Yesterday I promised you a post about my initial findings regarding the VLO technology that's available out there. This is that post. For starters, lets lay some ground rules. First, this is not going to be a comprehensive list of software providers that specifically target the legal industry (Stephanie Kimbro has a great list on the companion site to her book). In fact, I'm not even going to do a comprehensive list of law practice management suites. What I will do is give you some input on a couple of cloud-based LPM systems and then discuss the two VLO platforms that are currently available.
My method for choosing which systems to cover was simple: find the ones with client portals. I chose to start there because the prevailing definition of VLO (and my working definition of VLO) say that a virtual law office is one that utilizes a client portal to facilitate attorney-client communications. Check out the list and my initial reactions after the jump.
There aren't very many software providers that give you a secure client portal to interact with your clients. In fact, the list Kimbro gives on her book's companion site only shows four services that utilize a client portal in some way. Of those services, three are targeted directly to lawyers and law firms:
Clio: http://www.goclio.com
DirectLaw: http://www.directlaw.com/
Total Attorneys: http://www.vlotech.com/
The other system I'm going to cover here is Rocket Matter. It's not a VLO platform and it doesn't have a client portal, so it gets to be first. Rocket Matter is a legal productivity suite that assists you with billing, calendaring, and task management as well as document organization and phone messaging. The most obvious way Rocket Matter can help with your virtual law office is by allowing you to go paperless.
Next up is Clio. Clio is the software suite that I currently use in my bricks-and-mortar practice, and I have to say I love it. Clio, like Rocket Matter, is a cloud-based legal practice management suite. It allows you to bill your time, generate billing statements, and manage your calendar and tasks. Clio takes LPM a step further, though, by providing you and your clients with a secure portal through which to communicate. You can upload documents directly to your clients file and then share those documents with the client. They can access the documents at any time of day or night. Billing statements can be shared through the client portal. You can even use an internal messaging system to send secure communications that are inserted directly into the file. Finally, external e-mails can be included in your clients' files by inserting a system-generated code into each e-mail. And that's just a brief overview.
That's the two purely LPM systems on the list. There are also two virtual law office platforms. We'll start with DirectLaw.
From the DirectLaw website: DirectLaw is "A virtual law firm platform that turns your law firm's web site into an interactive, online law practice."Some of the features of DirectLaw include direct client interaction online, the ability to receive payments online, document storage, calendaring, and something that isn't offered by a typical LPM software: document creation. There are three pricing levels, two of which provide you with access to a library of document templates. Documents are created when a client purchases that document and completes an online questionnaire that gathers the pertinent data. There is a variety of other features that we'll get into later once I've had a chance to explore them during the free 30-day trial that I intend to take advantage of.
The last software provider is Total Attorneys, the company that acquired Kimbro's own VLOTech. According to their website, Total Attorneys provides many of the same features that DirectLaw provides. These features include online consultation, online document sharing, online billing and payment, and calendaring. Total Attorneys is also very proud of their security features and their professional responsibility tools, including trust accounting compliance features, conflict of interest checks, and regular data backups. In development are features like integrated online payment processing. It's not overtly indicated on their website, but their blog and FAQ hint at a document generation feature that is integrated with the client portal. I'll have more on this one, too, after I give the 30-day trial a shot.
This post is meant as an introduction to some of the major players in the VLO software industry. Each of the services listed here has so much to offer that I couldn't cover it in a single paragraph summary. Look for a dedicated post to each of these providers at some point in the future, as well as my decision on which service I plan to use.
No comments:
Post a Comment