Does It Compute?

Custom Sort Order in PCLaw 10

PCLaw has always had an option to sort the items on your bill by date, attorney or task.
In PCLaw 10, it is now possible to have a totally custom order, although it takes some doing and can only be done one bill at a time.

To do this, first select the matter to be billed. Then, in the Register, at the lower left corner check the “Set Entry Order for Bills” box. Then move the time entries up or down to the desired order. Click “Save & Close” at the top right of the button bar otherwise this order will not be remembered.

When you run the bill, click in the “Fees” tab and set it to sort by by Entry Number first (otherwise it will not work). Then, on the Options tab, check “Select Charges.  When you actually run the bill (or pre-bill), a screen will pop up with the entries to be billed. Check the “Set Entry Order for Bills” box at the lower left, then check the entries to be billed (the check box is at the left of the entry)  and if necessary move them up or down.

As you can see, this is a fairly complex process and not one that you would likely want to use on a regular basis. However, if you want to put a writeoff entry in a particular position or if a specific client has unusual demands, it could be useful.

PCLaw 10 Released

PCLaw 10 was officially released at the end of July. There have been several quick patches, so it now stands at 10.01b.  Is it worth upgrading?

First, if you are using PCLaw in conjunction with Amicus Attorney or Time Matters, you should hold off. There are problems with the link with Amicus, and Time Matters 10 is not out yet (and apparently having problems). PCLaw should not be upgraded until any links you are using have been tested.

Aside from that, PCLaw 10 is a minor, incremental release. However, it may well be that one of the “minor” improvements is something you have been wanting for years.

For example, you can now change the font size in the screen displays of data. With larger monitors and higher resolutions, a number of clients have been clamoring for this ability. If this is you (and there are no other issues, such as links to Amicus or Time Matters), by all means upgrade.

Perhaps typical of the “if you need it, fine,” character of the new features is the ability to display time by hours and minutes rather than in tenths of an hour. For most firms, this is probably irrelevant: but for those who want it, it may have been a long-standing aggravation and therefore reason to upgrade.

Also, PCLaw will now automate backups every day, which is very convenient. On the other hand, as with some other new features, it is not very well implemented. You can back up every day, but there is no way to specify rolling backups, so that you only keep data for x number of days. So your backups will grow and grow and grow until you manually delete older ones.

Another minor, but nice, feature is the ability to pay off previous balances from a trust account at the time of billing. This simplifies the process considerably.

Supposedly you also have the ability to prioritize time entries on the bills so that, for example, time entries could be sorted in a custom order. However, the process involves so many undocumented settings and is so cumbersome as to be almost useless.

In a similar vein, although PCLaw claims that new tokens and capabilities have been added to the template editor, some users report that in fact some key tokens (in particular for income reports) and billing template features are missing.

If you are using Credit Card processing, you will also have to upgrade that due to changes in Federal regulations concerning credit cards.

You should take a look at the “New Features” list at http://support.pclaw.com/techdownload/plnew1001.pdf to see whether any of the new features are of interest to your firm.

PCLaw v. Time Matters: Can PCLaw Do It All?

There seems to have been a recent uptick in inquiries along the line "Do I really need Time Matters?" Can't I do everything I do with TM just with PCLaw? (Manifestly, this corresponds to increased dissatisfaction with Time Matters and LexisNexis).

The generic answer is pretty simple: If you have an extensively customized Time Matters setup (for example, do you have custom fields on the "Additional" tab?), and make substantial use of chains and triggers, then the answer is "No, you would not be happy with PCLaw." However, if you use TM mainly as a calendar and rolodex for contacts and matters, then PCLaw may be able to do what you need. As usual, the devil is in the details.

Calendar and Chains (Linked Events).  PCLaw has an excellent calendar, on a par with Time Matters. And while TM can be customized almost any way you want, PCLaw has a built-in "location" category (where is the appointment taking place), and is much more geared to billing time than TM is. PCLaw will let you create and store "linked events" (what TM calls "chains"), and notify someone of an appointment.

Triggers.  PCLaw does not have triggers (where one event "triggers" another).

Customization of Matters.  While TM puts everything "up front" on three screens, PCLaw does let you create a series of "Custom Tabs" that can be associated with a matter or type of law. As you might expect from a billing and accounting program, these are heavily oriented toward billing items. However, while you do not have options such as calculated fields, phone, social security number, web or email fields, the options you do have include dates, yes/no, etc. You have lookups of PCLaw fields but not customized lookup tables as with TM. However, if you wished to set up a Custom Tab to display all the dates for particular kinds of court matter for example, you could do so easily and display it all in one place (which you cannot do in TM).

Documents.  PCLaw will let you create merge documents which are similar to TM's merge documents. In terms of usability, they are somewhere in between formattable clipboards and merge documents in TM and will also let you access fields in your Custom Tabs. They will work with WordPerfect, but must be created in Word.

Timers. If you make use (or would like to make use) of timers. PCLaw lets you start timers from Word, Excel or Internet Explorer to track and bill time spent in those applications. TM does not do this.

And of course, in terms of overall time and billing functions, PCLaw is miles ahead of TM's Billing Matters (which is in the process of being discontinued by LexisNexis).

Data Import. You may have trouble getting existing data into PCLaw. When it links with Time Matters or Amicus, it imports the clients, but not any other contacts. However, there is a little-known utility called “pclawdi.exe” which can be downloaded from the PCLaw download site (http://support.pclaw.com/techpage.asp). You may have to fight with tech support to get the product key (it is a 25-digit key which was used prior to v. 8.20c, not the current 40-digit key), but the utility itself is free. You can import basic information – contacts, clients, matters and calendar items. Not complete, but a big step along the way. You will not, however, get any custom field information in your current program (on the other hand, if you have a lot of custom field information chances are PCLaw will not do what you want).

So the answer is.... it all depends on what you are looking to do. If you make a list of the five things you wish your current system would do, but doesn't; and another of five functions you absolutely can't afford to lose, and compare the result with some of the details above, you will be in a much better position to make an informed decision.

Budgeting: Getting the Most Out of Your Software

In the midst of a severe recession (to avoid the dreaded “D” word), firms are under a lot of pressure to get more out of their software.

One way to do this is to keep better track of your cases and revenue by availing yourself of the budget features in Amicus or PCLaw. Both these programs let you set up a budget for expected billable revenue and then generate reports comparing time worked and/or billed against the budget.

In Amicus, the timesheets page lets you set up a budget for the year and for the month, and then compare what you have actually billed to the budget. While most small firms know pretty well how things are going (good month, lousy month), it will help manage your firm to be able to put numbers on this.

In PCLaw, you set up a budget per month for each timekeeper. You can then run reports on budget vs. worked, vs. billed, etc.

PCLaw 10

I recently sat in on a Webinar/user’s group for PCLaw. The difference with the Time Matters user’s group was like night and day. First of all, the presenter stated clearly that while PCLaw has some resources for end users, at a certain point they would be better off hiring a consultant, and even went so far as to show attendees how to look up and find a Lexis-certified consultant on the web site. More generally, the presenter was obviously very knowledgeable about the product.

More importantly, as the user group reviewed the new features in the upcoming PCLaw 10, two facts stood out. First, that PCLaw 10 will be an incremental release. Given the recent layoffs of programmers and support people, this is probably a wise move. Trying to do too much could result in Time Matters-type disasters.

The second interesting fact is that although the new features are minor, they are in fact responsive to things that people have been asking for for years. So the response to the traditional mantra: “don’t bother upgrading unless there is a feature that you have been dying to have for a long time” may well be that there is indeed such a feature.

Some of the new features include:

The ability to change the screen fonts in the grid displays (i.e. in the Register). I have several clients who have been complaining about this for years.

An improved way to show courtesy discounts on bills. This has also been an annoyance for many people.

The ability to pay off previous balances from the Trust account – you didn’t use to be able to do this.

Linking PCLaw Client/Matters with Worldox

When various programs are linked – such as Amicus or Time Matters with PCLaw or Timeslips – the client/matter information is exchanged between the programs as well as time entries. Thus if you enter a new matter in one program it is ported over to the other one.

There is no such direct link between PCLaw and Worldox, but there is a fairly easy way to keep your client/matter list up to date.

You can schedule the Worldox indexer to import a given comma delimited file containing client/matter information every night at a given time, say 11 pm. So any accounting program that allows you to export client/matter IDs and descriptions to a given file can be linked to Worldox. The accounting program (say, PCLaw), exports the current client/matter list to a given file (say wdximport.txt) at 10 pm. At 11 pm Worldox imports all the new information in that file (leaving the information previously in Worldox intact). Your list is now current.

PCLaw does not have an automated export facility. However, it is trivial to assign someone to export the correct information (the Client, Matter, Description and Last/Firm Name fields) every day last thing before they leave.

This does mean that there could be up to a 24 hour lag between when the firm gets a new matter and when it appears in Worldox. To compensate for this, many firms create a “client” called “unassigned” or “newclient” or something similar. If you have to work on documents before a client/matter number is assigned in Worldox, store them under “unassigned.” Then, the next day, move them to the new client/matter number.

What's New - PCLaw Versions 6 through 9

People who have older versions of software frequently ask: “What are the new features?  Will it be worth my while to upgrade?”  This is easy enough to answer of they are upgrading from, say, version 8 to version 9, because software makers usually produce a “What’s New” document to answer just this sort of question.  But what if they are on version 6, or 7?  The old “What’s New” documents are usually lost in the sands of time and there is no easy way to answer this question (unless of course you had the foresight to save all the “What’s New” documents when each version and service release came out).

However, the other day I discovered that LexisNexis has posted all the old PCLaw “What’s New?” documents on their web site. While they may never have intended this to really be public, nevertheless, the documents are there, all 25 of them.  I have summarized the main new features of each release in a document in the Cheat Sheets section my web site. Here is a shorter summary of the most major new features in each release.

Version 6-6.6 (July 2002-Oct. 2003.  This is probably the most major release PCLaw ever put out. It included both the Matter Manager and the Register, which fully updated the graphical interface and allowed users to see all their entries in ways never before possible. Department Codes were introduced in v. 6.5. A number of billing features were introduced, including Quick Bill (great for real estate closings) and the ability to bill a minimum amount even if the hours don’t reflect it, or to add a percentage to billings. Custom Reports which let you design your own report were introduced in v. 6.6

Version 7-7.63 (Oct. 2003-Sept. 2006) was the longest-lasting release and included the acquisition of PCLaw by LexisNexis (April 2006). It introduced the Document Management and other “Front Office” features. It added improvements to closing matters, transferring matters from one client to another. You could now “drill down” on entries in Pre-Bills to correct them. V. 7 also let you produce bills, reports and G/L statements in PDF format. It enabled batch printing of checks. All in all, it build on v. 6 and was stable over a long period of time.

Version 8-8.20c (Sept. 2006-Sept. 2007). This was the first LexisNexis “yearly release” and was pretty incremental. V. 8.20c made major structural changes for Vista compatibility. It included the very convenient ability to change billing rates effective as of a certain date (so you don’t have to spend New Years Even changing your billing rates for Jan. 1). It allowed you to track time from within Word, Excel, Outlook, as well as Internet Explorer (which it had been able to do for some time). Data could now be exported to QuickBooks after Month’s End. The ability to export to Excel was added to the Register

Version 9 (Sept. 2007 - present). The initial version 9 didn’t offer much, and took away the Payroll feature (infuriating the small minority of clients who used it). It added a Credit Card processing feature via PPI.  V. 9.2 let you jump versions if upgrading (previously, you could not go from e.g., 6 to 9, you had to go 6 to 7 to 8 to 9, which was a pain. V. 9.3, just out, added a very nice “Matters List” that for the first time let you see all your matters in a list and perform batch operations on them. It also allowed for printing G/L reports in both Cash and Accrual modes (or Modified Cash and Accrual). As usual, some of the newer functionality is still partial and needs to be rounded out (the search feature for G/L accounts for example).

To see the entire list, check the “Cheat Sheets” page on my web site or “What’s New PCLaw.”

PCLaw 9.31a Released

PCLaw version 9.31a has just been released after a series of more or less disastrous service packs by LexisNexis for Time Matters and PCLaw. This service pack actually has some fairly significant upgrades and is clearly intended as a surrogate for PCLaw 10, due out a year from now. So it is somewhat more than a routine service pack/bug fix. To date, it seems pretty solid.

Of course, there is the new splash screen – LexisNexis has reverted back to “PCLaw” (as opposed to LNBOPBPCL9 – aka the software formerly known as PCLaw). A belated recognition by LexisNexis that debranding a known brand is a really bad idea.  (“....hey Mo! The poker game and goils are in the Back Office along with the booze!...”)

For many firms, the most important new features include:

– The ability to run G/L statements in both Cash and Accrual modes (or Modified Cash and Accrual). This remedies a big hole that used to drive bookkeepers crazy.

– A new “Matter List.” To my mind this is the best feature in this release. Prior to this, it was never possible to see an actual list of all the Matters and operate on it. Now, by selecting multiple matters, you can make batch changes on the selected matters. 

– Improved search. On any screen in the form of a grid (time entries, for example) there is a very tiny magnifying glass at the upper right of the window (just above the scroll bar). Click on it and you can search for anything in any cell of the grid. Very nice.

– For firms that are using only PCLaw without a link to any other program, it now features an internal “instant messaging” capability similar to those found in Amicus or Time Matters.

– For firms linking PCLaw with TimeMatters, if you use the Billing Form in Time Matters to send time entries to PCLaw, and if “Use PCLaw Defaults” is selected, the rate PCLaw uses is determined first by the default rate set for the given matter and second by any overrides set in the Split Lawyer Charges (but only if the overrides are not tied to a specific task code in PCLaw).

– Finally, it is now easier to send data to your Accountant and integrate any changes they may make when the data comes back.

Like most software companies, PCLaw does not release a bug fix list. However, generally if you want to know in advance whether a specific known issue you have experienced has in fact been fixed, you can get tech support to give you a yes or no answer to a specific question.

For clients who want to upgrade from a much older version and want to know “what’s new from version x to version 9, there is a complete list of the “what’s new” files buried deep within the Lexis website (I only found it by accident). You can access it at the PCLaw Whats New page.

PCLaw Pro -- C-Tree vs. SQL

Over a year ago, LexisNexis started to try to force PCLaw Pro users to migrate to a SQL database structure. Since that time, however, the SQL version has had numerous problems and many consultants have been advised privately by senior PCLaw techs to stay with the C-Tree version. Having been tweaked over many years, the C-Tree version is faster than the SQL version certainly up to a large number of users (40-50). Part of the reason for this is that when a firm uses the SQL version, many queries and reports are translated back to the C-Tree version before they are displayed, thus negating any possible speed issues. There have also been a number of reports with other problems with the SQL version, possibly linked to this hybrid structure.

It appears that LexisNexis is starting to recognize this, although the semi-official CIC forum is still rejecting posts that try to point it out in response to queries about the slowness of the SQL version.  Once such user recently emailed me noting that PCLaw tech support frankly acknowledged the problems with the SQL version and quickly walked their firm through reverting from SQL to C-Tree.

The C-Tree and SQL versions are installed from the same executable, just with different license numbers. So if LexisNexis refuses to sell you a C-Tree license (which has until now been their official position regarding end users), find a CIC has have them order the C-Tree version for you.

As for the CIC forum, founded about 2 and a half years ago on the “Three Monkeys” theory: Hear No Evil, See No Evil, Speak No Evil about Lexis Nexis products, they are not doing end users any favors by censoring posts that correctly point to issues.

Customizing PCLaw

Like most programs, PCLaw has a series of keystroke shortcuts. A list of them (and for other programs) is in a series of blogs I did called “stop mousing around.” The PCLaw list was published on September 24, 2007  (Click to see the list).

However, one of the shortcuts may cause confusion. Most Windows programs use Ctrl-P as a “print” shortcut. However, in PCLaw Ctrl-P brings up the Pre-Bill screen.

Fortunately this can be changed, at least in more recent version of PCLaw (I am using version 9.20f – I don’t recall when this option was introduced). Log in to PCLaw as Admin, then select Options | Customize. Click on the “Keyboard” Tab and select the function you wish to change.

To change the Ctrl-P keystroke, select the category “Billing” and the Command “Pre-Bill.”  Ctrl-P will appear as the current keystroke. Change it to whatever you wish.  Other keystroke shortcuts can be changed in a similar way.