TechnoLawyer: TL NewsWire

Today's TL NewsWire Hot Product is cloud-based real estate closing software with built-in title searches and integrations with real estate financial platforms (see article below). In addition, you'll find links to many previous TL NewsWire Hot Products, including cloud-based timeline creation and case document storage software designed for the legal profession. Don't miss the next issue of TL NewsWire.

For a while, it seemed like the cloud would bypass real estate closing software. Then last year one of the leading companies shipped a cloud version that we covered in TL NewsWire. Fast forward to the present and it remains the only cloud-based real estate closing software — with a bunch of new features added since our initial reporting.

Easysoft Online in One Sentence

Easysoft Online is cloud-based software for Closing Disclosure (CD) and HUD real estate transactions, including a new user experience, templates, and third-party integrations.

The Killer Feature

Easysoft Online works in desktop and mobile web browsers. The company adds new features every week, which you can read about from within the application. You can also submit feedback and feature requests, chat with technical support, and search the knowledge base.

Regulations have made the closing workflow notoriously dense with a lot information crammed into relatively few pages. Easysoft Online mirrors these same pages for familiarity but recently implemented an accordion-style interface so that you can open only relevant parts of a page at any given time (e.g., Origination Charges, Total Loan Costs, Prepaids, Initial Escrow, etc.).

"I've used the program already on one closing and it's working great," says Felix J Mendigutia, founding partner of Law Office of Felix J. Mendigutia. "I like the fact that I can access it from home. I worked on a closing that required me to redo the documents late at night since the lender was in California. They were working late and I was able to redo the docs without having to go to the office."

Other Notable Features

Among the major new features, you can now conduct title searches from within Easysoft Online. Other recent additions include automatic calculation of taxes and government fees for all 50 states, more options for calculating tax proration, support for Balloon Payments and Range of Payments for projected payments, and a bidirectional address book so that you can add new contacts from a deal document. Easysoft Online has also improved its Ledger by enabling you to combine or split checks.

Easysoft desktop users who migrate to Easysoft Online can now import their templates as well as all their data and prior deals. You can also create new templates in Easysoft Online, which saves time if you often deal with the same buyers, lenders, etc.

Cloud-based software has an advantage when it comes to integrations, and Easysoft Online is adding them at a fast clip. It launched last year with an InfoTrack integration for 1099-S filings. More recently, it added an integration with RynohLive for managing escrow transactions and fraud protection, Fidelity National Financial for title services, and Dropbox for securely saving and sharing the final closing documents in Word or PDF format. CosmoLex and QuickBooks users can import financial data from Easysoft Online for trust accounting.

What Else Should You Know?

Easysoft Online costs $69 per user per month. "For over 30 years, Easysoft has been a leading legal software provider trusted by real estate closing professionals nationwide, says Managing Director Jeanette Knight. "Easysoft Online eliminates the need to manually calculate complex calculations by automating the calculations for you. Using Easysoft Online make you more efficient so you can make more money from your work." Explore Easysoft Online and bookmark the website.

About TL NewsWire

So many products, so little time. Each week, TL NewsWire reports on the hottest new products for lawyers and law office administrators. The innovative structure of TL NewsWire articles enable you to quickly understand each product's value proposition, and then zero in on its killer feature and other notable attributes. In each issue, you can easily revisit our back catalog of articles and the most recent TL NewsWire Top 25 Products Awards. Subscribe to TL NewsWire.

Today's TL NewsWire Hot Product is the first cloud-based timeline creation and case document storage software designed for the legal profession (see article below). In addition, you'll find links to many previous TL NewsWire Hot Products, including cloud practice management software designed to get your firm up and running quickly while also offering a seamless path to more advanced functionality when needed. Don't miss the next issue of TL NewsWire.

Time plays a critical role in many criminal and civil cases. Therefore, displaying key events on a timeline is essential for depositions, settlement conferences, and trials — not to mention for your own analysis of the facts. Most legal timeline software remains bound to your PC, but a new timeline product runs in the cloud.

TrialLine in One Sentence

Law Father's TrialLine is cloud-based timeline creation software for lawyers that includes digital case document storage.

The Killer Feature

Travis Luther's wife needed to create timelines for her law practice but could not find a modern web app. So Luther, Law Father's founder and president, created a simple app for her. Other lawyers began asking for access. Sensing a market need, Luther spent several years developing TrialLine. Users of the software like it so much they refer to their timelines as "TrialLines."

Luther realized that lawyers need more than one timeline view so TrialLine offers four — Relative, Carousel, Slide, and List.

Relative View shows events in a temporally precise manner (the time distance between events), making it suitable for demonstrative evidence. TrialLine offers granularity down to the second so you can use it for injuries and other split-second incidents.

Carousel View displays events side-by-side in equal succession, while Slide View blows up events to consume the full screen similar to a PowerPoint presentation. List View offers a text specific spreadsheet-like experience that enables you to sort and filter by columns and isolate select events related to an issue of law or those that may require review by an expert witness. You can save various searches and views for later reference.

TrialLine offers two export options — export the Carousel View in a high-quality PNG image format for poster board printing or export your data in Word or Excel documents for full or category-specific case summaries.

"I discovered TrialLine while preparing an employment retaliation case for trial," says Sam Cannon, founder of Cannon Law. "Using TrialLine really helped us visualize the temporal relationship between my client's protected reports of sexual harassment to the retaliatory acts. In addition, by adding the defendant's pretextual justifications for its adverse actions as separate categories, we could display the lack of a temporal relationship between them and the adverse actions. This helped us simplify the trial."

Other Notable Features

TrialLine's event creation tool includes fields for the date and time, case-specific categories, Bates numbers, Exhibit numbers, professional providers, bills, text descriptions, and tags. You can also upload corresponding documents and videos and attach them to specific events. Your TrialLines display symbols on events to let you know they have associated categories and files.

As a case progresses, you and your colleagues can collaborate and append notes and comments to events. Additionally, "TrialLines can be easily shared online with clients and experts, allowing them to monitor case progress and contribute new or requested information," says Luther. Sharing occurs via a link in an email message. TrialLine displays all sharing history on one page, enabling you to easily revoke access.

What Else Should You Know?

For one user, TrialLine costs $9.99 per month for the software plus $9.99 per case per month for the document storage. Larger teams receive a discount (see the pricing page). The ability to store the entire case file in a HIPPA-compliant manner eliminates the need to use a digital archive provider like Iron Mountain. TrialLine splits the software and storage fee so that you can recover the latter from clients. Explore TrialLine and bookmark the website.

About TL NewsWire
So many products, so little time. Each week, TL NewsWire reports on the hottest new products for lawyers and law office administrators. The innovative structure of TL NewsWire articles enable you to quickly understand each product's value proposition, and then zero in on its killer feature and other notable attributes. In each issue, you can easily revisit our back catalog of articles and the most recent TL NewsWire Top 25 Products Awards. Subscribe to TL NewsWire.

Today's TL NewsWire Hot Product is cloud practice management software designed to get your firm up and running quickly while also offering a seamless path to more advanced functionality when needed (see article below). In addition, you'll find links to many previous TL NewsWire Hot Products, including a cloud CRM platform that enables law firms to capture leads and nurture them into clients. Don't miss the next issue of TL NewsWire.

With dozens of settings and even more features, a modern cloud practice management system can seem daunting. It's difficult to know where to start. Many features may go unused for months or even forever depending on the needs of your firm. Ideally, you'd be better served by a product with only the essentials that also offers a path to more advanced features when you're ready for them.

Actionstep Express in One Sentence

Launching this week, Actionstep Express is cloud practice management software designed for a quick start while offering more advanced features if or when needed via sibling products Actionstep Practice Pro and Actionstep Enterprise.

The Killer Feature

Actionstep was the first cloud practice management product when it launched in 2006. What is now called Actionstep Enterprise differentiated itself with its Workflows technology, enabling law firms to automate their business processes. Because of their flexibility and power, Workflows can require a significant investment of time to create.

Actionstep Express ships with a collection of pre-built Workflows for common practice areas. This eliminates having to build them yourself. Because no two firms are exactly alike, you can add your own custom tasks to each Workflow. Designate tasks as required or optional, calculate due dates based on triggers such as the completion of a prior task, and create and auto-assign tasks to members of your team. When someone completes a task, Express can create a time entry.

"Actionstep Express works out of the box, including pre-configured practice-area Workflows," says Founder and CEO Ted Jordan. "Firms can fine-tune the workflows by adding automated tasks at each step. Express is the best of both worlds -- all the advantages of workflow, without the setup hassle. Seamless upgrade paths mean that firms will never outgrow Actionstep."

Other Notable Features

Express provides you with everything you need to get up and running on one screen such as adding your firm's details and logo, creating accounts for your team and setting their permissions, and entering your billing and trust accounting preferences. If you currently use another product, Actionstep offers a data migration tool and can assist you with the move.

The dashboard in Express keeps you apprised of your tasks and calendar events as well as recent activity on your matters. The activity feed can also alert you about new prospects if you use Express' customer relationship management (CRM) tools. Visually track prospects from initial contact through engagement and add them to a mailing list to nurture them.

When a prospect wants to retain your firm, the conflict checker -- the same as the one in Enterprise -- can search all records with one click or construct an advanced query. Export the results in Excel or PDF format for point-in-time proof of no conflict.

Express includes several technologies designed to improve productivity and help your firm grow. For example, the Intelligent Timesheet lists events and tasks without a corresponding time entry. The Mass Billing tool lists all clients with unbilled items -- one click batch generates all the bills and emails them. Express offers many reports for analyzing your firm's finances and other data.

What Else Should You Know?

Express integrates with QuickBooks Online and Xero for accounting, Office 365 and G Suite for calendar syncing, and Word and Outlook for saving documents and email in matters. Express costs $49 per user per month with an annual commitment ($59 per month otherwise). If you outgrow Express, you can upgrade to Actionstep Practice Pro or Enterprise (the company also offers a "data back guarantee"). Explore Actionstep Express and bookmark the website.

About TL NewsWire
So many products, so little time. Each week, TL NewsWire reports on the hottest new products for lawyers and law office administrators. The innovative structure of TL NewsWire articles enable you to quickly understand each product's value proposition, and then zero in on its killer feature and other notable attributes. In each issue, you can easily revisit our back catalog of articles and the most recent TL NewsWire Top 25 Products Awards. Subscribe to TL NewsWire.

Today's TL NewsWire Hot Product is a cloud practice platform that eliminates the need for QuickBooks and other third-party products thanks to its expansive suite of features (see article below). In addition, you'll find links to many previous TL NewsWire Hot Products, including an Android and iPhone app for capturing billable time on the go, including multiple timers, voice-to-speech, and other shortcuts. Don't miss the next issue of TL NewsWire.

The branch of mathematics known as chaos theory posits that unpredictable events are normal, not out of the ordinary. Busy, growing law firms know this all too well, always expecting the unexpected. This explains why many seek practice management software to bring as much order to this chaos as possible. The more your software can do, the better equipped you'll be.

Zola Suite in One Sentence

Zola Suite is a cloud-based practice management platform that offers billing, financial and trust accounting, matter and document management, full email capabilities, and much more.

The Killer Feature

"Zola Suite is a fully-unified practice management system on which you can run your law firm without having to juggle multiple integrations," says founder, CEO, and Chief Product Architect Fred J. Cohen, J.D. Cohen often uses the word "robust" to describe Zola Suite. The Add New Entry button at the top of every screen serves an apt metaphor for this characterization. Unlike similar buttons in competing products, this one gives you access to all major functions instead of just a handful.

Zola Suite's robustness results in several key differentiators, the most unique of which is its built-in email and calendar apps -- an endeavor few competitors have attempted. Zola Suite works with Office 365, G Suite, and other services. You can encrypt messages using RPost (included at no cost), automatically save them to the corresponding matter, and record a time entry, all from a single screen. The calendar sends standard invites that recipients can accept in all major email and calendar systems. You can continue to use Outlook, Gmail, Apple Mail, etc. as you do now.

Continuing with this "robust" theme, Zola Suite includes an accounting system that eliminates the need for products like QuickBooks. You'll find small touches like showing the Sent Date on invoices as well as major timesavers like the ability to bulk email invoices, trust requests, and statements of account. Thanks to its ability to connect with banks, you can import bank and credit card transactions for faster reconciliations.

"We are a mid-sized firm and Zola definitely helped us grow," says Thomas Dunlap, founder of Dunlap Bennett & Ludwig PLLC. "It's a fantastic cloud-based solution for a firm with multiple locations and attorneys that need to collaborate on a single platform."

Other Notable Features

Similar depth exists across Zola Suite's other functions. For example, the trust accounting system prevents you from assigning more than a matter's trust balance to an invoice even if the underlying bank balance is larger, the billing system can track hard and soft costs, and the task management system has features like multiple assignees and subtasks typically found in project management systems. Reports include all the ones you'd expect plus proprietary reports like Timekeeper Productivity and WIP-AR-Trust for greater visibility.

Zola Suite also has features for your clients. The company's Caseway secure portal enables clients to pay invoices, scan documents, and communicate with your firm. Zola also offers a white-label mobile app that can be customized with your firm's branding. Clients can download your app from the Apple or Google stores.

What Else Should You Know?

Zola Suite offers three plans -- Core ($59 per user per month), Enterprise ($79), or Enterprise Plus ($89). The optional branded app has a one-time setup cost of $99. Zola Suite integrates with sister product Zola CRM for managing your marketing efforts. Explore Zola Suite and bookmark the website.

About TL NewsWire
So many products, so little time. Each week, TL NewsWire reports on the hottest new products for lawyers and law office administrators. The innovative structure of TL NewsWire articles enable you to quickly understand each product's value proposition, and then zero in on its killer feature and other notable attributes. In each issue, you can easily revisit our back catalog of articles and the most recent TL NewsWire Top 25 Products Awards. Subscribe to TL NewsWire.

Today's TL NewsWire Hot Product is an Android and iPhone app for capturing billable time on the go, including multiple timers, voice-to-speech, and other shortcuts (see article below). Don't miss the next issue of TL NewsWire.

Lawyers lead increasingly complex and harried lives. One unfortunate side effect is lost billable time, especially when out of the office. While there's no escaping the laws of physics and adding more hours to the day, you can prevent lost time by capturing it on your smartphone. And now there's a new app for that.

PCLaw Go in One Sentence

PCLaw Go is a new timekeeping app for Android and iOS devices that enables users of the popular legal billing and accounting system PCLaw to post billable time entries from their smartphone while out of the office.

The Killer Feature

The designers of PCLaw Go set out to eliminate barriers between you and capturing billable hours. The built-in timer enables you to contemporaneously record a billable activity and enter that time on the go. You can run multiple timers simultaneously and switch among them. You can also enter time manually after the fact.

Either way, the matter lookup in PCLaw Go quickly finds the applicable matter in PCLaw for the associated time entry. When tapped, the Explanation Field expands to consume most of the screen for comfort and context when writing a detailed description of the entered time. PCLaw Go takes advantage of underlying technologies in Android and iOS such as voice-to-text for dictating your description.

When the explanation field is collapsed, the time entry screen displays the date, duration, matter, client, task code, explanation code, and rate (including exceptions). Your firm can select which fields in addition to the duration and matter are required versus optional.

When you're done with the time entry, one tap sends it to your PCLaw software. The app confirms receipt. If you use Time Matters, LexisNexis offers Time Matters Go offering similar functionality.

Other Notable Features

PCLaw Go can remind you to enter time daily, on weekdays, or on a specific day using your smartphone's notification system. You also choose what time you want to receive your reminder notifications.

You can save a time entry in progress as a draft. The Drafts screen also lists paused timers. One tap from Drafts takes you to History, which serves as a dashboard. At the top is a calendar. Tap on a day to view all the time entries for that day and the total time captured.

"There is a high demand for busy professionals to stay connected, even when they are on the go," says Scott Wallingford, Vice President of Strategy and Product Management for LexisNexis Law Firm Software Solutions. "PCLaw Go allows users to capture their time from anywhere, reducing time loss and increasing revenue. We've incorporated useful features like voice-to-text, a built-in timer, and automatic spelling correction to ensure that this app is both easy to use and convenient."

What Else Should You Know?

PCLaw Go requires PCLaw 14.2.2 or higher. Getting up and running involves two steps. Your administrator installs a utility on your PCLaw server and configures PCLaw Go. Invited users receive a link to the PCLaw Go app via email. The app is also available for download from the App Store for the iOS version or Google Play for the Android version. PCLaw Go honors all the same security settings as PCLaw, and PCLaw Go transmissions are encrypted (none of this data is stored by LexisNexis). Explore PCLaw Go and bookmark the website.

About TL NewsWire
So many products, so little time. Each week, TL NewsWire reports on the hottest new products for lawyers and law office administrators. The innovative structure of TL NewsWire articles enable you to quickly understand each product's value proposition, and then zero in on its killer feature and other notable attributes. In each issue, you can easily revisit our back catalog of articles and the most recent TL NewsWire Top 25 Products Awards. Subscribe to TL NewsWire.

Today's TL NewsWire Hot Product is cloud practice management software that tracks "opportunities" in addition to matters, namely your sales pipeline prior to when clients engage your firm (see article below). In addition, you'll find links to many previous TL NewsWire Hot Products, including a litigation analytics product that enables you to analyze the historical record of experts and judges to inform your case strategy and brief writing. Don't miss the next issue of TL NewsWire.

Remember when you were a young lawyer and wondered where clients come from? Eventually, your boss sits you down, tells you about the facts of life, and asks you to pitch in with rainmaking efforts. Most practice management systems don't accommodate this aspect of your legal career, but one company seeks to change this.

matters.Cloud in One Sentence

matters.Cloud is a practice management system that covers the entire lifecycle of your clients, including prior to engagement when they're prospects.

The Killer Feature

Typically, practice management systems use a new client or matter the starting point for data collection. This skips the critical marketing and sales phase during which prospects contact you. matters.Cloud includes this initial phase, eliminating the need for separate customer relationship management (CRM) or intake software.

You enter organizations as you see fit. You can then add notes and tasks to help you close the deal. Assign tasks to colleagues and add other details such as contacts, addresses, etc. as you obtain more information. At this stage, there's no "matter" so instead you create an "opportunity" -- a term of art in CRM software that means a potential sale. You can track time spent on opportunities to analyze your rainmaking activities. Make your most important opportunities "Favorites" for fast access from the Dashboard.

matters.Cloud recently added a visual pipeline much like you would find in CRM products to better visualize your sales process. The pipeline functions like a Kanban board in which you move opportunities through each stage. To assist your sales outreach, matters.Cloud integrates with Mailchimp for email marketing.

"matters.Cloud utilizes the latest technology allowing lawyers to collaborate, interact with clients and get an up to date picture of their matters from initial intake to completion," says founder Fraser Mayfield.

Other Notable Features

The Dashboard in matters.Cloud befits the modern era with a Google Scholar search box and your favorite Twitter feeds alongside your most relevant matters and opportunities, monthly billable hours, upcoming and overdue tasks, and the time entry tool. matters.Cloud integrates with the popular writing service Grammerly to ensure clear and concise time entries.

The calendar in matters.Cloud shows your time entries for each day. Days without any time display the time entry tool for quick input. The matters.Cloud mobile app for Android and iOS also helps you stay up-to-date on time tracking, including the ability to initiate a call from the app and have the time recorded. "The mobile app has all the same functionality as the desktop web app," says Mayfield.

Given its emphasis on the entire client lifecycle, matters.Cloud offers conflict checking via its global search. Just as importantly, you can track all contacts associated with your matters and their relationship — opposing counsel, parties, service providers, etc. You can also create custom fields to track anything else of importance. Everyone with whom you've ever dealt will arise in your conflict searches.

What Else Should You Know?

Whether it's your state bar or GDPR, matters.Cloud enables you to comply with any applicable data privacy regulations. Thanks to matters.Cloud being built on Google Cloud, you can choose to store your data in the United States, Australia, Europe, or India. The company isolates your database and encrypts all data at rest and in transit. matters.Cloud costs $25 per month per user. Explore matters.Cloud in more detail and bookmark the site.

About TL NewsWire
So many products, so little time. Each week, TL NewsWire reports on the hottest new products for lawyers and law office administrators. The innovative structure of TL NewsWire articles enable you to quickly understand each product's value proposition, and then zero in on its killer feature and other notable attributes. In each issue, you can easily revisit our back catalog of articles and the most recent TL NewsWire Top 25 Products Awards. Subscribe to TL NewsWire.

Today's TL NewsWire Hot Product enables you to analyze the historical record of experts and judges to inform your case strategy, including an expert's track record on Daubert challenges and citations your judge prefers (see article below). In addition, you'll find links to many previous TL NewsWire Hot Products, including cloud billing software for solos and small firms with new trust accounting and other billing productivity tools. Don't miss the next issue of TL NewsWire.

Everyone engages in mind reading. It's human nature. But it's not a good idea when it comes to the expert witnesses and the judges in your cases. You're much better off analyzing actual data.

Context in One Sentence

Context on Lexis Advance is a new litigation analytics product that enables you to visualize and leverage the historical record of experts and judges to draft better arguments.

The Killer Feature

Context grew out of Ravel Law, which LexisNexis acquired in 2017. Ravel Law garnered attention for its judge analytics offering, enabling lawyers to get inside the head of a judge before starting a legal research project.

With access to the vast store of legal knowledge on Lexis Advance, including more than 380,000 expert witness profiles, the Ravel Law team has achieved a breakthrough they call "case-law language analytics" -- the ability to transform unstructured documents into actionable data.

This has paved the way for Expert Analytics. Search for an expert and Context displays a dashboard with charts showing that expert's case volume by year, area of law, and jurisdiction, and another chart showing the hiring party breakdown. You'll also find current and past curricula vitae, contact information, and more.

Click the Analytics tab and you see the practical results of case-law language analytics. The Challenges Outcome Analysis chart lists the expert's Daubert challenge history, including the percent of testimony admitted, admitted in part, and excluded. An accompanying table lists each case, the basis of the challenge (methodology, qualification, relevance, or procedural), and the outcome. To the right, you'll find the corresponding court opinions for exploring these challenges in more depth.

"A resource like Context enables an attorney to better strategize," says Diana Witt, Director of Library Services at Akerman LLP. "Leveraging its analytics increases the probability of winning a case."

Other Notable Features

Context also brings case-law language analytics to bear on judges with Judge Analytics. After entering the name of your judge, the dashboard provides the judge's biography, contact information, etc. High-level charts break out opinion volume by year and area of law.

The Analytics tab takes you to the judge's Motion Outcomes chart, which compiles the percentage of motions granted, granted in part, and denied by 100 different motion types. You can filter by area of law, court, and motion type. Click on the type of motion that interests you and Context lists the applicable court opinions and outcomes.

Context also provides Citation Patterns for the judge you're researching. This means you can cite opinions in your brief that your judge is likely to find persuasive. A chart lists the judges most frequently cited by your judge (including self-citations). Cards that resemble those in Lexis Answers group related citations by point of law and display the key language from each case for you to copy and paste into your brief.

What Else Should You Know?

"With a few keystrokes, Context delivers the critical insights and analysis attorneys need to more quickly and successfully prepare their cases for court," says Jeff Pfeifer, Vice President of Product Management. "When attorneys know what specific language a judge regularly uses, or how well an expert's testimony will stand up to judicial scrutiny, they are empowered to argue more persuasively and effectively on behalf of their clients. Only Context delivers this level of insight, right from the very start of the litigation process." Explore Context on Lexis Advance and bookmark the website.

About TL NewsWire
So many products, so little time. Each week, TL NewsWire reports on the hottest new products for lawyers and law office administrators. The innovative structure of TL NewsWire articles enable you to quickly understand each product's value proposition, and then zero in on its killer feature and other notable attributes. In each issue, you can easily revisit our back catalog of articles and the most recent TL NewsWire Top 25 Products Awards. Subscribe to TL NewsWire.

Today's TL NewsWire Hot Product is cloud billing software for solos and small firms with new trust accounting and other billing productivity tools (see article below). In addition, you'll find links to many previous TL NewsWire Hot Products, including knowledge management software that enables you to mine your firm's own work product and the SEC's EDGAR database for model clauses and precedents using classification technology pioneered by Intelligize. Don't miss the next issue of TL NewsWire.

When you succeed in business for 40 years, you gain valuable insights into what solos and small firms actually need. When creating a new cloud legal billing product, this means you can carefully add valuable features such as trust accounting, and avoid unnecessary clutter to maximize ease of use.

Kurent in One Sentence

Tabs3 Software's Kurent is cloud legal billing software for small firms that now includes trust (IOLTA) accounting as well as many new productivity features.

The Killer Feature

The Trust dashboard in Kurent houses the new trust accounting tools but you can access much of this functionality in other areas of the software. For example, from within a matter you can create a trust account, set minimum and target balances, send a trust request (these can be automated), pay bills from the trust account, and more.

Creating a trust request generates an invoice that you can email, print, or download as a PDF. LawPay integration enables clients to fund their trust accounts via credit card. To save time, you can batch send trust requests using criteria of your choosing such as all matters below the minimum balance. The Bank Activity and Trust Ledger reports enable you to monitor trust accounts.

"With 40 years of experience making Tabs3 Software, we have learned that most solos and small firms want an easy way to manage their billing," says Tabs3 Software President and CEO Dan Berlin. "Without elaborate practice management features to get in the way, billing in Kurent takes minutes, allowing firms to focus on their clients, not their billing software."

Other Notable Features

Given the new trust accounting features, Kurent lets you know about trust balances when approving invoices. This is just one of many new features Tabs3 Software has added to the invoicing system. Chief among these is the ability to combine invoices, which gives clients a complete picture of all their activity for multiple matters.

Just as you can batch send trust requests, you can also batch send invoices for legal work, including reminders for unpaid invoices (you can also automate reminders). With Quick Add, you can add a new client and matter on the fly when entering a fee or cost. Your invoices will be on brand thanks to a choice of invoice templates and a myriad of customization settings.

"I have used Timeslips for many, many years," says Doss Law General Manager Dennis H. Doss. "Kurent makes entering time a breeze, posting payments simple, and billing much easier. In my opinion, Kurent is a winner."

Kurent has added many new functions designed for the way many lawyers work. For example, you can add notes to matters and convert them into billable entries, create text shortcuts to speed up data entry, apply User Roles to limit access with a high degree of granularity, and create Quick View widgets that display data (e.g., matters with unbilled activity) and provide a menu of options for taking action. New reports provide deeper insight on user productivity and historical transaction activity.

What Else Should You Know?

Kurent now integrates with QuickBooks Online, including contacts, matters, payments, and refunds. You can migrate existing contacts, matters, accounts receivable, and unbilled fees to Kurent during setup. Kurent costs $26 per user per month with an annual commitment ($29 month to month), including unlimited support. Explore Kurent in more detail and bookmark the website.

About TL NewsWire
So many products, so little time. Each week, TL NewsWire reports on the hottest new products for lawyers and law office administrators. The innovative structure of TL NewsWire articles enable you to quickly understand each product's value proposition, and then zero in on its killer feature and other notable attributes. In each issue, you can easily revisit our back catalog of articles and the most recent TL NewsWire Top 25 Products Awards. Subscribe to TL NewsWire.

Read our latest coverage of Search Advantage here

Today's TL NewsWire Hot Product is knowledge management software that enables you to mine your firm's own work product and the SEC's EDGAR database for model clauses and precedents using classification technology pioneered by Intelligize (see article below). In addition, you'll find links to many previous TL NewsWire Hot Products, including a popular document assembly product rewritten with more accessible authoring tools embedded in Microsoft Word and a modern browser-based experience for end users. Don't miss the next issue of TL NewsWire.

When a law firm grows to a certain size, you become unaware of most of the work product being produced in your own practice group. Over the years, you can even forget about your own work product. Accordingly, being able to find and reuse past work product has become an essential productivity tool in corporate practice.

Lexis Search Advantage | Transactional Powered by Intelligize in One Sentence

Lexis Search Advantage | Transactional Powered by Intelligize (Lexis Search Advantage | Transactional), which integrates with your firm's document management system to better classify your firm's work product, incorporates the search technology of Intelligize for more precise and expansive search results.

The Killer Feature

Intelligize revolutionized SEC EDGAR searches — so much so that LexisNexis acquired the company in 2016. As a result, Lexis Search Advantage | Transactional is built on Intelligize, enabling you to search both your firm's work product and EDGAR using a similar interface.

The Intelligize integration brings more than 300 classifications to your firm's documents with a 90% confidence level. For example, document types include Articles of Merger, Asset Purchase Agreement, Stock Purchase Agreement, Underwriting Agreement, etc.

Not all helpful work product resides within your firm. With one click, you can transfer your Lexis Search Advantage search to Intelligize to find similar documents among all SEC filings. Another click takes you back to Lexis Search Advantage | Transactional.

"Lexis Search Advantage | Transactional Powered by Intelligize is one example of how we put the power of data-driven law in our customers' hands," says Jeff Pfeifer, Vice President of Product Management, LexisNexis. "This new tool in the Lexis Analytics suite sits behind a firm's firewall and helps attorneys mine enriched internal documents while searching precedent agreements filed with the SEC to deliver better client value."

Other Notable Features

Lexis Search Advantage | Transactional has a two-paned interface with your search criteria on the left and the search results on the right. In addition to entering keywords, you can also choose from several filters, including the new Intelligize document types noted above as well as specific deal points (e.g., gold in the backyard and sandbagging in merger agreements). Other search filters include document title, clause title, parties involved, attorneys, firms, companies, governing law, jurisdictions, and date range. Your firm can customize these search fields when you implement Lexis Search Advantage| Transactional.

The new tabbed interface for search results enables you to toggle back and forth among searches. Icons next to each item in the search results indicate document format (Word, PDF, etc.). A new "tags" feature draws your attention to a document's significant attributes. A designated team at your firm can define all the "public tags" for consistency. You can supplement these with your own personal tags (called "My Tags") that only you can see. You can use both types of tags to narrow your search results.

Each document that your searches reveal contains a rich set of metadata for quick exploration, including definitions, reps and warranties, covenants, conditions, and remedies and indemnification. Click a covenant such as "gold in the backyard" for example and Lexis Search Advantage | Transactional displays that provision in a snippet. You can export multiple snippets and compare them side by side in an Excel document.

What Else Should You Know?

Lexis Search Advantage | Transactional integrates with popular document management systems such as NetDocuments, iManage, and eDOCS. All security settings in your document management system, including ethical walls, are inherited by Lexis Search Advantage | Transactional. Explore Lexis Search Advantage | Transactional Powered by Intelligize and bookmark the website.

About TL NewsWire
So many products, so little time. Each week, TL NewsWire reports on the hottest new products for lawyers and law office administrators. The innovative structure of TL NewsWire articles enable you to quickly understand each product's value proposition, and then zero in on its killer feature and other notable attributes. In each issue, you can easily revisit our back catalog of articles and the most recent TL NewsWire Top 25 Products Awards. Subscribe to TL NewsWire.

Today's TL NewsWire Hot Product is a popular document assembly product rewritten with more accessible authoring tools embedded in Microsoft Word and a modern browser-based experience for end users (see article below). In addition, you'll find links to many previous TL NewsWire Hot Products, including cloud billing and practice management software that now includes full business accounting, eliminating the need for a third-party solution. Don't miss the next issue of TL NewsWire.

Document automation software has long promised to accelerate legal document creation while reducing errors. However, in the effort to empower end users, the authoring tools have traditionally added layers of technical complexity that impede wide adoption. With the launch of a new platform, a document automation pioneer seeks to make authoring more accessible so that anyone in any law firm can automate any document.

HotDocs Advance in One Sentence

AbacusNext rewrote its venerable document assembly software to create HotDocs Advance, which offers a modern user interface and authoring tools that run inside Microsoft Word.

The Killer Feature

HotDocs Advance consists of HotDocs Author (this replaces HotDocs Developer) and HotDocs Advance web application (the template repository and drafting tool for end users).

"HotDocs Advance is the new simple, scalable, and modern document platform from the market leader in document automation," says senior product manager Nigel Richards. "We have taken our vast years of experience building our market-leading products and crammed that knowledge into the all-new HotDocs Advance, providing our users with an unparalleled platform for creating and consuming HotDocs templates."

HotDocs Author resides in a tab in Microsoft Word's ribbon. From here, you can turn existing documents into templates using the HotDocs Field Editor, a palette similar to what you would use to apply styles. For example, you might select a party's name and convert it to a "Content Placeholder," a dynamic text field that can later be populated by the end users who run the template. You only need to create a Placeholder once as HotDocs Author finds all the other locations.

AbacusNext is especially excited about the ability to use complex, interdependent logic that built the HotDocs reputation without having to write code. Instead, creating rules resembles formula building in Excel, thus lowering the barrier to entry to the most powerful aspects of template creation.

These advanced template options include grouping related questions, conditional True/False or If/Else/Or logic to skip irrelevant provisions, connecting to auxiliary templates to add boilerplate language, mathematical calculations, and multilingual documents.

As an example, a template for an employment agreement can offer different provisions depending on the employee's compensation, title, and geographic location.

Other Notable Features

End users access dynamic interactive HotDocs interviews via a web browser. Each interview consists of form fields, checkboxes, radio buttons, etc. with progress indicated by green checkmarks. There's no need to fuss with formatting. The template repository now includes role-based permissions to selectively present templates to users, reducing the friction created by sorting through irrelevant templates.

HotDocs Advance Workgroups add to the platform's collaboration capabilities. Workgroups permits multiple users to collaborate within a template simultaneously, while maintaining audit trails of user activity and changes. You can even edit answers to quickly correct an error in a document.

According to AbacusNext, HotDocs Advance's modernized user experience can reduce drafting time by up to 90%.

What Else Should You Know?

HotDocs Advance can be deployed on-premises or as a cloud service. Integration capabilities include Active Directory to automatically define workgroups and permissions, connections to document and practice management systems for auto-populating data, and the ability to embed templates on your website for dynamic, self-service document generation. The new architecture that facilitates these integrations will make it easier to incorporate emerging technologies such as artificial intelligence (AI) and smart (blockchain) contracts. Explore HotDocs Advance and bookmark the website.

About TL NewsWire
So many products, so little time. Each week, TL NewsWire reports on the hottest new products for lawyers and law office administrators. The innovative structure of TL NewsWire articles enable you to quickly understand each product's value proposition, and then zero in on its killer feature and other notable attributes. In each issue, you can easily revisit our back catalog of articles and the most recent TL NewsWire Top 25 Products Awards. Subscribe to TL NewsWire.