast. No attorney wants to enter hundreds, perhaps thousands, of events and matters only to start over again a few months later when the program falls short of expectations. Yet case management programs can be so complex that reviewing one for a few minutes probably will not yield enough information to make selecting a program easy or efficient. To make matters worse, case management software often is split into many pieces — document assembly, case management, calendaring, rules, and time and billing programs. Trying every program could be a full-time task.

However, RealLegal’s Practice Manager takes on that challenge by coordinating all these programs in one application. It’s a daunting task. Not only do all these components have to work together, but the program also has to be easy to use and powerful enough to fulfill the tasks of calendaring, billing and document assembly for any law office. In my opinion, Practice Manager does it as well as I could expect any program to do, even though working with it can be initially overwhelming.

Practice Manager’s first screen, while skimpy on flashy graphics, is a highly practical overview of the product’s features. Included are toolbar links to documents, matters and entities, and ways to turn on filters or queries. It also shows who is logged in and has a drop-down box on the right side of the screen, allowing you to select a time frame to review. Preview panes in the default view include a glance at upcoming tasks, calendared dates as well as practice analysis. It’s the Practice analysis that sets this program above standard case management and time and billing applications. When cases are being analyzed, you can see whether the case is meeting budgetary requirements. While this might be somewhat auspicious to some attorneys, most will appreciate being able to see where they stand on a particular case without having to open a separate billing program.

Entity entry is simple and standard for anyone familiar with any sort of contact manager or address book.

Matter entry also was easy to accomplish, with detailed fields covering just about any potential case type and matter. It also is customizable. Convenient link tabs at the top can direct you to set up a timeslip, attach a document or apply a filter. Again, there is nothing that will blow you away graphically, but functionally, it’s as simple as it is powerful.

Two functions really set this program apart. One is the workflow monitor, which keeps track of what has been done on the case. By going to “Tree View” and opening the workflow monitor, I could look at existing case status, what had been done in the case, how much time was spent on each item and what has yet to be done. The other function I really appreciated was a straightforward timeslip generating system, which seemed easy enough for me to use (which is good because I am terrible at setting up my own billing). Because it’s integrated with the rest of the features, billing becomes highly simplified. The program works with a variety of billing programs, such as Juris, Intuit’s QuickBooks 2003, Peachtree and a number of versions of Software Technology Inc.’s Tabs3.

Practice Manager is a strong and effective package. The only real drawbacks are that graphically, it’s pretty generic and demonstrations are difficult given its complexity. If a firm is considering a new case management system, Practice Manager is a program I recommend checking out.

RealLegal
(888) 584-9988

www.reallegal.com

Price: Licensing starts at $495 per user.

Windows 2000/XP

Reviewed by Russell Jackman, an attorney specializing in legal technology consulting with Community Legal Automation Systems and Software Consulting. You can reach him at classconsultants
@aol.com.

Jun/Jul '04 Issue

PROS
Cost effective when compared to the price of each program it replaces.

CONS
Steep learning curve to use all features, price could be high for solo practitioners, needs a lot of space and power.

VERDICT
The program is better at integrating case management and billing than many of its competitors and is well worth considering.