CosmoLex

Opmerkingen: I became a Cosmolex customer after being a customer of another practice management system and a customer of a widely known accounting software. My law practice incorporates general practice areas ranging from real estate/title agency, personal injury, litigation, family law, to probate and estate planning. With a variety of practice areas such as my firm, the challenges of practice management are complex because each area of the law has its own set of individual policies and procedures. The program I was using didn't capture my time spent on cases, nor created a detailed bill for my clients' review that completely captured all of the work my staff and I performed on their case. Cosmolex produces an invoice for the client that justifies my legal fee, which is essential to client satisfaction, and critical for ethical compliance purposes for cases that are accepted on a retainer or hourly basis. Not only do I earn more money because I'm able to quickly track time and expenses, but I also deliver a better product. Less time is spent telling my client what I did on their case but instead, allows me to focus on the particular legal matter the client hired me to solve. Further, the biggest hurdle to launching a successful law firm (I've only had my own law firm for seven months), is bookkeeping, and I have an in-house, nearly full-time bookkeeper which is also an accountant and is even qualified as an expert in a common accounting software system. However, with all of that knowledge and expertise, so much of my time was spent on accounting, and now it's spent on practicing law and a deeper concentration on my cases. This was not and could not have been possible with other accounting software systems on the market. Trust me, I tried them, and they only created problems. The other systems in the market (even those that are tailored for law firms) simply make the law firm work for the system, and not the system work for the law firm. Cosmolex is comprehensive. It takes care of the daily task delegation, case progress, and time tracking, accounting, employee performance, and reports. My experience has been an eye-opening one. My experience is mostly a relief because without Cosmolex I would still be living in the dark-ages of unproductivity and frustration.

Pluspunten: Ease of use, the simplicity of timecards, layout/design, price, functionality across multiple practice areas, ethical compliance considerations, cyber security protection, and mobility.

Minpunten: Lack of knowledge by customer support, inability of 24/7 customer support access, inadequate and burdensome contact importing process, access to library of forms and templates with incorporated merge fields, failure of bank integration for purposes of deposits, no app available, not synced with lexicata or another CRM service, doc mgmt could use some navigational ease of use improvement, no place for employees to insert their time for purposes of payroll, no spell checker, inability to make a matter designated as anything other than inactive or active (nice if had more options, such as closed cases, prospective lead, consultation only, referred out), migration of emails into cosmolex, lack of automatic matching of emails to correct corresponding client file (doesn't exist retroactive to joining Cosmolex at all, and once joined, the automatic email matching is rare but is much more usually manual entry, automatic base fee for commonly used tasks and expenses that would automatically be applied to each type of case's invoice for example, fax $2.50, copy cost 30 cents per page, courier fee $5.00, postage cost of $10.00, generate and open file $15, $10 document retention fee, and legal research $20.00, additional permissions for each user based on more than is listed under "role," label generator, sync with efax and adobe sign and google for work, ability to mark certain case documents as confidential and/or only for internal viewing purposes.

Opmerkingen: Pros: One program for almost everything. Cons: No document assembly; you can only link one person to the client portal; glitches in program- the program emailed an invoice to the wrong person; can not email through program; glitch- I had to give access to everyone for everything because the limited access features did not work; customer service is not the best; calandar portion has glitches when it interfaces with gmail and office 365.

Pluspunten: It is a comprehensive software. Its like having Quickbooks and a practice management program in one. This is the best feature.

Minpunten: Lots of glitches: (a) it emailed an invoice to the wrong person; (b) user restrictions do not work in my office; (c) calendar is not on the main page- usability is difficult for some tasks; (d) you can only have one person assigned to the client portal. Does not have email capabilities Does not have document assembly Does not have automatic assignment of matter numbers. Limited reporting features- you can not tailor reports (financial)- very limited.

Opmerkingen: Three software packages for billing, client accounting and back-end was TOO MUCH!

Pluspunten: Everything was in one place. I didn't have to generate bills in one package, enter them in another for tracking income, and then pay them in two places as well. It is also great to be able to write a cost check in a case and have the expense "attached" to the client's accounting file/bill in a seamless matter with just an additional click or two. We were promised an easy migration with all the support we needed, and that is what the team at Cosmolex delivered! Our accountant was also able to access the system for his end of the year work and add all of his journal entires and such and close out the books quickly and easily. The ability for us to generate P&L reports and other important accounting documents literally on demand is also pretty awesome. But the best part about Cosmolex, by far, is their incredible support team. They have never been stumped, and I've done my best to do just that! Every time I have a question, I get a prompt and complete answer, generally by phone, from one of their support staff who know me and my firm on a first-name basis. I don't think I could be nearly as effective in a dual-role position without this software!

Minpunten: I can't think of anything additional at this point; they have added all MY wishlist items! I think the only thing they could add at this point is a "hotline" 24/7!

Opmerkingen: I was looking for a complete solution to my practice management and accounting needs.

Pluspunten: I tried various other platforms including PCLaw and Clio, but they lacked in usability or functionality compared to CosmoLex. PCLaw is outdated, slow and not cloud based, while Clio lacks firm accounting functionality and though they advertise quickbooks syncing, there are major issues with the syncing that requires a great deal of work by the end user. CosmoLex is able to do virtually everything Clio can do with respect to practice management and even has a few unique features. However, where CosmoLex really shines is with its built in accounting system. As a Canadian Lawyer we require certain functionality that our American counterparts do not and CosmoLex has done a great job of meeting our needs. CosmoLex can properly deal with our HST/GST/PST issues and payments as well as offer us accrual based accounting as we are required to use by law. There is NO other cloud based platform with an all-in-one solution for Canadian Lawyers. This is a time and money saver for any firm.

Minpunten: I would like to see document generation (of all sorts), multiple clients per matter, the ability to generate Client I.D. Forms from the contact information. Also helpful would be the ability to attach scanned receipts, cheques, and bills to accounting entries similar to the functionality in QuickBooks. Some minor efficiency changes like being able to select certain options when creating an entry rather than having to re-open it afterwards.

Opmerkingen: I am practicing law more than I am fighting with accounting software for lawyers!

Pluspunten: It does front and back office and IT WORKS. Very little technical support needed on a regular basis. It allows clients to make payments online through an invoice link and cosmolex is partnered with LawPay.
Also integrates well with outlook exchange and all programs like google, onedrive, dropbox ;
allows all emails to be saved to the associated matters for easy access.
billing process is fairly simple
the invoice links are keeping receivables down as client's can pay their bills 24/7.
bills are able to be emailed easily and in bulk;
invoice reminders and trust deposit requests are easily sent out without the need to draft letters individually to the clients.
I could go on and on......

Minpunten: Hard to complain about much with this program. It depends on your needs. For me there are still some features I am used to from my server based program that are not availableyet in this cloud based software, but there are lots of things in the works. It seems each month a new feature is released that I had learned to live without or work around. The things I am missing right now are invoices saved automatically to a matter in a hard pdf when initially generated. The original invoice cannot be recreated unless you physically print or save a downloaded copy at the time they are generated.