Being your own boss, setting your own hours, and taking the cases you want to take are all common reasons to go solo. There are also many lawyers who are solo by circumstances, such as biglaw’s changing economics, rather than choice.
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Whatever your reasons, they probably don’t include being able to choose your own processes and technology. Hulu app for mac computer. In fact, it might be one of your big fears. Best mac bulk email mailing software. Not having the business know-how to run your own firm is fear number seven in Lawyerist’s Going Solo: Debunking the Top Ten Fears.
Search a portfolio of Law Practice Management software, SaaS and cloud applications for Mac. Save time with reviews, on-line decision support and guides. GetApp is your free Directory to Compare, Short-list and Evaluate Business Solutions. Save time with reviews, on-line decision support and guides. What was once a relatively short list of law practice management software is now a crowded space full of many different applications and vendors, all vying for your firm’s attention. In 2020, you have more options than ever when it comes to finding the right software to help you manage your law practice.
“You probably don’t,” Roy Ginsburg writes bluntly. “It is a skill set few lawyers possess. Add book to kindle app mac. That is the bad news. The good news is that your competitors are just as clueless about managing their practices as you may be. They all somehow seem to make a nice living. You will, too, if you work at this.”
Half of your competitors are also not using law practice management software. Specifically, only 49% of respondents reported having practice management software available, according to the 2014 ABA Legal Technology Survey Report.
Legal software can’t make good business decisions for you, but it will free up your time and energy to gain business acumen. And setting up your practice is the perfect time to also set up the technology which will make you more efficient and effective as an attorney.
Matters are your bread and butter as a solo attorney. And the lawyers who quickly and competently organize them have a distinct advantage over the lawyers who don’t. Let’s break down the various parts of a matter.
Case Management Software Solo
Lawyerist also has a great guide for what the solo attorney needs tech-wise to set up shop. Writer Sam Glover recommends Google Apps, QuickBooks, and Microsoft Office to get started.
Those will handle your billing, email, documents, and calendar. For the Quickbooks averse, there are other accounting software solutions. But Quickbooks or Xero is recommended for attorneys because they integrate with legal practice management software.
Glover also recommends law practice management software, specifically MyCase or Clio. You want this kind of software because it integrates information from Google Apps, Quickbooks, and Microsoft Office and organizes it according to matter. So for every case, your appointments, documents, correspondence, and contact information is all in one place, easy to find, access, and take action on. While Glover might have suggested just two, there are many more options than that.
Here are some questions to ask yourself before you start looking at software:
Harder questions include how important it is to be able to, for example, remember which expert witness you used in a particular case. If you haven’t labeled your contacts as clients, opposing counsel, witness, etc, it will be harder to find them later. Some legal software includes relationship fields for contacts. Some assumes all contacts are clients.
Those kinds of questions might make you want to wait until you set up your practice to invest in software.
Don’t.
Most law practice management software can be paid for month-to-month. And, as Lawyerist writer Sam Glover put it, “When it comes to outfitting a law practice, it doesn’t pay to pinch pennies.”
And it’s easier to transition from one comprehensive solution to another than to go from a suite of unintegrated tools to one solution.
Beyond case management software, you need:
You’ll also need access to legal research. Fastcase and LexisNexis offer subscriptions their databases.
That’s about it! Don’t let making choices about technology scare you. Once you get started, it’ll be easy to tell what’s working and what isn’t, and change course accordingly. Take comfort in that you get to decide which solutions to use.
Solo Law Practice Management Software
Is there anything you learned while searching for technology for your shop you’d want other attorneys to know? Any questions you still have about setting up tech for your solo practice? Let me know in the comments.
Law Firm Practice Management Software
Looking for Law Practice Management software? Check out Capterra's list of the best Law Practice Management software solutions.
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