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.

Keeping up with a matter’s profitability is but one of the features on LawRD, reports wise. The Reports tab enables users with an array of pointers most useful to any lawyer or manager:

The following example shows how thoroughly detailed reports on LawRD are. Let us picture this: there’s this lawyer, who is partner in a firm, about to have a meeting with a client to debate the annual fee for the legal advisory service.

That lawyer logs into LawRD and on the Performace option, clicks on the Money report (data retrieved from our Demo Account). This report displays various firm’s financial data:

This report compiles data from all clients and matters: once the math is done, one can conclude that in the last 3 month period the firm billed a total amont of £131,635.94.

The lawyer, wants to see the data from this report that concerns the client Pub & Creativity, though. To do that, all that’s need is to use Filters, cliking on show filters:

To gather data from a single client just pick the name from the Choose a Client box, then click on Filter >>. The lawyer will then get from that report the following:

The lawyer has come to the conclusion that the client Pub & Creativity represents a revenue of £32,012.83, i.e., nearly 25% of the last quarter’s gross revenue (the time span of the report can be changed through filters). This is an important client… which will shorten the range for him to negotiate.

However, the report stands out an amount of £31,865.00 (Unbilled column) that has not been billed yet, during those 3 months. That makes the lawyer wonder: “Are we billing all the work my team has been putting into this client’s matters?”. By sellecting the Time report on the Performance option, he’ll get his answer:

Next, he has applied a filter to check the data concerning only the client Pub & Creativity:

.. to conclude that the team worked about 259 hours for that client, but only 143 of these were billed. This might prove to be a valuable argument when negociating with the client.

And all it took were 2 LawRD reports.. from a total of 24 that LawRD can provide, along with the possibility of customization (to be dealt with in future posts).

Adding to the new website and demo account, during this Fall 2009 other new features are now enriching LawRD. Such an upgrade results from our users community feedback, to whom we are thankful. The improvements are as follows:

• Events: from now on, it is possible to relate events to contacts and matters, by logging on LawRD important dates referring to actions and tasks needed to be acomplished. Such events are either public or private, in the latter case, they will be available only to whoever did add them.
  

• Setting fees per lawyer on matters: up until now, LawRD enabled billing matters accordingly to each intervening lawyer fee. Now, it is possible to set for any given matter, other fees different from the ones preset per lawyer.
  

  When setting up a matter´s team, LawRD will display the standard fees preset on each lawyer’s file, in case the fee is other than the preset one, just change it.
  

• Setting up a success fee in a flat fee matter: by the time a new matter is added, this value is a forecast which can be adjusted when the billing sheet is issued.
  

• Adding a new type of matter within the matter adding assistant: when adding a new matter, if it doesn´t match any of the existing types, now, one can create a new type without needing to close the matter assistant.
  

• The timesheet tab in Matter displays costs and fees columns: this makes way for a easier check on a matter profitability. At any time it is possible to have a grasp on the matter billing potential (Fee column) and the assigned lawyer internal costs (Costs column).
  

• Deleting contacts and matters: this new feature allows to delete unintended duplication of matters and contacts that usually occur during the early usage of LawRD.
  This feature is available, by default, to users on the Administrator and Manager profiles ( the latter can delete only the matters he/she manages and no one else’s) , but its settings can be changed by altering profiles:
  

• Billing sheet deduction row: when issuing a billing sheet there’s the possibility of mentioning a deduction to the total amount.
  

• New billing sheet PDF layout: the PDF billing sheet layout has been upgraded to a nicer look.
  

• Relating users to matters via users tab: that will make it simpler to relate lawyers to the firm matters which are logged in LawRD. Whenever a lawyer is related to a matter, Lawrd will email her/him notifying of that.
  

• Timesheet status: timesheets display now the following different status:
  No tasks: timesheet open by the user with no tasks logged in yet;
  Clear: timesheet open by the user wherein tasks have been logged but not yet approved
  To approve: meaning that the timesheet was sent for approval, but it hasn´t been reviewed and approved yet. In this instance there is the need for the user supposed to approve it to do so;
  Closed: timesheet approved.
  

• Searching through comments on matters and contacts:
  

• Self-suggesting tags: when adding tags, LawRD will suggest tags already added by users.
  

Other issues and glitches reported since the Summer 2009 upgrading are now corrected, e.g. retainers, reports and budget fee matters.

2010 will bring new developments, so we invite everyone interested in LawRD to keep posted on this blog. Thus, subscribe to our RSS feed or follow us on Twitter or Facebook.

With this entry the Quick Guide is updated once the matters feature had a big improvement, as referred in New Features- Summer 2009 Collection.

One of the new features matter type categorization aims at two goals: sorting matters by type and allowing Flat Fee billing.

One acesses to the matter’s  type configuration by clicking Configuration when the Matters tab is selected:

Within the Types of Matters option an array of types is defined to which a matter can be assigned to, when it is added later. Such types have to be sorted before adding a new matter:

Types of Matters can also be used to set the flat fee value which is a new way of defining fees. For instance, if the firm has a standard pricing or has a specific one for a client, these are to be inserted in the Amount field and it should mention wether or not in that amount are included expenses, checking the Expenses Included box.

The second big update deals with billing methods. Now it is possilbe to:

• Bill matters by the hourly rates of each intervening lawyer or by the value specified to that particular matter. Billing by the standard pricing of the firm or by a client’s specific amount, still remains. It is also possible to bill a success-fee which will be settled when a new matter is added, being it adjusted by the time of issuing the billing sheet:
  
• Flat-fee. This option has a pre-defined by the lawyer database with services which relates to a payment plan, as said before:
  
  Configuring payment plans happens in the Configuration menu, when the Matters tab is selected and whithin Payment Plans a calendar for issuing the billing sheets is set:
  
  With this billing method, the matter’s manager is able to check its profitability and keeping up with issuing of billing sheets. In the following example, an installment is overdue and this matter’s networth is negative - the light green column on the chart on the left - the total time spent times the hourly rate of the employee assigned to the matter is superior to the amount already billed:
  
• Contingency fee. A percentage of the recovery amount can now be charged (it can be adjusted when issuing the billing sheet):
  
  Profitability check keeps on being available to the matter’s manager and the contingency is a quick glance away:
  

Finally, there is a new help  Wizard when adding new matters.  These can be added by the following modes: Quick Add and Advanced.

In Quick Add mode the new matter is billed by the hour (be it the standard firm pricing or a specific one for that client) wherein the employee assigned is its manager.

The Advanced mode enables all the possible options for a matter (team assignement and other contacts related to the matter) and is also the way to change or complete the settings of a matter added in Quick Mode:

A handy feature is the name suggestion that can be selected when the client´s name is being inserted in (it works on both modes):

The deployment of IT in legal offices is usually related to big investments on expert labour to install, upgrade and maintain. Simultaneously it is demanded from the staff time and availability to attend training, to get acquainted with the features, to streamline procedures and to make the most out of the applications.

Taking the human factor at its core, LawRD is an intuitive tool allowing users to fully and immediately use it, with no need for training.

LawRD doesn’t aim to do everything. It’s goal is only the essential in a simple and effective way:

• Register all billable and non-billable, tasks, expenses and resources in a newer, easier and swifter way;
• Team work and data sharing from anywhere at anytime;
• Improve Customer Relationship Management, create timesheets and schedules, manage tasks and costs;
• Permanent control and update on clients, files, bills, current accounts and on employees’ productivity;
• Management reports on: billing, profitability, billable hours and risk and safety management alert system.

All of this through an Internet connection.

You’ll be the judge of that. Try it for 30 days, free and fully functional.

Welcome to LawRD … it’s now online to pro-fit your practice !
   
LawRD is a SaaS application aimed at lawyers and legal office managers, as well as those who run companies’ legal departments.
  
Get permanently updated reports on clients, files and employees, on the fly. Control efficiency, profitability and costs.

Any internet connection stops low activity times and allows for “Productivity 2.0″.
   
Being web-based, it’s safely accessed from anywhere at anytime, enabling team work to users. LawRD aims lawyers’ ever growing demand for mobility and their need to instant access to data in an easy and simple way.
  
Register for a free try now!
 
The LawRD team.