LexisNexis' Firm Manager

Several people have asked me about LexisNexis’ Firm Manager, so I decided I should take a look at it. Firm Manager is designed as a low-end SaaS practice management program for solos or very small firms. It competes with programs such as Clio or Gavel & Gown’s Credenza.

First of all, it won’t run on Firefox or Chrome. They claim that with the Silverlight Plug-in for Firefox it “should” run, but I never could get it to.

So, it requires Silverlight to run, IE and Active X (configured in a mode designated by Microsoft as “not secure”). This is not a combination I would recommend to anybody, and is a configuration most SaaS applications do not require. So, we have a bad design from the outset.

You can synchronize Outlook with Firm Manager, but only Outlook 2007 and higher. I syncrhonized 2,500 entries in about a half an hour. After the first synchronization, it took about a minute to synchronize a dozen or so new items. However, it is not clear that the synchronization just does all changes to existing entries (deltas), since it is labeled “recently added items.”

Some of the features did not work properly. For example, when I tried to assign a batch of documents to a document type (“category”) and then upload them, I got an error message that a category had to be assigned. I had to indicate the category for each individual document before I could upload them.

If you have an earlier version of Outlook, there is an contact import template, but it is beneath rudimentary. It does not provide for a person’s title (Partner, Manager), allows only for a 2-line address, only a single phone number, there is no field for notes, etc. It is totally inadequate in terms of the contact information a person normally wants to maintain.

Even with virtually no data, Firm Manager is extremely slow (a problem it shares with many SaaS products). I hate to think what it would be like with any significant amount of data.

The application sends you an email every night at 9 pm containing your existing appointments, etc.  This could be a nice idea, but for some reason it sends two emails. In addition, there have been reports of people receiving an email containing some complete stranger’s information.

Pricing for Firm Manager is in line with what similar applications such as Clio, RocketMatter or Houdini Esq. offer, at $44.50 per user per month.

Essentially, Firm Manager is a 0.9 release. The world of SaaS products changes extremely rapidly and it is very dubious that LexisNexis has the agility (or the will) to implement improvements at a rate comparable to the competitors. You would be much better off with one of the alternatives.

Comments

[Clayton Hasbrook]

I didn't realize it was "designed as a low-end SaaS practice management program." I guess that makes sense because it seemed very low-end.

The document management with Firm Manager was terrible as well. I have no interest having to download a file and then re-upload it after I make changes (unless this could go quickly). I was assuming it was incredibly slow b/c it's a Beta, but it would take several minutes just to upload a basic document. Awful.

I guess they could offer some type of integration with NetDocuments, but then it would get costly per person for the functionality of the program.

[Steve Stockstill]

I think Firm Manager was DOA (dead on arrival).

When you consider Firm Manager’s limited functionality it’s obvious that Lexis is banking on their publishing and research reputation. Unfortunately (for them) their reputation in “practice management software” has developed a legacy of (and propensity to) sunset their products. Billing Matters and World Edition are two strong cases illustrating their past willingness to walk away from their investments.

Obviously Lexis is not trying to stretch the market with innovation. Instead, it appears Lexis is relying on the expectation of name recognition and trust. Having read John’s comment about someone else’s’ information being sent to the wrong account holder, that raises some concerns.

[Steve Shaw]

I was part of the public beta and couldn't agree more. SO SLOW.