The gold standard of legal technology information.
Is This the Most Robust Practice Management System of Them All?
January 24, 2019
Today's TechnoLawyer Buyer's Guide report covers a cloud practice platform that eliminates the need for QuickBooks and other third-party products thanks to its expansive suite of features.
Is This the Most Robust Practice Management System of Them All?
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."
Zola Suite's dashboard offers one click access to all features.
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.
