Post by Braz Pereira, muchBeta’s Chief Commercial Officer:

Since we got LawRD out, we’ve had a two way approach as to spread its users community: the Internet and its social networks and the direct approach to legal practice professionals.

When contacting law firms for demoing LawRD (on the premises or online), we’ve systematically faced the ’software salesperson stigma’, which recalls them an array of bad memories from previous cases of IT deployment: the need for training, trying to figure how ‘this and that’ is done or bothering someone with tons of questions about it, trying to get in contact with the vendor to solve problems and glitches and never getting to solve them in due time, …

It’s by the time when clients realize that LawRD is altogether different from what they’re used to, or someone who has used or already using LawRD recommends us, that the ’software salesperson’ label gets yanked off. From then on things get smoother, our clients can immediately spot what sets our app from the rest: easy and intuitive use, available from any Internet connection, free 30 day trial, great pricing and no need for upfront investment.

Aiming to override this hurdle when presenting LawRD, we’ve come up with an affiliates program so we can support and reward those willing to make LawRD known and used by the most number of users. This means that we will pay a monthly amount for as long as 10 years, per active user each affiliate brings to us. Whoever has tested LawRD’s performance has the chance of having an extra source of income, helping us overcome the ’software salesperson stigma’ by scheduling LawRD demos.

We have a SaaS application for supporting the email contacts from our affiliates, which allows them to keep up with their contact performance and who have read their emails and when.

The challenge is set. It pays to pay a visit to affiliates.lawrd.com:

Post by Braz Pereira, muchBeta’s Chief Commercial Officer:

When we first started to develop LawRD, we were quite aware that, in many fronts, the concept we meant to come up with was going to be ground-breaking to most law practice professionals.

The innovation here, is the fact that LawRD is a service, not software sold in a CD-ROM demanding an upfront investment and periodical upgradings.

Being a SaaS, all its data is hosted in the “cloud” (Amazon data centers in LawRD’s case) thus being available through any Internet connection, freeing its users from concerns with servers, firewalls, viruses, IT infrastructure, compatibilities and safety.

LawRD has a mandatory free 30-day trial, no upfront investment and its monthly payment is done  accordingly to the number of active users. No long-term contracts or commitments, quit when you want to.

These facts are self-evident and, in our view, point to the new paradigm to which we move into at fast pace (thanks Gmail, homebanking, Salesforce and all other that paved the way to solutions such as LawRD).

The awareness for these advantages really stands out when a software “glitch” turns up, though. Usually, users call the software vendor presenting a complaint or asking for customer support. Then, a location visit from a technician is scheduled, which never happens as soons as needed, plus there are delays of all sorts, traffic jams and other setbacks until the problem is fixed and that support is paid for.

On the other hand, LawRD’s support is requested through the application itself:

Right away, LawRD team takes charge of the situation and, on most instances, users doubts are cleared or the problem is solved in a couple of hours. Most of our replies to help requests are just to inform our clients that the situation they contacted us for in the first place, is now solved.

Odd as it may seem, it is there and then, when doubts and problems arise, that we can better prove the edge that SaaS presents, being much more than software that one must pay for the the right to use it, LawRD is actually a service, provided by a team that stands only a click away, to solve any doubts or problems from our clients, in a quick and swift way, shortening waiting and offline times to a minimum.

To conclude, for LawRD, solving doubts and problems, is a deciding factor in our clients trust and satisfaction.

Transcription of an original post by Rui Amores, lawyer and partner at RA Law Office, from the Inconfidencias (content in Portuguese only) blog:

“The legal practice is the worst managed and most productivity challenged of all practices, probably. I’m talking about Portuguese legal practice, a small one, with little resources, few employees: solo practitioners, so to speak. It may not sound pleasant that the legal practice is not just of public interest but a livelihood for many who must support their families, pay for their children’s education, pay the bills, i.e. the  sort of needs that all PEOPLE have to face.

At times it seems to be a heresy, a gross fault when a law firm is profitable, well run and squanders neither  time nor money. It should always be available and willing to spend mercifully time away to whom may want to take advantage from us, may they be clients who happen to have forgotten their wallets at home and so not paying for the consultation, or simply the courts and Judges always counting on us to be at their service.

Well, it doesn’t have to be so. It can not be so. A law firm has to know:

• How many clients it has;
• How to contact them swiftly;
• The time spent on each task;
• Expenses and costs per matter;
• The matters there are per client;
• What is the billing at any given moment.

Computers are great and effective when assessing on the above goals, Up until recently we were dependent on software that generally was little user friendly; expensive since there was the need for a license for each user; it had to be installed on our computer or it  had to run on an intranet, which seldom happens in law firms.

On the other hand, law firm management software overlooked the fact that at this day and age, law practice happens not only in the office, as well as in the court houses, state buildings and generally wherever clients have their interests located. Adding to this, there is the fact that laptops are taking the place of the old pen and paper at courts lounges and court rooms.

Not long ago, it came to light in Portugal, a law firm management system that meets all these needs, namely, accessing at anytime and from anywhere an online platform and therein log everything that has been done for a client. LawRD, that is the name of such a platform that provides the answers to the issues afore described. It is quite worthy to give it a try for 30 days, completely free.

I did and I’m enjoying it.

If you want to know more on the system’s features and potential watch this video:”

Uplifting news to start 2010 with: DreamSimplicity.com website ranked LawRD - Reports on Demand on its Top 25 web solutions:

http://www.dreamsimplicity.com/top25.html

DreamSimplicity is a SaaS (Software-as-a-Service) solutions directory wherein one can find articles, news, videos and events on this industry.

We stress out one of the main features of SaaS solutions: there’s nothing to install and start working right away. It is easy as pie working with LawRD on your daily life: it just takes an Internet connection, a web browser  and link to http://www.lawrd.com.

We are waiting your visit.

LawRD has taken another step towards introduction to the international market, by joining a restricted group of sponsors of the II Competencia de Arbitage Comercial that took place at the Universidad de Buenos Aires, from 24 through 28  September last.

The event, a joint collaboration of the Law College of the Universidad de Buenos Aires and the Jurisprudence College of the Universidad del Rosario (Bogotá), enrolled over 400 participants from allover Latin America, who were given the chance to work on practical matters on Commercial Arbitration, had the guidance of professionals from top level law firms in this legal area.

This opportunity was presented to us by Estefania Santos, an argentinian lawyer who is an expert on legal issues concerning IT and author of the blog Internet y Derecho, whose most professional support in the introduction of LawRD to the argentinian market made our participation possible.

According to Estefania, LawRD’s presence there was a successful one due to the fact that it is a SaaS, by its interface and ease if use, and the usefulness of its reports, accessible at any time from an internet connection, being these what  mainly made the app stand out from the competition.

This event stands as a milestone from LawRD in the latin american market, by delivering an innovative and insightful service.

Below you can see the LawRD video we made specially for the event and that caught everyone’s ear at the meeting:

It took place in Brussels on the 25-26th of September last the European Lawyers Brussels Conference.

The event was organized by the European Lawyers team. This group gathers presently 2.873 lawyers from allover the world on Facebook and is a perfect example of the power of networking that the internet enables like the BBC points out.

LawRD - Reports on Demand could not fail to support this event. The photo depicts our COO when presenting our law firm management SaaS application at the conference:

LawRD team wishes to say thanks to the organization and everyone at the conference for the nice and professional manner in which we were received.

Sam Glover, Editor in Chief at Lawyerist.com, posted a review on LawRD - Reports on Demand titled: LawRD: Affordable Law Practice Management Software as a Service.

Beyond welcoming a new competitor in the SaaS world aiming at law firms, Sam Glover points out:

• The features that make LawRD stand out from the competition: “LawRD has some features the competition lacks, such as smart, preset billing configurations, always-present contextual help, and a great interface.”
• The reports issued by LawRD: “RD stands for Reports on Demand, and LawRD excels at providing helpful, good-looking reports for all aspects of your law practice, from productivity to profitability.”
• LawRD pricing: “But for all that, LawRD’s best feature may be its price. (…) LawRD has a realistic pricing structure, just $20 per user, a third of the others”

One more thing to clear the issue on server location: LawRD uses Amazon’s AWS, therefore the datacenter is not located in Portugal

Sam Glover wraps up saying the following: “Overall, though, I was quite impressed with LawRD”.

Maria Spínola a Cloud Computing evangelist issued a white paper titled: An Essential Guide to Possibilities and Risks of Cloud Computing, wherein she writes:

“Cloud Computing proposes to transform the way IT is deployed and managed, promising reduced implementation and maintenance costs,  while accelerating innovation, providing faster time-to market (…)”

“Cloud Computing is not a technology revolution, but rather a process and business (…) without investing in new infrastructure, training new personnel, or licensing new software and you only pay what you ‘consume’.”

Nicole Black, a lawyer, blogger and law book writer, mentions LawRD on her article Law Practice Management in the Cloud posted in the Practicing Law in the 21st Century-A Law & Technology Blog.
 
Nicole singles out three SaaS solutions presently available:

If, after balancing the benefits and drawbacks, you decide to use a Web-based practice management system, there are a number of excellent SaaS providers that offer software to manage law practices online, including Clio (www.goclio.com), Rocket Matter (www.rocketmatter.com) and LawRD (www.lawrd.com).
 
This article is worthy careful reading once it sums up in few words the advantages of the SaaS model:

Advantages include lower costs due to reduced overhead, less hassle related to maintaining the and upgrading the case management system and greater flexibility, since the Web-based system can be accessed anywhere, at anytime.

LawRD is always evolving so it can meet our clients demands. One of the advantages of SaaS applications is that as soons as updates are implemented they are immediately available to LawRD’s users.

Adding comments is a newly implemented feature - such comments can be either public or private and the status can be altered at any time - there is the possibility of attaching files to Contact and Matters.

The image below depicts a row of comments on a contact:

The feature works exactly the same way on Matters. To add a comment just choose that tab within Matters:

The comment must have a ‘category’ and it is up to the manager of the system to define the types of categories on LawRD settings:

Once the text is written, its status must be defined, i.e. public or private and attach a file (optional). Just click on ‘Save’ and the comment is added: