Avaliações do PracticePanther Legal Software

Amazing program!

Comentários: I bought this program when I first opened my practice about 2.5 years ago. I knew going into my own firm that I wanted a comprehensive client management tool. After spending hours online reviewing various programs, I decided to give the 30-day free trial a shot. I think I purchased the monthly subscription immediately after starting to use the program. Since that time, I have built on my knowledge, incorporating the MailChimp and QBO features first, then started learning how to streamline my document preparation through the template feature. What would have previously taken me multiple hours a week to manage, now takes minutes.

Vantagens:

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.

Desvantagens:

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.

PracticePanther Integrations with Key software is a great advantage

Comentários: I am very pleased with PracticePanther. Very easy to use. Does what we need.

Vantagens:

Integration with quickbooks and the ability to take credit card payments through PP helps make collections and billing work well with all team members being able to take payments without needing all of them to be able to get into quickbooks.

Desvantagens:

Having restart searches for contacts or matters when we did not find the one we were looking for i.e. multiple persons with same name. and having to search again. Would like to be able to have reporting using matter type. Being able to customize reports would be great. Some reports show graphs but are hard to get the information ranked like the graph

PracticePanther is great for Law Firms!

Comentários: We have been using it for a few years now and it has really streamlined a lot of our client management and billing and made it easy to function day to day.

Vantagens:

It is an easy to use software that makes client management and billing easier. I like the simplistic design/look of it and ease of use. It is very intuitive and there are multiple ways to go about accomplishing any task.

Desvantagens:

I don't really have any "cons" to list. I really can't think of any.

Personal Experiences

Comentários: When the software works, it works amazing. The issue is it works only 30% of the time.

Vantagens:

Client portals and the ability to have certain payments be applied automatically.

Desvantagens:

The reporting system is broken, and has been for 2+ years. Getting technical support is essentially pulling teeth, there will be months (6+) without response to simple tickets after they tried to deflect and then finally acknowledged issues. Consistently claim they added the new “feature requests” when fixing a bug such as the system doing math like: $1+$2 = $4,000 when it actually is $3.00. These are not feature requests - they are bug fixes. Despite reconciling our trust account monthly - there are data errors that their system has calculated incorrectly in the past, we have shown them via bank statements etc what the problem is and what transaction it is dealing with, and 2+ years later they still haven’t fixed it. Their Zapier integrations get triggered all the time when they shouldn’t be. They blame Zapier, but it is their software triggering the automation, Zapier isn’t just randomly doing it.

Very Good Software!

Comentários: Excellent legal CRM, it has helped me time track and bill very easily

Vantagens:

Many different integrations and features that make it a one stop shop for law firms

Desvantagens:

Customer service responsiveness is TERRIBLE

Changed my business

Comentários: Generally has been a good experience.

Vantagens:

Calendar and billing features are most helpful

Desvantagens:

Would like a better accounting plaform that makes it easier to reconcile and track transactions, as well as better integration with quickbooks.

Old Dogs Can Learn New Tricks

Vantagens:

Having tried different types of practice management software and billing systems, finding PracticePanther changed this skeptical old dog by teaching her new tricks to make life easier and assure time gets captured and billed and contacts are at your fingertips. PracticePanther works seamlessly across all platforms, desktop, laptop, iPhone, iPad so you never have to be without the tools to have your law firm with you when you need to have the information. Easier to use than most software of similar types.

Desvantagens:

Not much to say here .. it works for us very well

Wonderful PracticePanther Legal Software

Comentários: Efficient management of legal affairs with simplicity and facilitation of tasks for clients, as well as transparency in operation and extension multiple platforms make this software perfect.

Vantagens:

Easier to use, this software is the guarantee of efficient management of legal affairs and perfect organization of client tasks. It works seamlessly across all platforms, laptop, iphone, deskto, iPad...

Desvantagens:

Although requiring a good connection, the functionalities offered by this software are well above. Nothing to complain about!

Practice Panther review

Vantagens:

Ease of use and functionality. I will continue to use it.

Desvantagens:

The contact field is not super convenient.

Use in "of counsel" role to a small/medium size offer

Comentários: Extremely easy to use – intuitive. The mobile app allows you to quickly capture your activity while fresh and to enter time, expenses, etc., on the go, during travel or momentary downtime, or in other instances where use of a laptop may not be practical or convenient.

Vantagens:

The product has great functionality in tracking time, ease of performing and switching functions with multiple access points to product features (such as editing time entries and invoices), and creating professional looking invoices.

Desvantagens:

That certain convenient features are only included in the more expensive version, although all of the functionality is still present in the base version

Loved it at first, disappointed after 6 months

Comentários: I purchased PracticePanther about 6 months ago, and I was initially very happy with it. I hadn't used a practice management software before, so it felt pretty life-changing. The platform felt intuitive and user-friendly, and it simplified everything from time tracking to billing. However, after 6 months of use (and data loss), I have become increasingly frustrated with PP and have finally made the (costly and inconvenient) decision to switch to Clio. There have been a lot of glitches with the platform and things that don't work intuitively. But the most frustrating and costly glitch occurred when I downgraded my plan to the "middle" plan, and it somehow deleted all the custom rates I had set for each matter. No one at PP could figure out why this happened or how to undo it, so I spent half a day re-reviewing engagement agreements, and re-creating new matter rates -- in addition to spending an hour or so on the phone with PP customer service and sending emails explaining the issue (and didn't even get a response). The "solution" PP offered was to upgrade me back to the higher level for one month (about a $30 value)! That provided absolutely zero benefit to me (I downgraded because I didn't need the features from the highest plan). The amount of money I've lost using PP has been in the thousands! I've switched to Clio now, which seems better so far.

Vantagens:

That it made time tracking and billing easy

Desvantagens:

Too many glitches in the software that caused serious issues with my pricing and billing

Best integration with Office 365

Comentários: Everything we need is here, trust accounting, case reporting, financial reporting, customizable fields, document automation, etc.

Vantagens:

Practice Panther out performs on integration with Outlook. Users can send email from within the platform and the email will send in outlook, as well as be saved in the PP file. Similarly, emails that are received can be added by a drag and drop that resides on the Outlook side. It also has better document automation and work flows than the competitive products.

Desvantagens:

The dash board at the matter level could be better. All of the information is there, but one has to move from tab to tab to find it. I'd like a "status" feed at the top (with the ability to generate reports for all open matters and current status) instead of the feed that is at the bottom of the case dashboard (which we don't seem to use).

Practice Panther is a Great Cloud Solution for Solo Practitioners

Comentários: I still had an excellent experience. I suspect that in time PracticePanther will address these issues and I will gladly give it a 5-Star rating.

Vantagens:

Practice Panther has a fairly intuitive interface for daily billing entries, templates for monthly billing and accounting for your trust and operating accounts for your clients. The learning curve was minimal in comparison to other systems I tried and the program was more responsive over other programs I tried over the internet. Tech Support and help files are easily available on every page. I found daily entries both fast and easy and the online billing system linked with LawPay is magnificent and has worked flawlessly for me. I was very skeptical of "secure" cloud-based billing and accounting but after more than a year it would take a lot to pull me away from Practice Panther.

Desvantagens:

There are two cons to this software to be aware of. First, there is no single backup system to backup and restore all your files with just a few clicks. While complete backup is available, it requires you to go through far too many steps to make sure you back up everything. I have not yet had to restore anything to Practice Panther but I am wary that a system that requires multiple steps could have glitches in trying to restore from their backups. It is more than possible that if a restoration were required it might involve more "downtime" for a practitioner than he or she would like in order to get back up and running. This is where I think they need to most work. Secondarily, their billing review system has an issue that will throw practitioners off. If you create a bill several months ago and you go back to look at the bill to see what the retainer balance was at the time of that bill, the historical bill actually pulls up the retainer that exists now. That should not occur on a historical bill. Once a bill has been saved, the bill should not change unless you intentionally change other things in your billing. An old bill should never show the current balance of the retainer. It should show the remaining balance of the retainer at the time the specific bill is generated.

Easy to use practice management software with top-end functionality at low price

Comentários: Easy of keeping track of deadlines and client contacts. Overall, the best practice management software I have seen for the price. I would say this performs better than CLIO (I've used it with ALL of the add-ons), way better than AMICUS and MyCase and similar to ABACUS. They need to add a matter pre-billing function to run attorney's fees reports and allow you to copy/paste e-mails into the matter, but otherwise this is a perfect solution for most practitioners. Unless you are using the rules-based calendaring in ABACUS or Westlaw's Firm Central, I have not seen a product that is nearly as useful on the market.

Vantagens:

Unlike a number of the cheaper practice management software programs on the market today, Practice Panther has a wide range of functions within the software which are easy to use. Instead of just having "Tasks" or "to-dos", PP allows you to create Activities which can be "Events" "E-mails" "Phone calls" or "Tasks". On the Task front, PP allows you to set sub-reminders that can send you e-mails or text messages in advance, like say "7 days before," and "3 days before," for a filing deadline. I also think it is pretty fantastic that PP shows whether a time entry has been completed for EVERY SINGLE ACTIVITY marked "completed" or "in progress". This would be incredibly useful for practitioners (mostly civil) managing staff and trying to deal with staff not accounting for all of their time in billing. The "mail sync" function is also easy to use, and allows you to e-mail out of your native software (MS Outlook, GMAIL, etc) and simply "bcc" the client matter itself. When you do this, the e-mail is automatically saved into the matter. Almost every other program out there that I have used requires you to use their client messaging portal to get the same functionality. The templates are easy to use for creating documents to merge out of PP also. Think client engagement letters, releases, and basic letterheads that you use in every file. We don't use PP for accepting payments so I cannot comment on that portion.

Desvantagens:

1. Matter pre-bills or invoicing. In many civil cases there will be a time when you need to prepare a billing report to present to the court solely for a claim of attorney's fees. In other software that I have used, you can run a report for a set period of time or type of billing entries which will then create a printable draft invoice-looking document. You would then be able to slap an exhibit sticker on that document and use it for your attorney's fee request. I haven't found a way to easily do this in PP yet, and it seems like you would have to utilize a draft invoice which captures all time billed in the matter. I could be wrong. 2. No Batch Entry System for E-mails. PP has a GREAT syncing system that works with your native e-mail so you can BCC messages into the matter when you send or receive them. However, if you forget to include the mail-sync in your BCC line, or don't forward a message to the mail-sync, there is no easy way to subsequently get the e-mails into the matter in PP. What I mean is this: say you have a number of e-mails from someone that weren't saved into a client PP matter and instead lived in your Outlook before the client actually hired. You would have to manually forward each one of your emails to the mail-sync to get them into PP. Additionally, if you are a federal criminal lawyer and use CORRLINKS to communicate with your clients you will know that you can't forward out of that system. PP doesn't let you copy/paste emails so your stuck.

Great and improving all the time!

Comentários: This is an update to a previous review I made. The folks at Panther are impressive. They've taken recommendations I and others have made and implemented them; they've quickly addressed issues I've had; and they are always courteous and responsive. The overall layout has vastly improved since my first review, and looks downright beautiful. We live by the search feature and it now works on custom fields. Custom fields can now also be listed in reports. You can now group custom fields so that you may show only those fields in a matter or contact that pertain to their specific situation. We have structured Panther so we can use it as a basic CRM...which is an immense work-flow savings for us. We asked for Dropbox integration and what they produced is perfect (considering the limitations of Dropbox). Time keeping is a snap and reachable from any screen. We asked to be able to a log call without assigning it to a matter, and they changed that so now we can. The tasking feature and its integration with the calendar is fantastic, I could not service so many clients without it. And the Panther folks have taken it on themselves to make some minor changes that have made the workflow of using the program much faster than in my previous review. I now can answer the question I posed in my earlier review of whether I love or hate Panther: We love it. I admit that it's not perfect (a couple of basic features in billing need to be addressed before I am willing to use that portion of the program), but Panther saves us many hours a week. I tried many firm management products before settling on Practice Panther, and I am glad I stayed with them. It's already better than the others, and it keeps getting better all the time thanks to their team. You cannot go wrong choosing Practice Panther. Final note: To my surprise one lawyer told me Panther seemed expensive. Really?! It seems well priced to me, and if you try to save a few dollars a month with some inferior product you will pay dearly for that choice in lost time.

Vantagens:

Beautiful layout, easy to use, functions as a basic CRM, matter and time management, and billing program all in one.

Desvantagens:

Flat fee billing is not well thought out, and the billing module presents clients with a reckoning of my operating account as well as their trust account. (I understand Panther may have made the operating account info optional by now, or that is in their near term plan.)

Practice Panther meets the need for small lawfirms

Comentários: PP has been very affordable and user friendly. Attorneys who have been in practice for 20 years who never entered their own time are now doing it themselves.

Vantagens:

never any data corruption issues like Timeslips. Time consuming backups not necessary, can have users tracking time while billing is being run. Web Based and can enter time tracking from anywhere on any computer or on your phone.

Desvantagens:

Some report features not available but over the past two years greater functionality has continued to be added

Developer Issues

Comentários: Overall the program is subpar. It is great for simple billing tasks but customer support response time is lacking and the developer has limited the software to basic usage. Every time I raise a question about something simple that is not available I get the standard "that is a developer question" Will be looking for other programs to utilize that are geared more towards our needs.

Vantagens:

The product is easy to manipulate and anyone can migrate through entering time.

Desvantagens:

Their billing templates are not interchangeable. I have clients that use different placements for the law firm id/customer id. Contacted customer support (as there is an option to copy the template) to find out how to reverse the 2 columns and was told that it cannot be done and that he would bring it up with the developer. I highly doubt that that is the case since I never received any response back. This means that each month I have to go into the ledes file and reverse the numbers in the 2 columns. Very time consuming and not realistic if you have more than 1 client utilizing ledes billing. Also, their reporting is horrific as you cannot create your own customized report.

Great Product!

Comentários: I recently switched to PracticePanther after 20 years using different version of Amicus Attorney. While Amicus helped me to keep my practice moving for years, the lack of continuing support for the product and meaningful changes caused me to start looking at alternatives. After researching the current crop of practice management programs and downloading several demo's, I ended subscribing to the PracticePanther team. The first reason I chose PP was the fact that I was able to create "workflows" that automate a ton of the tasks required for several practices areas. For example, a new misdemeanor criminal case can have the misdemeanor workflow that I created applied and all of the steps for the cases are automatically generated. The scheduling of the first client meeting, initial hearing, filing of our appearance, requesting discovery, sending discovery, attending the pretrial conference, plea meeting with client and change of plea hearing all become tasks or calendar events with just the touch of a button. My assistant then just needs to coordinate the dates for all of the auto-generated tasks or events in order to have the file completely organized. The workflow also assigns the responsibility for completion of tasks automatically to me or my staff so we all are reminded of what needs to take place next. The second selling feature for me was the automated email and text-message reminders that can be generated to the client (and to staff if desired). I like that I receive a text reminder from my dentist's office and wanted something similar. For all events that I create within the workflow, I can assign the reminder details. This has significantly lowered the number of no-shows that I have for office meetings and court hearings and reduces the staff time that was spent before calling to remind clients of court dates and meetings. The third key feature that I really wanted was the secure client portal feature. The portal allows me to hand incoming clients an Ipad to have them fill out their intake information that we would need to create a new client file. Once the client has completed the information on the Ipad, it automatically creates a new contact within the PP system and we can then easily generate a new matter if we are hired. For clients that we choose to work with, they are also sent an email invitation to open their secure portal, thus allowing them access to their online file within the PP system. Clients love it.

Vantagens:

Great tools, great automation, great customer support

Desvantagens:

There are continuing areas that we could further automate to make the product even more amazing.

Why did I wait so long?

Comentários: Until we found PP, we were posting our files in OneDrive and having to search for things that we should not need to. Quickbooks is inadequate for billing legal-type work and there was no way to run any kind of conflict check without making a spreadsheet and manually adding new clients and inquiries. Now, all we do is put everything in PP. There we can see the progress of our cases, billing, calendars, tasks assignments, project plans and do conflict checks based on more than just the case caption or attorneys. Each case has tag options for identifying the type of work we are doing or any other significant aspect of the case and we can use that also for finding things within the matter or inside our entire database. What's more, it works with OneDrive, so all of our documents are accessible within the program.
This is just what we needed and more...

Vantagens:

As a small practice, I needed to organize and implement an office management system that I could use if my assistant was not here. This software is the most intuitive, responsive and useful that I have tried...and I have test driven four of the top recommended products. I have everything I need in one package; whereas, other companies require additional packages to connect to email and form templates. The learning curve has been very small. Both of us here have not had any training yet and are up and running (for the most part) after only a week or so. Now we will be taking advantage of the great training videos and one-on-one training to hone our skills and use it to its fullest extent.

Desvantagens:

So far, our experience has only been positive. Graphics are simple and somewhat old-fashioned, BUT they work great for finding things...that's what counts.

Best firm management software on the market with the most personable company behind it!

Comentários: Easily the most user-friendly law firm management software on the market with an awesome company and support staff behind it. Keeps me organized and streamlines everything from contacts and calendars to billing and invoicing. Changed the way my law firm runs.

Vantagens:

User-friendly - Learning curve is easily the lowest of any firm management software out there Support - Short training videos and support chat are right at your fingertips and easy to use so you get the most out of the software. Support staff are personable and very responsive - no waiting for days to get answers Integration - Easily syncs with commonly used products like Quickbooks, Gmail, Outlook, and other legal software Price - The price is competitive and gets you more bang for your buck compared to other software out there. They also partner with other companies which allows them to add little freebies, like covering the cost of your LawPay account if you use it. I expect they will keep giving cool incentives like that. This software and company have changed how I run my law firm. I'm a believer and I hope they continue to do great things.

Desvantagens:

Still developing - PP is still developing so you do run into hiccups sometimes, but it is still the easiest firm management software to use and I have not had an issue yet that was not resolved by a quick chat session with support staff. They are continuing to add features and developing the product all the time, so I am excited to see what they do - really looking forward to seeing what they do with voice command integration

Love the product but technical issues are problematic

Comentários: If you are a solo with a few clients and few files, it will work great. But as you grow, it becomes increasingly difficult to filter out the closed and unwanted files and clients.

Vantagens:

Super simply to use. The dashboard snapshot of a case if fantastic. You can see how much is trust, the next task, etc.

Desvantagens:

I absolutely loved the software until issues began developing with how it syncs with Box. Files and documents would go missing. Every time we reached out to tech support we were told "user error." It didn't seem right. But then, after paying careful attention, we began to show it was NOT user error but the software remapping the location of various folders into places that we weren't looking. Half of the call was spent convincing tech support that it wasn't us, but them. They would then look into and find out that it was a software glitch.

Law Office Management Software

Vantagens:

This software is great right out of the box, so to speak; there is no box. But as I have needed something extra I have made suggestions and the company actually improves the program. New additions come up as other users make suggestions as well. The program is very intuitive and therefore easy to learn and use when you are a new user. But with time I have learned that it can do so much more than I realized at first. The customer support is great at teaching users how to do some new task and the You Tube training videos is a great way to learn how to make your practice more efficient using options that you might not otherwise know are available. Overall, this is the best law office management software I have used over the last 15 years.

Desvantagens:

Rarely, there have been times when I wanted to create a report that the program was not able to generate and I would need to export a current report to excel and then modify or add data to get the report that I needed.

Does not respond and is not refunding payment

Comentários: POOR! When I first signed up for them, they were great. You could get a person on the phone (which I am paying for) or a response within a few minutes. No Longer! They do not respond at all!!! I changed my subscription to monthly from annual. Yet they took the annual payment and they are not refunding it. They claimed first that they would refund it immediately and bill me monthly. Then they said they are applying the amount each month to the monthly bill. It costs more monthly so why are they keeping my money for annual and billing me monthly? Then they asked me for the plan i was on and the plan i am not on. I gave that info to them over a week ago. No response. You cannot get anyone on the phone. And they do not respond to support.

Vantagens:

At this point, nothing. They are not responding via telephone nor their support online

Desvantagens:

My header changed and no state or zip code now appears. I did nothing to change it.

Midsize Law Firm with diverse practice areas

Comentários: Our Attorneys love being able to access case data and records from anywhere, and I have been very happy with the development pipeline. The Panther team has been adding request features regularly since we began our migration over a year ago. They're based out of Miami, which was also a big selling point for our firm since we are located in Southwest Florida. Their support staff is incredibly responsive, even an issue requires escalation.

Vantagens:

Our team has a number of favorite features, being able to access Box via the Panther Mobile app is a big one, and being able to shoot text reminders to clients about appointments and deadlines is another favorite, but how much time Panther has shaved off of our billing cycle is definitely the top. Using Panther, we have cut in half the time it takes to review and approve pre-bills, invoice the client, and get paid.

Desvantagens:

Being a larger firm and having migrated case management software several times already made the transition and adoption challenging. Practice Panther allows for very easy import and export of information as csv files, which is great for producing your own reports, but created a lot of front end work massaging data from the previous system in order to import into Panther. As of Summer 2018, the QuickBooks integration is a little basic and still needs some work.

Review

Comentários: It is okay. It is good for billing. If they don't improve their customer service or keep up with competitors we may leave. Having the relationship with law pay is essential if they end that relationship we will leave

Vantagens:

Billing is easy to complete with PP. It sometimes syncs with QB (when it doesn't it causes major issues)

Desvantagens:

The customer service is horrible and has gotten progressively worse over the years. It seems like when the company changed ownership there was no money put into development to make the system better and it is constantly getting beat by competitors. The customer service is almost non existent and there seems to be constant turnover.