Firm Central Software

Pros

The calendaring feature is great! Most of the people we have asked for help with the program have been extremely responsive and helpful.

Cons

There are so many options in the Deadline Assistant, that it is often difficult to find what I am looking for. For events like "Court Holidays" or "Attorney Out of Office" I have to create a fake client matter and calendar it for that just so the entire office can see it. I wish there was a way to make an event, viewable to the entire office, without having to attach a matter to it. Integration has not been as swift as we though it would be. It's laborious and extremely time consuming to move all our clients' documents from our current platform to Firm Central.

Pros

I like how it is very user freindly. It is easy to navigate, and customer support is excellent.

Cons

I would recomend that Frim Cen tral/Westlaw allow their customers to have trial access to their addins before commiting to a subcristion agreemnt (or an increase in their subcription agrrement). There are many futures that I think could be benifial to our firm. However, I want to test the product before commiting to it.

I would not recommend it.

Pros

The sales presentation was good. The software itself has not performed well.

Cons

It is not fully integrated with outlook - so every update to FC also has to be updated to outlook. Rule updates come late - our state revised its rule and gave 7 months notice of the rule change, FC is still making rule changes 3 months after implementation of the new rules.

Service requests are poorly handled and we often get bumped from one person to another who just want to talk about the experience. We still experience mistakes in calendaring (sometimes extra days are added for no apparent reason) and we end up having to double check everything which defeats the purpose of getting this software.

Pros

The ease of tracking time and generating invoices

Cons

hanging billable hour rates based within a matter is difficult and time consuming.

We like the software alot and customer rep. did a great job in training. We got up and running in a hurry!

Pros

The intuitiveness of it!

Cons

nothing

It was over sold in the selling process.

Pros

The fact that it is comprehensive in its approach.

Cons

The features have not reached their potential and need further development.

Pros

I like the ease of use that this software provides.

Cons

I do not like that the billing doesn't put all matters for one client on one invoice. Sending multiple invoices to one client can be confusing to the receiving party.

Overall I would not recommend this product. Work disappears from the software, and in a lawfirm this is unacceptable. The software needs to be 100% reliable.

Pros

I like that it is cloud based, perfect for small firms. It integrates with Outlook to schedule calendar items. You are able to work remotely becuase it is cloud based.

Cons

There are many bugs. The desktop application is often just gone from the explorer menu, things you import disappear or never upload to begin with. I am still waiting for TR to figure out why my documents just disappear.

I think we've consolidated information that was in multiple places. That's the biggest plus.

Pros

The search function is great. The deadline assistant is also very useful. We use it to manage our multiple clients with multiple deadlines and it's working beautifully.

Cons

The contact/client list is a little tough to navigate if you're going through the whole database to review data entry progress. The search function fixes that drawback.

Total firm management from one platform and scalable for a big firm with lots of cases. Project management team has been an absolute godsend for us!

Pros

The platform is so intuitive and the customization is superb. The system is quick and we have everything we need at our fingertips to run our firm for the foreseeable future.

I am blown away by how professional, prompt and helpful Project management team assigned to my account has been.I can't say enough good things about the team. they have gone above and beyond what I expected from Firm Central and stepped into the shoes of the tech assigned for my migration since he was away on vacation. Team helped us troubleshoot the migration process and we are up and running already with over 730 active lawsuits! AMAZING CUSTOMER SERVICE!

Cons

I would love a "batch" time entry option for the cases in which one task has been performed/applies to all.

Pros

It's laid out well; has all the features you need for firm management; the connection with Westlaw research platforms is also very helpful.

Cons

Mastering the billing aspect takes a bit of time, but the customer service can help you with this.

It actually protected us from a ransomware attack that annihilated all of our files on our server

Pros

I like the cloud-based technology and the constant updates to improve the software. Additionally, it is very user-friendly and the customer support is great. We love Customer support and she's always there to answer our questions.

Cons

Billing takes a little bit more time than my old software, which allows you to duplicate entries. I also wish that you could edit the "open date" since we uploaded older files, forgot to change the date and then couldn't edit it

Client/Matter management and organization. Document builder. Time/Expense billing and accounting.

Pros

Potentially any firm could be run on Firm Central almost exclusively. It's designed to contain anything and everything a firm could administratively need, and succeeds on most levels in that regard.

Customer service has been exceptional as well. Each member of the team that I have spoken to has been consistently helpful. In situations where they could not help me with my concerns, they took the information I provided back to their team to implement features on my recommendation - they even called me personally and excitedly announced the implementation of those features.

Cons

Some of the features show great potential; however, they remain half-measures and are therefore left underutilized.

For example, the platform offers a cloud drive functionality that automatically creates folders for each client and matter - but then nothing is actually saved in those folders automatically. The document builder only saves user input, not the document itself, and so the document must be downloaded and saved manually - and you're going to want to save them locally anyways, because anything saved in the Firm Central drive cannot be consistently accessed by other applications (e.g. e-filing service websites).

There are many other ambitious features here that will remain underutilized, but I've seen improvements just in the few months that I've been working with the program. Time will tell if these features will be fully implemented and incorporated into Firm Central's functionality.

Pros

I find the product very easy to use. The document storage and retrieval using Windows Explorer is great.

Cons

The calendaring software could be more streamlined. There are probably more items in the rule sets than there needs to be.

Pros

Very little in terms of pros. You can use the calendar, task management, it is a secure portal and for billing and invoicing.

Cons

You need to be a Westlaw customer for you to use this. It is at a high price and not worth the hassle of it. It does not provide the best way to use the system and nor is it client friendly.

Pros

The integration with westlaw researching is great. Firm central documents display when conducting westlaw research so you essentially can look on your own system for information while searching westlaw. The customer support is great, but if it's after business hours the 24/7 support is farmed overseas, which is similar to no customer service at all.

Cons

There are several small bugs in the software. You cannot drag and drop files from an email into firm central sometimes. the load time for larger files is unusually long despite a fast internet connection. Displaying the pages and moving from page to page is not instantaneous and takes too long

Pros

The interface is very easy to use and learn, it allows you to delegate tasks to other attorneys, and it provides one central hub where everyone on the team can view updates on communications with client and work done on the case. FC team is always available to answer questions.

Cons

It does not have a quickbooks function, yet, but I have been informed that it will have one soon. Also, there is no compatible smart form for intakes that would auto populate the information filled out by the client on an iPad to creating a new client under firm central.

Deadline Assistant
Communication In-house
Links to Calendar System

Pros

Deadline Assistant
Communication in House
New Matter Set up
Links to Calendar in Outlook
Customer support has been wonderful

Cons

Multiple steps while using Deadline Assistant
Can be a little overwhelming with all of the functions

It saves me a lot of time because it is much easier to use than other programs.

Pros

Speaking from the perspective of a small firm, this software is ideal for time keeping and billing. It is easy to open a client and a matter, and to generate invoices. It is easy to access off-site. The ease of use and portability to different devices makes it more likely that you will capture your time because you can just do it on the spot (e.g., in court) I also like that my client information is kept on TR servers rather than in the Cloud.

Cons

I would like more flexibility in terms of layout. For example, I would like to be able to make my calendar bigger on the home page, and I would like to have a bigger field for entering time from a Matter page (as opposed to from a time-sheet) so I do not have to scroll down to complete the entry

If you are a person who needs your computer systems to be intuitive and user friendly then do not use Firm Central. Firm Central offers a lot of teaching help, but it was still just too difficult for me to learn a "better" way of working with it. I thought that the frustrations I was feeling when I first started using the product would lessen - you always have a learning curve

Pros

Price is not bad. I was offered a "2 for 1" deal. Also, Firm Central is just generally a good price for a firm management system.
Great support. Firm Central offers a really in-depth one-on-one learning opportunity to help you get to know the system.