PracticePanther

Avantages

PracticePanther is intuitive and very user friendly. It has a ton of features that expedite minuscule tasks and free up admin time. It syncs with all my favorite resources, like QBO, MailChimp, and Box, making communication with clients a lot easier and keeps routine mailings operational. If you use a lot of form templates, the template builder is a major time saver and cuts down on user error and oversights. I use this program every day in my law office and am very grateful for how easy it is. Even better, the customer support team is phenomenal. I rarely have any issues with the program (it is easy to use), but when I run into something I need help with, a quick message to the PP team is responded to within minutes and the problem is solved or at a minimum I am given an update and expected time of completion. I couldn't recommend this program more to a solo or small legal practice.

Inconvénients

Nothing, the team is constantly updating its software and programs that it connects to. They provide online videos to help and I frequently learn of new ways to use the program from regular updates by the team.

Avantages

I like being able to bill, take credit/debit card payments, and tell clients their balance with the app while in court. There are simple reports and a great dashboard to see how much is outstanding, to be billed, and the amount in my trust account. Practice panther has cut down on the time it takes for billing and made my office more efficient.

Inconvénients

I print checks directly from practice panther, which takes several steps, but it makes it easy to add the cost to the client's billing. I would like the software to allow a report of vendors/payees' payments over various time periods as it does with tags and categories.

Avantages

They add features on a regular basis and have loads of training. The support staff is super helpful and if they don't know the answer they will try to find it. I understand that every system is different and every one has it's pros and cons. I really think once we utilize every single feature this program has we will be a much better law firm.

Inconvénients

The email integrations phase in and out on working. It may simply be the plugin I have for Gmail but that can be a struggle.

Avantages

The software sure does “look” nice. But it really missed the boat on some of the more nuanced features of a law practice. For example, when applying a discount to an invoice, the discount must be applied to the total invoice (fees AND costs). Discounts cannot be applied to just the fees. Why in the world would any attorney want to apply a discount to client costs advanced on behalf of the client??? When I inquired about this, their answer was “just put in a discounted custom rate for the matter”. This response is completely unacceptable since I may only want to apply a discount to one invoice rather than all work done on the matter! This is just one small example of the half hearted attempt of this company to make a legal management software. This is just one of several problems with the “features” of the software. The timers are always so buggy. The software is just not refined at all. None of the features were well thought out. It’s like the programmers decided “Hey! This is a cool feature to add!” But never really fined tuned any of them to a fully functioning feature that could work well. They all sort of work to only about 50-60 percent functionality. It should not come as any surprise, though, since neither the founders nor anyone else on the management team has any experience in the legal industry. The company would be well served to hire some actual attorneys to advise them on how to fine tune their software to make it a truly great legal software.

Inconvénients

The lack of any real understanding of the nuances of a legal practice by the founders and creators of the company and software.

Avantages

I love that the billing soft ware is so flexible and able to create what I need. I now capture all my time and my clients get their bills by email and are also able to pay online. I love this software and the creators are wonderful. They reach out to me to help me, even though I am a little account. My former big firm software did nothing for me but bill me. PP is amazing and I'm so thankful we found them.

Inconvénients

It would be nice to speak to PP and tell them my time as I have to go back to fill in the blank. I have manic time which tracks my docs so I can enter my time. Maybe use a doc tracker like manic time? But manic time is too darn complicated to use other to look at what I did.