Does your firm rely on a bookkeeping service to manage your books? Have you experienced data syncing issues or do you have concerns that your provider doesn’t have sufficient experience to manage your books in compliance with your state bar’s client trust (IOLTA) rules and regulations? If so, then it’s time to take your firm’s legal billing and legal accounting into your own hands.
Every lawyer has been there. You need your client to get you time-sensitive, confidential documents and they can’t get to your office. Or you’ve been told “the check is in the mail” and you need to disburse funds that aren’t there. Wouldn’t it be nice to have a convenient, secure way for your clients to send you critical information and pay their invoices using their smartphone? Enter Caseway Mobile, a custom, branded portal application available exclusively to CARET Legal users that lets your clients share privileged information and pay their invoices via their mobile device. With this intuitive and user-friendly application, your clients are sure to keep your law firm in mind when they need you most.
Whether you’ve been practicing for years or just starting out, you undoubtedly have multiple simple form documents that you use again and again. When you think about the time you waste replacing the information and customizing the same document for each matter, it can really add up. Want to find a better way to streamline this process? CARET Legal’s document automation software will do the trick!
As an attorney, you’ll spend a great deal of your time preparing for cases by conducting client interviews. It’s a skill you learned early (and often) in law school — usually while going over the minutiae of what questions to pose to clients as part of your basic legal curriculum.
As cybersecurity threats continue to grow in both frequency and complexity, legal professionals are under increasing pressure to protect sensitive client information.
Regardless of the area of law you’re working under, taking an agile approach in the way your firm operates serves as a bold and compelling step towards becoming a more efficient practice.
Florida has become the first state to mandate technology CLEs. Beginning January 1st, Florida lawyers must complete a minimum of three extra credit hours of technology-related CLE courses, raising the standard to 33 hours every three years. The FL State Bar decided that lawyers within the state have a technological competence to protect and serve their clients as necessary. Florida Bar Board of Governors member John Stewart stated, “[l]awyers now have to be familiar with social media issues, e-discovery, e-filing, legal outsourcing, web-based conferences, cloud computing and record keeping, how electronic records are stored and secured, webinars, protecting their electronic communications with clients, and other issues.”
When searching for the best legal practice management software, you need to consider which application will best improve your firm’s efficiency. One factor to look at is whether the software can take care of all your firm’s needs from a single platform. Many practice management platforms integrate with multiple third-party applications as a means to increase functionality for their users and draw in prospects. Although it may seem as though your firm would benefit greatly from software that integrates with many other applications, this may not be the case.
Whether you’re setting out on your own to start a new law firm, or you’re looking to improve the organization you’re already part of, managing your firm like an actual business is absolutely essential to its success. A law firm business plan doesn’t just put your ideas to paper — it acts as an anchor for making both major and minor decisions.
A User Interface, or UI, is the series of visual elements that you interact with in a software program such as buttons, icons, screens, and pages. All of these elements contribute to the functionality and usability of the application. A successful UI has to be equally appealing to the eye and easily navigable, especially for those who would not consider themselves “techies” (perhaps this sounds like someone you know?). A well-designed interface can shorten the learning curve of an application, helping you perform tasks easier and faster without wasting billable time. For this very reason, some of the country’s most gifted designers, lawyers and technologists have been collaborating to apply legal design and innovation to legal products and services.