Law Office Technology

Lexis is Combining Client Development and U.S. Practice Management businesses

LexisNexis Combines Units to Service The Business of Law

LexisNexis is bringing its Client Development and U.S. Practice Management businesses together under a single leader, Phil Livingston. As you may know, Phil joined LexisNexis in May as Senior Vice President and head of our Practice Management business. Combining the teams under Phil’s leadership will enable us to better understand and address the business needs of our customers – the “Business of Law”. It will also allow us to create a center of excellence for the development of software within the LexisNexis organization.

“This combination of businesses demonstrates LexisNexis’s commitment to help solve the business challenges of law firms,” said Phil Livingston. “Customers want their problems to be solved in a holistic way and this move better positions us to do this by leveraging our market leading assets in each area. On the Client Development side, our Lawyers.com business is a leader in marketing services, website construction and lead generation for small law. In the Practice Management portfolio, PCLaw™ is the market leader in legal, accounting and billing applications.”

The Practice Management business will continue to serve its customer base and work with the CIC channel, with no changes to its management team. Our vision remains unchanged – to transform the business of law. By taking the headache out of the business of law, LexisNexis helps legal professionals focus practicing law. Customers are at the core of our strategy.  We are focused on gaining a deep understanding of customer needs and workflows and building world class products to address those needs in addition to continually developing products like PCLaw™, the award-winning, number one legal billing and accounting solution in North America, and Time Matters^®, our Client & Matter Management software which has won Legal Technology Awards year after year.
We look forward to continuing to work with you, our valued partners, in serving the needs of our mutual customers.

I do not have a lot of clients using PCLaw to track what aspects of their marketing is most effective, so maybe there will be some improvements in this area.  I will probably learn more as I head to Dallas on Monday for the LexisNexis Practice Management Conference.

PCLaw 10: New Features

New Features

• Schedule automatic backup during non-work or off-peak times
• Track physical closed files and documents in safe custody at your firm
• Gain advanced management tools, including an SQL database*, extended productivity reports and more!

Discover easier ways to manage firm finances with these flexible enhancements:

• Courtesy discount and fee change tools
• Three trust-retainer threshold choices for replenishment reminders
• More flexible time tracking and time entry ranking
• Expanded rate exception capabilities
• Additional billing and usability enhancements

Amicus and PCLaw 10 Link issues

PCLaw 10 is out and the good folks at Gavel and Gown have updated 2 possible issues with the link.  This should be a  moot point for Lawot clients, because we always wait 3 months to after a new version comes out, right?

Issue #21166: Upon initialization of the link, some Billing Rate Values for Amicus Timekeepers mapped to PCLaw Lawyers will not synchronize from Amicus to PCLaw. Note: This issue does not occur for Rate Categories that ship by default with PCLaw.

Issue #21167: Upon initialization of the link, Rate Values for any Amicus Activity Codes and Task-Based Billing Task Codes mapped to PCLaw Task Codes will not synchronize from Amicus to PCLaw. This issue also occurs when adding a new Amicus Billing Rate to PCLaw (as a Rate Category) via the link wizard.

PCLaw 10: Safe Custody Manager

PCLaw 10 New Feature

PCLaw’s physical closed file management system, Safe Custody, allows you to track your physical client items and records such as wills, deeds, bonds, and closed files easily.   

 

Store and maintain details regarding any property you hold on behalf of your client. Create a new Safe Custody record, identify the record type (i.e., will, lease, etc.), create your own custom packets (i.e. physical reference such as a specific box, file cabinet, etc.), and add locations for where property could be stored.

The Custody Listing is a new report corresponding to the Safe Custody feature for physical file management.  It displays all movements, packets, and records you have created using the Safe Custody Manager.

Enabling Safe Custody

From the Options menu, select System Settings.

Click the Front Office tab.

 

Restart PCLaw

RULE 1.15. SAFEKEEPING PROPERTY b

A lawyer may deposit the lawyer’s own funds in a client trust account for the sole purpose of paying bank service charges on that account or obtaining a waiver of those charges, but only in an amount necessary for that purpose.

There is no way to record bank fees in PCLaw and there should not be.  I have dealt with enough Law Firm’s in Louisiana to know that their are plenty of banks that do not charge bank fees on trust accounts.  If yours does, find a new bank.

RULE 1.15. SAFEKEEPING PROPERTY (f) – and PCLaw

Got a good question about Louisiana Rule 1.15 f which basically says every attorney must sign all Trust Checks.  So when you setup your Trust Account require that a an attorney’s signature (NO STAMPS!) regardless of the check amount  Also, remember that PCLaw cannot actually move money into your bank accounts so, you will do a

1. Trust to General Transfer

2. Print the Check,

3. Get Attorney’s Signature

RULE 1.15. SAFEKEEPING PROPERTY (f)

Every check, draft, electronic transfer, or other withdrawal instrument or authorization from a client trust account shall be personally signed by a
lawyer or, in the case of electronic, telephone, or wire transfer, from a client trust account, directed by a lawyer or, in the case of a law firm, one or more lawyers authorized by the law firm.

http://www.ladb.org/Publications/ropc.pdf

PCLaw and Worldox Users, Save $25 on the new ScanSnap S1500

 

Law Office Technology Review of the ScanSnap S1500

 

PCLaw Users

Worldox Users

PCLaw is Down

For some reason, certain version of PCLaw had time bombs in them that forced them to stop working on July 22nd.  Guess what I have been doing all day? 

Here is the solution:

1. Visit http://support.pclaw.com/PCLawUpdate.asp (please make sure that you run the Active X control)

2. Select “Check here for updates”

 

Note, that you will have to bounce the server (Which I hate doing during the work day)  and you will have to update PCLaw on all workstations as well. 

Advanced Search in PCLaw

A client asked me the other day how to run a report to see a list of all matters and their billing rates.  To do this you need to go to Reports –> Client –> List of Clients.

This will list all the clients\matters and what rate they are billed at, plus a whole lot of other information.  If you have a lot of matters this can be a hard report to get information from and you do not have the option of exporting it to excel to sort.

The Adv. Search… feature will help you filter this list to find some real information for you to use.  One example is using the Advanced Search to filter to view just one type of billing rate.  Lets say we wanted to see all matters that have the allstate billing rate. 

This will now only bring up matters that have the allstate (alst) billing rate.  We can save this filter to use it again if we need to.  \

Until the time where you can export the full report to PCLaw, this is your best bet for sorting matter information.

Bye Bye Matter Manager, Hello Matter List….

In one of the newest releases of PCLaw (9.20), a new feature called Matter List appeared.  Lets face it, the Matter Manager in PCLaw leaves a little more to be desired.  It has a narrow view and is not that customizable.  The Matter List solves all these problems and gives you the ability to customize your Matter view like you can in TimeMatter and Amicus Attorney.  To get to it, you need to open PCLaw and go to File –> Matter List. 

Here is the default matter view which shows all your active matters.  You have the option to Add Tabs…

Below is the customized matter list that I install for most of my clients.  The first three tabs are for Active, Inactive and Archived Matters.  The next three are Tabs I create are for the Attorney’s in the firm.   After Responsible Attorney Tabs, I list matters by year opened.  I usually do 2000 -  2007, 2008 and 2009.  After that I create Matter Tabs by types of Law.

Besides looking at a lists of matters I can easily select a matter or group of tagged matters and create a prebill, add a Note or change the matter.  I have stopped using the Matter Manager all together now that I have the Matter List.