Practice Management for Legal Accounting

Welcome to Accountants LawPod, where accounting professionals and law firms converge. Hosted by Lynda Artesani, Sarah Prevost, and Stephen Libhart.

Welcome back to the podcast, everyone. And this week we're going to talk about practice management for a law firm. So practice management tools or just practice management in general. Hmm, who should I pick first to kick it to? I'm going to kick it to Steve. I was saying no.

And I need to take a break. I'll see y'all later.

Oh, okay.

Bye.

We don't want to tell you software on the podcast that we think is better because it might— there's not one size fits all. And there's never— I always say there's never a perfect software. There's always going to be, unless you built it yourself, then there's really—

Even then, even then, I've been in a build and it— no. Not easy.

So that kind of rolls into like, how do you know where to begin? Like, how do you— what software do you think you want to go to? What are you looking for? What do you think some of the things are that you would be looking for, Steve, in a software?

Well, so I've got a list of 10 things that you need to consider when you talk about legal practice management software. One is case and matter management, which enables you to organize and manage your cases and matters. Time tracking and billing, which is huge. And again, to your point, not one size fits all. So, you know, flat rates versus hourly versus contingency, you know, those sorts of things.

I was going to ask you, Steve, on that first one though, like if we don't run through it, but just kind of go piece by— so on that first one, wouldn't a factor to consider is how are they organized now in the firm?

Exactly.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Access.

What are you using? Are you using Google Sheets?

Are you using like And what do you like and don't like about what you're doing?

Right.

You know, what, what do you want it to do?

Yeah. Is it, yeah, jointed where you're using a little something over here for this and a little something over here for that? Is it some, is it something that you're using a different amount of pieces for that you think might be best served by one software?

Kind of like in the firm, let's say you're a solo attorney and then you get a part-time paralegal. Or a contract paralegal to help you, then you're growing. And what works for the two of you, possibly, or the three of you, might work. But like you're saying, Lynda, when you get into the space where you need to really manage it, or the type of practice area you're in—

Exactly.

So that you've got that layer. So that's why I'm asking first, is if we just kind of take it in bite-sized chunks, that first one on the nose, it— to your point, Lynda, are, where do you hold all this data? And to me it's like, where do you hold it? But also who has permissions? Who needs to know this information? Before you look at a software, you might wanna take a moment to kind of review. Now mind you, we all know everyone gets recommended software like nobody's business. My friend down the street, we've brought this up before in past podcasts. Oh, the down the street part. How things happen.

They could be in court and like, well, my buddy uses, loves this software.

Yeah.

And like, oh, I don't know if that will work for you. Because, because so involving in the tax, the accountant or the tax person or whoever, probably not the tax person, but involving your bookkeeper or accountant might be helpful because we know it maybe works better with the accounting software.

Yeah. Yeah.

If it integrates, if it doesn't integrate, or if you have to manually integrate, that's a hurdle that you have to climb over. Yeah.

Well, you know, I think of, I think of docketing software. You've got to be really careful in the type of law practice that you have because, you know, you might be docketing just for your state, which is really focused. But then all of a sudden, if you're doing something in Delaware, you know, you've got to be able to have that tool look up what's going on in the, in the courts in Delaware, you know, and Dussault doesn't do that for you. What— it's not that just because your buddy's using it in his practice, he might not be doing law just in your state. You know, he's, he's multi-state. Go ahead. I know that, that pinged you on something.

I was just thinking, but he's also maybe not, and we see this all the time, they're using a software, but it's not to its full capacity.

Right.

And Lynda and I get those questions.

There's a lot of time savings in using the tool to its fullest extent.

Yeah.

Like the templates and stuff.

I guess so that one. And then I think from there, like you're saying, Steve, the second one on your list was—

The time tracking and billing.

Yeah. This was interesting because Lynda and I were chatting last night with a colleague and we, it's flat rate or fixed fee, I guess you could say. And obviously you're paying your staff, but tracking against that, what does it look like? What is the productivity rate to that? We didn't quite talk about it in that space, but I mean, Lynda, that's where we were sort of driving in some of the conversations.

Yeah, because it's, it could have a very variable, right? If you're not tracking it, I think you still have to track it. And I think sometimes people think of flat fee, you don't have to think about the time anymore, but you kind of do.

You want to know—

Well, look at the guest. Look at the guest we had a few weeks ago on the podcast, Doug Richards, when he said he was in a flat fee environment and he realized that he was so good at settling the cases for the type of work that he does that he felt like he was overcharging. And so when he went to hourly, it all started making more sense. And so again, that we keep, you know, emphasizing this, it's not one size fits all. You've really got to look at what type of law are you doing, who are your clients, what are the results you want to get, and then go shopping for the software. There's, there's been times where I've taken a potential client and I'll set up an appointment with a LeanLaw, a Clio, a MyCase, you know, I'll do 3 or 4 of them and we'll go through it and I'll say, now think about what fits your firm the best. And they really appreciate that. Because they're involved in that process. They're not— and I do because I know I'm not just getting a client that's like, oh, I'll just put me in this and we'll be fine.

You know, you can do a salesperson at that point too, right? So you're meeting with a salesperson that wants the sale, right? It's the best scenario for the client because they're trying to sell. So you want to have somebody, and they're knowledgeable in software, but you know what their needs are better than probably them. And that's in some respects—

And you know what else it does is it gets them involved in the process when they do sign up for the software.

Yes.

So that if you can't answer a specific billing question for them, they're, they're, they've already got the courage and the know-how to get to the help desk of the software that they picked.

Yeah.

And get the answer that they need. And we're not having to do that for them in some of the realm where we don't work.

Yeah.

You know, time and time and time tracking and billing is one of them. You know, I've, I've—

Calendar too, right? So the calendaring is important. If your software doesn't have the calendaring, some of them are set up so that you can set up a workflow. Where the case starts here, these things have to be filed, it has to be completed by this time, and all that's inside the software for you because it's a repeatable process. And anytime you can make those repeatable processes, it's going to streamline your firm. I think that that's part of what you're looking for when you're paying for the practice management. It's all housed in one. I think you're going to see more of the one and eliminating the need for a lot of software.

Right.

Over having it in a million places.

Although the problem with that, and I will say, is sometimes the all-in-one is not suitable for the circumstances that you need. So there's nothing wrong with having add-ons.

You—

I think the core of it is, is understanding the type of software you might want in the core necessities and what are the attachments that you can add, because things will change. I mean, software will change in a heartbeat.

I like that.

And I feel like an all-in-one does at times limit you. You're structured in a way that you have no flexibility to make those changes or adopt to new changes. I mean, I will just say, like, from what we saw in the massive growth, attorneys were not in the way that a lot of us at the accounting firms have been set up. We're very similar, like professions in some ways, and the whole thing during COVID The fact that courts had to go on online and go to Zoom and/or Webex or whatever it is, that was not a thing. That was not even a consideration. And the lights turn off, the switch flips, and you gotta make those changes. You have to adopt to those changes. And that's exactly what's gonna happen going forward with a lot of changes in the future. So to me, I've always thought about it, get the court, like, Yeah, this receipt app can do X, Y, and Z. I don't, I don't care. I just want the receipt portion of it. It does it well here.

I'm finding that. Better job on that because that's all they're focused on is the receipt capture. So they add these little things that you don't even think about. And that's better than inside the product where you have it built in and it just doesn't have all the bells and whistles. Also with practice management, you might wanna think about the lead gen. Where, where does the lead come from and the lifecycle of the person coming in, whether they become a client or not. And I think that that's part of of what practice management can be. So—

Some, not all. You can have an attachment.

You can buy an add-on for that as well.

Yeah.

I mean, that's something you wanna consider if you want that baked in, but it, 'cause you wanna track where are your clients coming from. I think of personal injury because it's such a lot of money spent on marketing, billboards, the way they have to advertise themselves. You think about that and you wanna know where the, client come from? Did it come from a referral from the, you know, the personal, uh, the therapist that is handling taking care of the person after the accident? So you want to see, um, maybe it's come from the chiropractor. I mean, there's a lot of ways that they can get a client, but you want to know where the funnels are working, where you're putting your money, to see where they're— where is the— where are you getting the best bounce back from, and what's working, what's not working. Is YouTube—

I also working, you know. With the, the requirement complexities and the requirements per state, it's really important for you to pick a practice software, a practice management software that supports the proper billing structure that you need.

Yeah.

Because not everything is like, and so it's fine if you're in a software that works for a lot of people, but there's a component that might not work well and you need outside services to help you. I get it. That's fine too. There are pieces. That's why I'm saying I kind of like the building block situation, like the Lego situation where I feel that sometimes those all-in-ones, and we hear this, Lynda and I see this right now in an all-in-one that's coming out and it's not a small firm, multiple states, and the concerns are beautiful. But what we're hearing a lot of, okay, what we don't like is XYZ that we currently have because they've had to do a lot of supplements. On the outside and they've been structured in an all-in-one and it's hard to get the data out.

And then if you leave that all-in-one and now you're gonna go into pieces, you could extract, yeah, you could extract that data out.

That's it all.

Redo where if you're just putting this, you know, all the documents are here, all the communication is here. You're, you're having to just shift that one segment as opposed to shifting everything out, which is a big task. Yeah. I mean, we met with a client this week that's doing a big data migration and you can just see we could see it on their face because we've done enough of these migrations that they're like, everything's gonna be fine. It's like, how many times I've said everything's gonna be fine. And then, you know, and this is not a flip the switch one day you're in this software, one day you're in the next software and everything's hunky-dory.

No.

Yeah. Not. It takes time.

It's stages.

Yeah. You wanna set that expectation. If you are moving from something to something else, you wanna make sure that they understand that the expectation, especially we're doing the work, that it's not going to be rosy.

Honestly, I think, I don't know, Steve, if it's on your list. I know it was on mine. Budget is something to consider. Okay, well, does budget, does pricing always go ahead of needs and necessities and requirements and complexity? And no, I feel like yes, it's important to have a budget. Yes, you don't want to buy the $2,000 per seat situation. But like you said, Steve, you mentioned it earlier, you explore a variation of different types of softwares because they all have pluses and minuses. And then you wait what is going to be— because you have to be able to adopt it. You can't just like buy it and then expect somebody else to just fix it for you.

And that happens so often.

Yes.

It happens so often.

And truly, if you, when you're picking software, I mean, you wanna make sure you're picking, sometimes the latest and greatest may be really new. You wanna know who's behind that software. Yeah. Because it might be something—

That's a good point.

So you wanna make sure about that. I think there's a lot of different aspects to picking that you wanna really take the time because you're not just the cost of it per user, but training your staff. Getting over that hurdle has to be considered in budgeting because it's gonna take time to train the staff no matter what you're taking 'em off of one to another. And sometimes people are forced off of software and you don't really have a lot of options.

But yeah. Yeah.

Yeah. There's a lot to think about when you're— a lot to consider when you're, you're walking down this path of software.

Do you all feel— I, I don't know personally, I, I know where I sit personally, but how you both feel on cloud-based systems over anything else.

Are you— instead of being server-based, you mean, or cloud-based? I just— I don't want to have to dial into somebody's server and go through all of that anymore. Those days are— those days are gone.

Those are gone. Yeah, the VPN, um, you have to first have, then you get into the next stage. And I mean, we should all be protected, but What I think of is how quickly— the reason why I bring this up is I've heard clients say, you know, how quickly they've had to adjust and move, and they notice a colleague having a little bit more fluidness to their— they have ability to look something up so quickly on a phone or, and/or on a computer while they're, you know, sitting in court waiting for something or sitting somewhere in proximity where they need to be. And they don't have to call that in, which I found just thinking about that is like not just the document piece of it, 'cause document storage is huge and making sure that's central, but just communication is big. Asking questions in a safe space, 'cause as we know, email is, I mean, to this day, I'm still, I still don't understand how you can just send me a document that says your entire banking information, gives your whole life away in one sheet, and that's okay? Like, where in the email space is— I mean, we hear it all the time. I just don't understand what's not filtering into people's minds. So I bring it up, and I was asking you what if you had a preference, because I, I think it is scary for some people. They don't want to be on the web, they don't wanna be cloud-based, but that's where software's going.

You say that in today's world still.

I can, but people do to us, right? They tell us this and we're like, I'm not gonna put, risk my whole like hat on the fact that I can't control you as a user in your own seat, in your own chair, on your computer. But I can tell you, you're entering stuff on a software program with your bank data Okay, well, you could— I mean, to me, the risk is if you don't have it in somewhat of an automation or confirmation way, you're going to code it incorrectly and you're gonna have a bigger mistake of financial upset. Essentially, if you don't code a settlement incorrectly, if you don't validate your numbers, making sure people are validating that or validating the time so the client isn't upset that you've overbilled them. Yeah. You have all these processes come into play when picking software is to me, it's about ease of use and time efficiency. So I was curious if you had a cloud-based versus other. I only say other because I could care less about the other.

So, well, the usually the usual excuse for, well, I have a client, as you know, that I drive off to every month to do their work. And the excuse is typically, I'm afraid of getting hacked. I'm afraid of— and that's definitely going to be the type of person that would just email you your routing and bank number. Yeah. They— I'm afraid, what if the internet goes down is my other favorite on why you would not want to have online.

What if it doesn't?

Well, if it does, go for a walk, right? Usually if the software's on—

Or get your hotspot on your phone because it's not one thing over another any longer. Like, that's not an excuse anymore. Yeah. Other than if everything goes down, your power's out and you need to save your phone. Hurricane.

Yeah. Hurricane. How many days did I miss in the hurricane, Sarah? We had no power for 5 days. I, I hooked up with my hotspot.

Well, look at Steve. He's having a snowstorm now. Okay. Kind of wild, but what that could do, you know? So I do think though, Steve, on your list you had a few other things that I thought were important we should mention.

The next one is client communication and collaboration. So what will the software do for you in communicating with your clients? And so one of the tips and tricks that we've been doing with our legal clients is going into that portal and giving them a folder where they can put their SOPs for working with their legal software. When I'm working with them on some sort of issue and answering a question, I'll go, let's go ahead and SOP this and drop it in your folder so you'll know how to do it next time.

Nice.

And, you know, is their software— back to this, this subject. Is their software able to do that with their clients? How secure is their communication? How are they storing their documents? How are they getting what they need? You know, so that's a real strong consideration to think about with legal practice management software. The document management side, we talked a little bit about calendaring and deadline management.

Yeah. Yeah, there's some, there's some amazing apps out there that like work with the court system on some of those deadlines.

Right, right.

Those are pretty amazing. And I mean, it's fine. There are people that are tapped into it. Other people don't want to pay the expense. Well, okay. To me, it's kind of like if it's worth that little bit of money to have peace of mind knowing that you've not missed the deadline, isn't that better than reminding yourself?

Yes. You know, this reminds me of a law firm I worked in and I was their accountant, but for some reason the accountant was assigned the job of docketing as well.

Mm-hmm.

And so I thought, well, okay, this is a good time to learn it. I may as well just embrace it, do it. They handed me this little cardboard wheel and on this wheel it had all the things that could happen with different types of cases. Mm-hmm. And so you would spin this wheel, you would, you would turn it. And so you just did step 1 and it would say, okay, if you did step 1, 7 days from now step 2 has to happen.

Mm-hmm.

And so then you'd take the wheel to step 2 and it'd go, then in 14 days this has to happen. And so I would take all this stuff and type it into a document and then put it on a calendar and then issue this thing every Friday. Well, then, you know, cases change all the time. So, you know, by the time I got it done on Friday afternoon, half the time it wasn't any good anymore. And I finally said, we're going to go get Law Toolbox. And so we went out and got a subscription to Law Toolbox and lo and behold, docketing. Finally, the attorneys embraced it.

Yeah.

And they were able to do their own docketing. And I got that off my plate.

Yeah.

What can your legal practice management software do for you in that realm? How does it calendar? How does it do deadline management? And so many of the, the products that are out there now do that for us.

You know, Steve, I love what you're bringing up and there's a counter to that and not, and I don't mean it in a negative way, but this came out of a conversation with a client that Lynda Artesani and I were having. It was recommended that they grab this software because 2 people out of, say, 50— just keep easy numbers— have used it before. Okay, well, the other remaining 48 people or 47 people don't touch it. They don't understand it. They don't want it. There's no— it doesn't make sense. It's just a repository of information. So like what you got, you— it sounds like you, you got and implemented and was able to help the firm. That's, that's also the consideration that goes on with this. Just because the staff was like, hey, did you know, you really have to evaluate it because ultimately that person leaves, it's your software and you don't understand it.

Right, right, right.

Yeah, I, and I like your situation where you brought that up and it reminded me, Lynda and I We heard this today, and I'm thinking in the back of my mind— not today, but this week, I'm sorry— and I'm thinking, I know how much you spend per, per month on this. That kills me. Like, I cringed at the idea. I was like, okay, we probably need to cut that, but what's in there? What do we have to get out, and where can we put that information?

And how many times have you seen a client have a software that they're still paying for because it had legacy stuff in it —to pay and pay and pay just in case they get a call from a client from, you know, 5 years ago that wasn't when they were in that software. Yeah. Actually move them.

Ouch. Yeah.

That's, that's a good point too.

Checks too. You want something, sometimes the software, because it's managing your practice, you wanna have software that you, not the attorneys are all in, but they're only able to see their matters and their, their clients. So you want something something that can filter to that. And then you want something that has some metrics for you so you can track how the attorneys are doing. So I mean, that's some things you might want to think about when you're trying to pick a software. It's not an easy job picking a software.

It's just— Can I ask you all, like, how do you feel about free trials or 7-day trials when looking at software? Or do you prefer demos and demos and free trials? Or what, what's your I'm curious.

Ooh, that's a good one. I think you like to— Yeah, I was gonna say, I like to start with a demo and then get my trial after that if I'm interested.

Okay.

I mean, we just, well, you weren't at that one cause you were working on a client, but I grabbed Nicole and we, we went to a software trial that somebody had referred to us and said it, we thought it would be perfect for us. And we got in and went, and both of us like, this isn't gonna work. Like we knew. And the guy was really nice. It was a short meeting. As soon as we realized what this software actually did, it really didn't fit us because it was to do work with accruals. So we don't really have clients that with accruals, it's not a pain point for us. And it wasn't expensive software, but he gave us a free trial and we never even used the free trial because we don't really have a use case for it.

Yeah.

So it was a little bit of a waste of time, but we, it was worth it. I mean, it might have been a great software. Yeah. Really nice salesperson. He understood that it wasn't what we thought it did, wasn't what it did.

Yeah.

So in that case, the trial kind of eliminated the need for us to—

Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah. Eliminated the trial period. We didn't need that.

Yeah. I, I, I go back and forth because I understand the free trial thing. It's, you're on the website.

It goes fast.

It, you know, and they go fast and This is such a big decision. I feel like this is sometimes a standalone conversation. Okay, fine, you can just, you know, have it with yourself and decide and whatever. But you might want a perspective from, say, like a firm like us, or, you know, a contract paralegal that you might be working with, or somebody that is of strength that can help advise you without making you feel like you're making a poor decision, because nothing's worse than getting involved in a software and learning after the fact the features that you don't like because it didn't work the way you intended or thought it would. And we do hear that too. We hear that quite a bit. We were— it was new, it was on the roadmap. Okay, what's the roadmap? Where does the roadmap exist in this feature add that you're gonna do? So—

We've had clients come to us that they wanna get out of their software and move to one that we use. For that same reason. Like, they told us it was on the roadmap and it never happened. And they kind of lured us in with these things that they said were coming, and that hasn't happened. We've been with them for 3 years and they just never showed up. Mm-hmm. So, you know, the fact that it's on a list, if it's not in the software, and, you know, and I listened to, actually, uh, listened to Jason Stat's podcast this morning, and he was talking about some, at some point he brought up software and he was talking about the nicer thing with some of these softwares, maybe not like the big ones. Like, I think Intuit is a big software, right? So that one's kind of like you don't have a lot of choices there. But working with a big company and I send in a thing like, I'd like to see this or that as an, as an, a feature add, not necessarily gonna happen. Don't have the pull to make it happen. But with like a LeanLaw where it's a smaller, even like a Clio compared to LeanLaw, to be able to maybe ask for a feature, we can ask till the cows come home with Clio. And I don't even know half the time, sometimes I don't even answer your emails. But with LeanLaw, I might be able to get that. I'm using them as an example, but you know, using— Yes. Smaller-size software that's established. You got to make sure it's established though. You can't pick a fly-by-night one, but you might actually get features added. We've certainly had contributions to LeanLaw because we've asked and we're able to have a relationship with the people. I think of Ben from Keeper, right? Ben and Kenny.

Oh yeah. Yeah.

Not huge to the point where we can actually, we could pick up the phone and talk to them. We can reach out to them and they're very receptive. They may say that's not going to work. But they may say, hey, it's a cool idea. Maybe we'll, we'll add that. And maybe they'll come back to you and say, add it. But that's the size of a software company that's— you might get a little bit more chance of to be able to help shape it.

Mm-hmm. I do feel— I don't know if you both feel this way, but I do feel that software, we're investing as a consumer into the the space, it is nice to know that feedback is heard, or, or in a space where others are asking and you realize, oh, that's a great— I'd like that actually, that's a great feature. Or, you know what, that has nothing to do with your software, don't even bother, what a time waster, it doesn't make sense. I mean, that's a really ridiculous request, but you know, you don't know with some softwares, you don't know that feedback And that's hard to understand.

But like Clio for us, and even QuickBooks, we go to the conference, we have, we're a person with a face and we talk to the, we go to the development teams and we sit and we chat with them. We do have the ability to help them shape the product. 'Cause you, Sarah, we, I had to pull you out of there. You were in there so long telling them things that—

Yeah, that's a very kind of different scenario.

Yeah. Yeah. But that is a way to get the software to be in, certainly attorneys go to But if you're purchasing software though, is what I'm kind of going with.

Oh yeah, if you're purchasing. In the evaluation, that's like down the road.

Yeah.

Evaluation.

You've got a software that you like, but it's missing something. You know, it doesn't hurt to bring it forward.

Or see how many times others have asked the question.

That's how Intuit does it. They have that little feedback button and they do have a way of aggregating. They do look at all that.

I mean, I would assume.

Sure. Saw how they kind of—

Wouldn't it be nice to know where people are asking the most?

It would be, you know, it would be.

That's where I brought, why I brought this up because I feel like—

Who does that with the votes, Sarah? Somebody does with it.

There's quite a bit actually. And Steve, like when you're talking about pieces that you like inside your current software that you use for your firm, it's nice to be able to have that space know it's protected, know it has security. Some people might do it differently than you. That might not be right. They might do it as a link out to a Microsoft space or a Google space. Okay, no problem. Or Dropbox.

No problem. Yeah.

Yeah. As long as security is an important— Meet you in the middle. Yeah, it's got to meet you in— and that's where I'm saying I feel like is I think we're all kind of saying is the features. There's got to be core features that mean a lot to you that's got to be in the base of the product. And if it's not in the base of the product, you got to keep looking till you get to one that you understand could work, or you have two core products that can come together and work together. So—

And if you're out looking for software, what would you recommend to find it? Do you think you should go to Google? Do you— should you go to your referrals and talk to other attorneys? What do you think is the best way for them to find a good software?

I would do both of the things you just talked about. I would— there's no harm in asking others what they're doing. Your bar association can help you. Going to classes there, there's usually vendors there. There's software vendors at those classes. Googling, there's nothing wrong with that. You know, getting— going through all the demos and all, you know, really getting to really drilling down on what you need in your business and shopping for it. I mean, do you just go out and buy the first car you look at? Probably not. Same thing with software. You've got to go and shop for it and you've got to see what's going to fit you well. I mean, I, I won't fit in a Mini Cooper anymore. I'm a big guy. Okay. But I'll fit in a great big truck, you know, and there's a reason why I buy the great big truck, you know what I mean?

Yeah.

So, you know, what works for you? You know, compliance and risk management. What is your software doing for you to keep you compliant in the state where you're working?

Mm-hmm.

And does it actually have the ability to tap into that software with the state regulatory agencies in the various states and let you look things up? And, you know, how secure is that? You know, you know, what, what do you want it to do? Do you want the car with seat warmers, or are you okay with one that's just got a bench in it?

Yeah. Yeah. So can I, can I ask you, Steve, um, you'll still ride with me in my convertible Mini Cooper, right?

Oh, of course I will. And I, I had a Mini Cooper up until about 3 years ago. I miss my Mini.

Okay. You can spin mine around if you'd like. I love it.

Yeah. But you know what, what's going to fit for you? What are the reports and analytics like? What are they telling you out of that software?

Good question.

I have to chuckle when we go into different clients' portals and look at all the different softwares they use and it's like, oh, we're in this one now with Rocket Matter. We have to think this way, you know, and sometimes they'll say to us, well, what, what do you recommend? And it's like, well, you know, we work with another firm like yours and they're using this software because You know, again, it's— you've got to be really flexible with it. And you have to realize, too, no matter what decision you're going to make for your legal practice management software, it's not going to be 100% of what you want. So, you know, how does it integrate? How does it integrate with other tools?

I love that you're saying this because the nice thing about us, you know, accounting folks that work with this niche in this profession, we get this big bird's-eye view and we can—

Right.

And we've seen a gamut of software. I don't wanna name particular ones, but there's a few out there right now that I'm like, "Oh, okay, I'm not quite comfortable because I'm not seeing the development go in the way that makes sense." Or I can't get the data that you're asking me for. Exactly, it's not coming back in the way I wanna see it. Or like Lynda and I experienced this, you mean we have to do this in order for you to get it into your system? That's, that just doesn't, that's just not having the two-way sync situation that we would want to see. So Steve, you bring up a really valid point. We can look at it through a lens that's completely different and not favorable just because a colleague—

Right.

—used it. Right.

Or I get pitched a sales pitch on it. Because you may not be thinking about all the other questions that we see or might be working with you and saying, well, do you realize that we've asked you this question 5 times over in 1 month? And it's just really simple. If somebody just did X, Y, and Z or put it in the software, use the software to its capability and—

Right, use it.

So we've had software too, Sarah, and we've discussed this in the past and I won't use any names. Discuss software that sits out there and they've developed it to a point and then it just stagnates and they don't really do anything new to it and it just stays and it stays and it stays and it's not innovative. It's not— they really should be adding features along the way and sometimes it just stops and then it becomes—

You know, that's a good point. I went to Lá Week in New York probably Where do we, about 8 years ago maybe? Mm-hmm. And I think of some of the software that was there when I was going through the vendor court.

Mm-hmm.

That's not being widely used or talked about anymore, but it was the hot thing then. You have a very good point, Lynda.

Wow.

That was just 8 years ago.

When we went to ClioCon, I was amazed 'cause that's just legal specific. And I remember I was amazed at standing in that vendor section and it was, Aisle after aisle after aisle after aisle of vendors that have made software to help solve a solution for any particular, you know, practice area and the things that they've come up with. And usually it's an attorney that found a need that something wasn't being met and they created their own software. And it, it's pretty fascinating. It's, it's really cool to hear their story behind why they made their software.

Mm-hmm.

Mm-hmm. I can remember years back, well, QuickBooks Connect going through. They used to do the hackathon. Remember the hackathon, Sarah? That was pretty cool. They used to do it into it.

Yeah.

And we would go into the vendor area and we would actually interview all the vendors. And that was one of the questions we would ask is, you know, how did you get started? What, what made you create this software? And it was like they were talking about their child, you know, there'd be, their eyes would light up and explain what made them create it and where they were going. And they were very excited about it. It was, it was fun to go through the aisles and hear their stories.

Mm-hmm.

Because they would be excited about their software.

Well, I guess the innovation part. I, in the news, Nike made a comment about how COVID and remote work stifled their innovation. I thought that was interesting.

They've talked about that at Intuit.

They've talked about that at Intuit, yeah. And when we were touring universities and so forth, and some of the questions parents were asking, which I thought were really good questions of, you know, how does AI fit into your curriculum? Who's teaching it? What are you experiencing now? I was a little surprised at the lack of just honestly knowledge on some of it.

Mm-hmm.

It was like, oh, I play around with it. But I was a little, I was like, okay, is this still too new or have they not figured out how to regulate it? Properly.

Fascinating.

It fascinated me because really it's— some, some are probably going to advance faster in it and than others. But I did feel also it's like, well, secondarily to that, there's a lot of innovation and ideas and thought-provoking things that are happening at colleges and universities. So what does it look like in the current market? Because the market is shifting way faster than I think we can even take a beat in ourselves, which I feel for our profession that we serve in, for the, the lawyers and such. Firms are changing so quickly, you almost have to work at a quicker pace and a speed and having information readily available a lot faster. So why it's important to pick a software that supports you in a way that's— it's, it's flexible. It can grow with you. That's why I personally like what I call the Lego space, like building blocks of it. You really need a core and then build off of that.

So, and you think about it, Sarah, a lot for a while there when AI started to become the big buzzword at the conferences, all of a sudden all these software were adding AI. I mean, like, well, where were they adding it? What are they doing with it? And what part of that is helping the software—

Helping us, right?

Yeah. Inside the software, where, where are they going with it? And I think a lot of them just added it just so they could say, well, we have AI in our—

Sure. Yeah. Yeah. Well, the thing too is when you're, when you're working with the different vendors that provide these products, when you go to buy something, you can tell whether the, they're trying to, to heck, just get a quick sale and get some numbers in, or if they really care about your success, that should give you a very good indication of what you're getting into right up front. And then number 2, I always like to look at what their customer service is like. Is it going to be just a chat thing where it takes 10 hours for them to get back to you, or for the attorney who's working on Saturday morning who gets stuck and there's nobody at the help desk at these places? You know, you really need to look at that. What are they going to do to follow up on the product? Mm-hmm. With you.

I love that.

That's a great point, Steve, because you really should look at the how support is with your product.

How is the support? Is it just a sale and they're just getting a bunch of attorneys to sign up for this software, or are they there with you holding your hand and getting you through everything you do until the training wheels can be taken off?

Well, Steve, you also— what I'm thinking about too is, okay, like Lynda's saying, AI is in there and you're having these bots learn and Oh yeah. Categorize, manage. There's the human piece of it. It is not robotic on a business level on certain expenses that, I mean, one mistake could cost you a lot of money. So to hang your hat on some of these types of things, it's, you just have to do more diligence is the way I feel.

Yeah.

And you need somebody who understands the type of work that you do and could look at these, especially your numbers financially on a statement. What does this look like and what it means? And do I have the right numbers for each case? Am I undercharging, overcharging? Did I lose? Did I forget a cost because something stupid just put it in another bucket and I totally forgot about it? I mean, really, it's being sold as such a magic thing right now. And I'm like, let's kind of pause. Yeah.

Well, you know, but to your point, it's being sold as this magic thing. But I always think about the Wizard of Oz and the guy behind the curtain. Peel the curtain back and give me some meat here. Don't just tell me that, you know, this thing's gonna cook your breakfast and balance your books and drive you to the store later. You know, it's—

Well, speaking of, how do you feel about self-driving? Get in the back of it, might be kind of fun, but you wanna go on a long trip with that?

Oh, I wanna try that though. I really wanna try it.

I wanna try it, but I don't wanna be on a long trip in it.

You know, actually in my book, I talk a lot about software and legal tech software and how to do with a lot of the tips that we're providing today. But there's also a checklist in there that all these little things, 'cause as Steve's saying about the, as we're saying about check to see how you can reach out if you have a problem in the software, is it just chat? Is it that? There's a whole checklist in the book, a free checklist. I think it's a Google Form that you can go through it and check the boxes as you're finding the software. Is it secure? Is it— does it have good support?

And I'm glad you mentioned that. Yeah, it's so funny you mentioned your book because on my calendar this morning it popped up. It said, read Lynda's book. And I'm like, why is that on my calendar today? It must be.

Pre-made the book. Yeah, I got it right now.

Oh man. Well, this has been fascinating because I, I do feel that it's a personal journey for sure. My, my own experience with you, Lynda, and our own firm.

And it's expensive. So, you know, you really want to try to make your decision. Like I said, check all those boxes off that's in the book because you want to make sure that you make the right choice. Because if you have to go down the road of moving stuff over and then all of a sudden you realize this is wrong, it's not the end of the world. You can find something that may be better, but then you gotta pay to do it all over again. And training staff to learn new software is harder, a harder point that you wanna make sure that they're happy with it. I mean, like we, we, Steve talked about Financial Sense. We use it as well at our firm, and it's setting that up takes time.

Mm-hmm.

And that's probably the same with any practice management tool for an attorney. Same thing, takes time to set up all the workflows, and it's time well spent.

Mm-hmm.

But it still takes time. And as much as I'd like to blink my eyes, go to bed and wake up the next morning and Financial Sense is all beautifully stated and it's all the same. So if this client has Clio, it's this, and It's not that way. So it takes time to get set up and we're still kind of in that process. But it does have that cool feature. If you need to ask a client for something, it will send out the ask and then if they don't answer, it sends it out again without you having to do anything. I think that's—

Well, their new, their new uncategorized feature, our clients are really liking it a lot.

Oh, good.

You know, we, we can communicate with the attorney and say, what is this transaction? You know, it came through the bank feed. We don't know what it is. We can communicate with them. They can go to, you know, we can, we can take it and drill it down to just one person in the law firm and she can go talk to the attorney and say, what is this transaction for? And they're like, oh, I forgot to turn in my receipt or, or whatever. And they're doing all that work for us and we're not chasing them. To your point, you know, it reminds them, you can set the reminders 2 days, 1 week, whatever, you know. And so what is your practice management software doing for you in that?

Arena, that kind of a tool inside of theirs, because I, right, the pain point of trying to get documents from their clients. Yeah. Have that in there to kind of follow up, because that's, I think sometimes when you look at the AI piece of it right now, I think AI does a great job at, like, taking all the information in and sorting it out and making it in a, in a logical way. So that's a good use case for this AI that's inside the software. But I haven't seen great results because it's just so new. It's just new, but it'll get there.

Well, I think people are expecting— they hear AI and they're like, they're either, ooh, I'm so scared, or they're like, okay, this is the magic wand. All I have to do is go ping and I've got what I need. And it's like, it's not that simple. No.

You know?

Well, Walter says it's time to go.

Yeah, obviously.

Well, I want Walter's life when I come back from my next life. Like, look at how comfortable he looks.

And I've tried to use this— this blanket is mine. I've tried to use it only to be attacked to give it back. So I've just— so—

I love it.

I'm like, all right.

Great conversation today.

It's not yours. Yeah, very good conversation.

It is. Yeah.

Okay, T, take it away.

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Well, thank you.

Thanks everybody.

Bye-bye.