Law Office Technology

Minimum Fee in PCLaw

A client asked, "When I charge a client a minimum fee earned,
sometimes I complete the file and my time charged does not completely use up the fee; i.e., they may have $127.34 left as credit balance.  Rather than increasing my billed time, (sometimes I can't since already printed final bill to keep the client informed of their account status) is there a way to tell PCLaw to just accept that remaining credit balance as income?  What I've been doing is making a fee entry for whatever the balance is that basically says, "balance of minimum fee" but thought there may be a better way."

There is a better way.  To advise the client of the account status, I would either create a prebill, go to the matter manager and look at the summary, or run a WIP Report (Reports --> Client --> Work in Progress). 

To setup the Minimum Fee, go to the matter manager and then the billing tab.  Change the Quoted Type to Fees and put in your minimum fee amount.  Now when you bill, it will adjust your bill to that amount.

Here, PCLaw added a $50.00 fee to get the bill to $200.00

Duplicate Entries in Trust Account

I recently got this question: 

We accidentally made a duplicate deposit in our trust account and then the file was billed.  We need to delete one of these deposits, however, when we attempt to do this, it will not let us because it says it has been billed.  When we try to undo the bill it will not let us because there has been allocations.  Can you tell me how to correct this problem?

If you make deposits into the trust account in PCLaw and then create a bill, it will not let you remove the trust deposits prior to billing.  You will have to first Undo Bill, and then you can remove the duplicate entry.

In this case the client automatically transfers the trust balance during billing.  Therefore, they need to Remove the Payment, then Undo Bill, and then Remove the Duplicate Entry.  In the Matter Manager, under Ledger, I can see all the Payments that have been made on a particular matter.

What I need to do is remove the Trust Disb (Under Type). Then I can Undo Bill,and then remove the duplicate trust entry.

Louisiana State Bar and Technolawyer Correction

The free access to the Technolawyer Archives should appear on the LSBA's Web site next week.  I have made the correction in the previous entry.  It also looks like I have trouble spelling the word, purchasing.  I guess I broke my rule about not writing anything the day after an LSU game.  I tend to get incoherent.

Billing per hour and document generation

I have always been convinced that if firms start using document generation software, they will become more efficient and it will take less time for them to create documents.  Since they can not make as much money by the billable hour, they should start moving to a flat fee model.  They should start making more money because they are producing so many documents.  Here is an article that discusses this ideal:  http://ijlit.oxfordjournals.org/cgi/content/abstract/eal019v1

Another great reason to look at PCLaw

I have a hard time understanding why TimeSlips is still in use.  It only does billing, and for virtually the same price you can get billing and accounting with PCLaw.  Anyways, here is another good reason:

http://websandwings.blogs.com/webworld/2005/05/bye_bye_timesli.html

Louisiana State Bar and Technolawyer

I just wanted to remind everyone that the Louisiana State Bar Association gives free memberships to the Technolawyer Archives.  This is a great resource for anyone thinking about purchasing Legal Software.

A link to the sign up page should appear next week on the LSBA's Web site.

SQL is Where it's At

Most good legal software programs are moving to SQL databases and this is a great step for the Legal Profession.  SQL databases make it very easy to link to other programs, are efficient enough to use over a VPN connection, and have virtually unlimited database capabilities.  SQL (Structured English Query Language)  Server was first released by Microsoft in 1993 and its latest version, SQL 2005, launched in Nov 2005.

SQL is a commonly used database and most programs are built with the ability to link to it.  A good example is HotDocs, a document generation program.  Some legal programs have a link to HotDocs, which sometimes I can find quite limiting.  If the program has a SQL Database I can use the HotDocs database to connect and link directly to the SQL database bi-passing the programs built in link.  This has two advantages for the user.  The first is that the direct link to the HotDocs database is usually way more robust than the program's link. And second, if the client has a program with no built in HotDocs link, you can just use the SQL Database Connect.

Lawyers (and just about anyone else) would love to work from home.  Back in 2002 I tried disastrously to run Amicus Attorney V and PCLaw 5 over a VPN connection that I had set up at a partner's home.  I wasted an entire day and it never came close to working.  Those versions of Amicus Attorney and PCLaw used a Ctree database and I have come to discover that it is pretty impossible to run a Ctree database over a VPN, regardless of the program.  Flash forward to 2006.  TimeMatters and PCLaw have Ctree and SQL versions, and Amicus has gone totally SQL.  From my home, I can VPN to my office's server and run Amicus Attorney, TimeMatters Enterprise, and PCLaw Enterprise like I was actually at my office.  Since I only make it in to the office about once a week, this is very effective for me.  If you have multiple offices, then they can all be connected together (SQL Replication) and you can work from home like you were in the office. 

Microsoft's newest version of SQL Server does have "some limitations".  Its maximum database size is 1,000,000 terabytes.  Now I don't have any clients with databases over 10 gigabytes and I would be surprised if there are a large number of firms with databases over 1 terabyte of data, but the ability is there and in the future more and more firms will move to the terabyte size.  The United States Library of Congress has around 20 terabytes of text.  In my experience, Ctree and other databases begin to crap out once you start getting into the 2 gigabyte range.  If you use a SQL database, you won't have to worry about space limitations for a long, long time.

If you are looking to purchase Legal Software, I would only buy programs that have a SQL database or have the ability to upgrade to one.  Unlimited linking, portability, and size are just to hard to pass up.

Amicus 7 and the Quickbooks Link

I tried the link with Quickbooks 2004 and there were a lot of issues with the link.  When we upgraded to Quickbooks 2006 all these issues went away.  I am going to recommend if anyone wants to use this link to have the newest version of Quickbooks.