PracticePanther Legal Software

Working with Practice Panther

Comentários: The user-interface is designed for quick and easy navigation. You can look at your dashboard and very clearly see everything you need to know for your day to run smoothly (well as smoothly as possible). It is cost effective and the onboarding and training are taken care of with Practice Panther's incredible customer service.

Vantagens:

Before PracticePanther we had started an Excel spreadsheet to log our contacts for conflicts checks. We created a joint email account with Gmail so our email would be centralized and that also gave us a central calendar that we all had access to in order to set appointments, record deadlines, etc. We also created a Dropbox account for file storage. While everything was low cost or free, all the parts felt scattered. PracticePanther pulls it all together in one beautiful, user-friendly interface. Now, instead of having to pull up 5 or 6 different apps/websites, we are able to pull up just one site and have everything right there. All of the components of PracticePanther are really easy to use. The entire program is designed for efficiency and ease of use. Color-coding allows you to see and understand your financial details in mere seconds. Tasks, events, and timekeeping are easy.

Desvantagens:

I would like to see the software integrate with more programs. Quickbooks is great, but my brain works better with Wave Accounting; LawPay is great, but being able to integrate with PayPal also, would be even better. However, these are minor things and not worth seeking a different program I like as much as Practice Panther. I had shopped around quite a bit before choosing Practice Panther; I doubt I would find anything I like as much. Hands down, our favorite thing about PracticePanther is the superior support staff. If you have a problem and leave a message after hours in the chat box, you get a response generally within the hour. There is also training videos and a help center that will help you find the help that you need.

PracticePanther is so easy, it feels like you're cheating!

Vantagens:

Everything. From the calendar to contacts, to matters to invoicing, this program has it all. The interface is easy and intuitive. I can usually accomplish whatever I want without trouble. When I have questions or don't understand how something works, PP has lots of online tutorials that include both video and text / image guidance. Very useful.

Desvantagens:

When saving emails, there is a max file size when uploading attachments. Most of the time my attachments are too large to upload to PP.

After years of begging them for real fixed price billing, I'm giving up.

Comentários: It was a good start to law firm management, now I need something that works like a law firm needs to work, not force my law firm to work like the software wants me to.

Vantagens:

It's easy to learn the basics. The calendar is good, it's helpful that they show tasks there. Searching is great. It's totally adequate if all you do is bill for time and integrate with Quickbooks.

Desvantagens:

Panther has no report on Items (e.g. how much of your revenue is from Document Drafting vs Litigation). To get such a report, you MUST integrate with Quickbooks. But the biggest problem is that Fixed Price billing (what they call "Flat Fee") is worthless. Fixed Price billing was clearly an afterthought, and their implementation has not changed at all since the early days when I started using it: 1) It does not let you assign an Item as you can with time entries, so you can't easily tell Quickbooks that a Fixed Price invoice was for a trademark application, not doc review; 2) You can't assign a lawyer to a Fixed Price billing, so you cannot get a report to help you pay everyone proportionally to their Fixed Price billings; 3) Fixed Price matters become immediately billable even if no work has been done, so you must manually keep track of when it's time to invoice for a Fixed Price matter, and there's no report on billable Fixed Price matters; 4) When entering time on a Fixed Price matter, there's way no way to check whether you are about to exceed the budget, and no way anywhere to compare budgeted vs actual. If you're a modern firm moving to fixed price as much as possible, you'll spend a LOT of time looking for work-arounds, and you'll find that implementing your work-arounds will chew up any time saving you might have gotten from using the rest of the software. I can't wait to change to software that does Fixed Price right.

Great practice management software. The only short-fall is that it doesn't allow auto future billing

Comentários: PracticePanther is a great platform and you should definitely give it a good try during a free trial period.
It also has Rules of Court deadline figuring if you're a Civil firm.
PP has great integration with QuickBooks on-line.
You can print checks directly from PP, or QB online to pay other legal vendors (Chiros, etc.)

Vantagens:

Price - either $59/mo or $49/mo if paid the year in full. Fee to bill clients on-line: $.20 per transaction plus 1.95% Workflow customizable - Yes, you can customize the workflow on different case-types. Activity Log - easy access history. Create Contact on the fly as creating matter - easy to create a Contact during the process of creating a matter. Intake form for new clients - Yes, can put a link on your website so new clients can fill-out a new client form, and that info will auto fill into the client's PP account. Time tracking timers - you can have multiple different timers open and running at the same time and assign them. Mobile App - there is no mobile App, but the site is mobile optimized. E-file integration - there is No e-file integration. Color assignments - there are up to 6 colors that you can assign to parties & roles. Task customizable - Yes, you can customize task flows. Easy to create and merge documents - Yes, it's very easy to create and merge documents with the program. PDF-auto convert - No, it cannot auto PDF convert a document. Create documents that can merged - Yes. This program makes it easy to create documents that can be merged. Support - Yes, support seems to be free. Notify client when upload a document - Yes, you can notify a client a document gets uploaded that you want them to review or be aware of. Email syncing - very good syncing with Gmail and Outlook. Emails linked to a matter - Yes. Easy to link emails to a matter. Client Portal - Yes.

Desvantagens:

The only thing that kept me from staying with PracticePanther, is that MyCase allows you to be able to set future billing to go out to a client(s) and forget it. PracticePanther has a bit of a 'workaround' if you get the client's Visa/Debit card on file, but many times clients are uneasy giving you their card number. With Criminal Defense clients that need to make monthly (or future) payments on a retainer amount, MyCase allows you to set-up future dates where a client will be emailed a bill, which they can tap on a button and pay on-line. This is the main thing that made me go with MyCase. But if not for that, I would have stayed with either PracticePanther or Smokeball. Smokeball had/has the slickest software for being able to send emails from (either) Outlook or Gmail, and a small window at the bottom allows you to connect that email to a matter. Smokeball's software also made/makes it very easy to sync a Word document with a Client/Matter.

Love PracticePanther

Comentários: This software has saved us time on the tasks that would take a long time like creating letters or pleadings as they are automated now. Since the information pulls from the fields there is also a very low risk for typing errors.

Vantagens:

Super easy to use! We love that we can create custom fields for a contact or matter and have really enjoyed the automation portion of the software. The templates are easy to create and automatically pull the information from the contact and matter sections that we need.

Desvantagens:

Under Matter, instead of editing the whole section, it would be nice if I could hoover over the field I only need to update. I also wish I could highlight text in the matter or notes section. I create multiple matters under one client and some of the information in the fields is always the same. It would be nice if I could select an option so any time I create a new matter for that client, the information in the matter auto fills for any new case going forward.