Hands down the best legal billing software I have ever used

I have found PCLAW to be the best solution for smaller law firms, where numerous timekeepers may work on a particular matter.

Pros

PCLAW has the best interface, once you've learned how to use it it is very easy to use, with a lot of features. Very easy to integrate with various insurance carrier portals. Easy to generate reports.

Cons

Somewhat of a learning curve. Can be expensive if you're adding many licensed users.

Used to be good-do not buy any more. The company is falling apart.

So in the past it was great. We still use it because we made it stable without pclaw help. I have also found there are independent people who will provide pclaw support. Use them.

Pros

I bought this in 1996. Until version 12, it was great. It could do trust and general accounting, payroll, time keeping, calendering, billing, and even case management. We do not use it much for case management. We do use it extensively for deadlines and follow up. I could do payroll in two minutes. It can do case managemen in regard to documents but we have no experience with it.

Cons

The problem is that it became unstable with version 12 and never became stable again. It can freeze easily and then you have to reindex the data which can take a while. Recently the support became nonexistent. You are on the phone 53rd in line. Chat does not connect and email response is non existent. If you have it, let me tell you what we did to solve the freezing problem. WE reboot the server and all workstations at least weekly. We run verify data integrity now once a week.

Former PCLaw user

PCLaw is a complete package to run a law firm with. Prior to the past couple of years, it was a pretty solid, although very dated, package. After a year or more of issues without resolutions, we decided to move on to another package. Unless major improvements are made to the product and it actually becomes a stable product, I would not recommend it. Customer service needs to drastically improve as well.

Pros

The original PCLaw package was very good and reliable. It had all of the features that you needed to properly run a law firm. The package was a bit out of date, but worked well until they tried to upgrade it.

Cons

The last couple of years had updates where each update was worse than the one before. When we would call customer support about an issue, we were told that we were the only ones having that issue. We later learned from other users that we were not the only ones experiencing the problems. Customer support was seldom able to fix a problem or solve an issue. We didn't install the last couple of "upgrades" due to the experiences of other users. Finally, we just move on to another software package completely. We had been users of PCLaw for well over 10 years when we finally left.

Was barely aceptable once; not any longer

When I started my private practice 6 years ago, this product was satisfactory. It integrated time, billing, and banking functions (though never easily or in a straightforward manner). However, with some effort, it was manageable. Now, Lexis Nexis seems to treat it as an pariah. They are pushing (punishing?) all users to switch to Clio, but seeing how they orphaned PCLaw users without support, why would anyone switch to a new product of theirs, only to suffer the same fate in a few years?

Pros

Relatively complete - when it functions without glitches (not often enough).

Cons

Lack of tech support - calls are not answered and messages not replied to in a timely fashion, if at all. Overly complicated Lack of clarity Lack of definitional explanations Since they began to offer Clio, they pay no attention to PC Law issues and problems (and there are plenty) and offer no support.

This Company and Product are NOT worth buying.

Customer service used to be the best in the software business. It is now non-existent. If you call technical support, our wait times always exceed 4 hours (No kidding). If you use the online "chat" service, you are in queue for at least an hour, and when it says "you are next - connecting," all of a sudden, the agent is "no longer available."

Pros

My firm has used PCLaw since 1994. It used to be a very good, intuitive, and easy to use program. It is now full of flaws that are not easily corrected.

Cons

The program loses transactions. I don't need to tell you how serious it is for accounting software to lose track of client funds.