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.

Flawed software

I used it for about ten years, and each year I spoke to company reps about addressing the problems I saw. They promised but never made any attempt to address my concerns. I switched to CosmoLex,and it is significantly better.

Pros

Integrated time keeping, billing and accounting

Cons

Poorly formatted bills - columns don’t line up and tech support couldn’t correct it; difficult installation involving database engine, clumsy updating procedure when software versions released

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 The package was a bit out of date, but worked well until they tried to upgrade it.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.

You cannot auto pay for PC Law

Don't use LexisNexis PC Law. I have used PC Law for more than 12 years and loved it. But, if you want a convenient way to pay then don't use this LexisNexis product. They will not offer an automatic pay and it takes a call to their support in order to be able to make the monthly statement.

Pros

It is a good accounting program, but too complicated for most small law firms. I have used it for many years and learned how to customize it to our practice.

Cons

It takes my bookkeeper 30 minutes to get help paying our monthly statement because LexisNexis does not offer automated payments. That is ridiculous and at least 15 years behind auto pay processes.

Pclaw

The software was great. General ledger, trust, time keeping, billing, reports, calender, reminder system. Starting with version 12 it started slowing down and crashing. I would not recommend buying it

Pros

accounting portion and the calender and reminder system

Cons

it is no longer a functioning software. It is corrupted on a weekly basis. It is very susceptible to any inference by temp files, antivirus software, backup programs or the like. I bought it in 1996 and it was great until version 12. It has been hell since then. It constantly slows down and then stops. I would recommend buying cosmolex.