hundreds of articles by subject Featured: Writing Paralegal Resumes New: How To Discover Business Assets New: Criminal Motion Practice (with forms) New: Trends in paralegal training & programs. New: Getting Started as a Paralegal The Listserv is a free, e-mail discussion group. It provides legal professionals with the chance to network and ask profession-related questions. Featured topic: Billable Hours This long-running column examines ethics in the paralegal profession. Do you have an ethical dilemma or question? E-mail us today. Recently Posted: Avoiding Technology Traps
|
Review PCLaw 8 September/October 2007 Table of Contents
Large firms and corporations with hundreds of lawyers and big budgets
might not have trouble finding a single software program for complete
practice management with integrated time, billing and legal accounting.
However, for small firms and solo practitioners, finding such a program
can be challenging. Besides the obvious budgetary concerns, many small
practices can’t afford the extended loss of production caused by
installing and learning a new software program, not to mention the time
involved with entering current and historical data. Fortunately for
today’s small firm, practice management software with full front office
and back-office legal accounting capabilities need not break the budget,
and has the potential to maximize profits when properly used. One
example is LexisNexis’ PCLaw 8, designed for firms that have one to nine
timekeepers. As a freelance
paralegal, my experience with working for solo practitioners has been
that they often use several discrete programs to accomplish front office
(practice management) and back-office (timekeeping, billing and
accounting) functions. In fact, the front office tasks are often managed
by nothing more than Microsoft Outlook for e-mail, calendaring and
contacts, and Microsoft Windows Explorer for document management, while
Intuit QuickBooks Pro often handles back-office accounting and billing
tasks. This can result in a monumental waste of valuable time and
resources lost to data reentry, error and continuity problems from
worker to worker (i.e., your method might
not be my method). Purchased by
LexisNexis in 2005, the award-winning PCLaw now integrates with other
LexisNexis products such as lexis.com (research), Total Practice
Advantage (integrated legal software solutions), HotDocs (form document
preparation) and Shepard’s Citations (for cite-checking cases), as well
as core third-party programs such as Microsoft Outlook, Word and Excel,
and Corel WordPerfect. Combined with the power of back-office accounting
designed especially for lawyers, PCLaw streamlines the most important
tasks legal professionals routinely perform. PCLaw’s front office
capabilities include conflict searches, management of calendars,
contacts and tasks, as well as document, e-mail and phone call
management. PCLaw’s clean and uncomplicated interface is not only
refreshing but also functional and inviting, unlike other software
programs that can overwhelm users with a multitude of options that
obscure the common and simple features. Simple timesaving steps, such as
the ability to enter dates in the date field in abbreviated form (e.g.,
“90106” for the date Sept. 1, 2006), make data entry less burdensome and
promote efficiency. One of the most
impressive and welcome features of PCLaw is the ability to
contemporaneously track time spent on work-related activities. The
design and implementation of this feature sets it apart from other
time-tracking software that I have used. PCLaw installs a toolbar
featuring a timer that can be integrated with Word, Outlook and Internet
Explorer. The toolbar is unobtrusive, small and straightforward, with
start, pause, stop and cancel buttons, and handily displays elapsed
time. While some programs offer almost all possible options, a dialog
box appears that has all of the options you could possibly want — post
entry, delay post entry, review entry — upon stopping the timer or
exiting an integrated program. Additionally, the “Time Sheet” button on
the toolbar provides access to quick and direct entry of time without
using the timer. You can quickly view daily hours worked (allocated as
billable, nonbillable or adjusted in a number of different ways), by
simply opening the monthly calendar for a particular timekeeper. The timer feature
worked flawlessly with Outlook and Internet Explorer, although I was
disappointed when I encountered problems using it in Word and
WordPerfect. When I enabled the PCLaw toolbar in Word, my system would
freeze when I tried to exit, and I had to then
invoke the task manager to exit Word. On the other hand, in
WordPerfect the PCLaw toolbar was blank. Once I got through to customer
support (free for 60 days with purchase of a license), they were
responsive and patient in addressing this issue. It turns out that
LexisNexis is presently working on a resolution to be included in the
next point release. Because, in my view, PCLaw’s time-tracking tool is
exceptionally well designed and valuable to paralegals and lawyers, and
because of my confidence in LexisNexis to resolve this glitch soon (if
it has not already done so), my disappointment is tempered by
excitement. Having these handy timekeeping toolbars alone could increase
profitability by capturing work-related activities in real time, while
encouraging efficiency, time savings and stress relief. PCLaw’s robust back
office capabilities provide many accounting tools specific to law firms,
including trust account management, retainer handling, productivity
reporting, a contingent fee calculator and settlement statement
generation. Standard accounting functions include billing, accounts
payable, general ledger, check writing, bank reconciliation, expense
recapture and generation of financial statements. PCLaw supports
standardized electronic billing in more than 30 formats and has a tool
for converting billing statements into PDF format. Users of LexisNexis
Total Practice Advantage (see Reviews, November/December 2006 LAT) have the added benefit of
bidirectional, real-time synchronization of billing and client contact
information between the two programs. Included with PCLaw 8 is the PCLaw Express module, which allows portable computer users to connect to the office and synchronize work done off-line. Also included in version 8 is the PCLaw Satellite module for exporting data to disk, a network location or e-mail, which then can be imported back into the main PCLaw database. In sum, even though I experienced problems with the timer, my favorite feature, I like PCLaw 8 more than most other, more expensive practice management software products. For small law firms and solo practitioners, PCLaw allows employees to integrate both front and back-office functions to meet objectives without having to spend an arm and a leg.
|
© Legal Assistant Today Magazine |