In this solo video, Linda Artesani of Artesani Bookkeeping explains how attorneys and law‑firm administrators can systematically research and compare legal practice‑management and billing software. She starts by demonstrating a Google search for “legal software,” then shows the results on SoftwareAdvice.com, noting that top‑ranked listings are often sponsored and may not be unbiased. She moves to Capterra, highlighting its more organic listings, filtering options, and side‑by‑side comparison feature that lets users evaluate ratings, reviews, and feature sets across dozens of products. Throughout the walkthrough she names a wide range of solutions—including PracticePanther, Clio, MyCase, AbacusLaw, Tabs3, Filevine, Smokeball, TimeSolve, Bill4Time, Zoho Suite, Rocket Matter, and her personal favorite, LeanLaw, which integrates tightly with QuickBooks Online Advanced. Linda discusses key evaluation criteria such as core features (time‑tracking, billing, calendaring, docketing, document management), trust‑accounting capabilities, QuickBooks integration, pricing models, demo availability, and user reviews. She advises viewers to watch out for all‑five‑star ratings that may indicate paid placements, to read lower‑rated feedback for potential drawbacks, and to solicit opinions from colleagues who actually use the software, while also considering technical factors like internet speed that affect cloud‑based tools. The video concludes with a checklist for due‑diligence—assessing cost, number of users, and overall fit—and a promise to dive deeper into specific products in future episodes.
Chapters
Hi there, Linda Artesani, Artesani Bookkeeping. I've been doing app reviews for legal software every week now. And this week I thought I'd just take a little break because as I'm doing some of these reviews, I thought about it and I'm like, what do, what do attorneys do to try to figure out what software or what does the admin staff do? Thinking about the process of how I would go about it if I started to work at a law firm and my boss came to me and said, or my colleague came to me and said, I need— we need new software. Let's get a new software. And I think that might have happened a lot this year with people working remotely. If you're in a desktop-centric software, you've probably had to shift. And maybe the thought's always been there, but you just never wanted to take the time because it's a big undertaking. moving from one platform to the other. It's actually something my firm specializes in. So that being said, I thought, where would I go first if I was asked the question, what's the best legal software? Where can we go? And how can— give me a few examples so we can decide which one works the best. So of course, where would I go? Google. So I'm going to take you to Google and show you the results, and then I'll take you to a site that I think is a lot better than Google. So let me take you to Google. So here we are, and affectionately I call it Google. And here's the results. So I found— I typed in legal software. I found right away a banner that said top 2020 legal softwares and a complete review. And the site it took me to right away was called softwareadvice.com/legal. It's actually a website that if you want to be listed really high on it. You pay and then they put you up there. So it's not exactly an organic, unbiased opinion base, although there are a lot of reviews on here. Practice Panther ironically came up on the top of this list. Now Practice Panther is a software that I just reviewed last week. And it's a software that does time and billing and it has some practice management in it and it works with QuickBooks. Doesn't work with QuickBooks really well, but it came up as a top reviewed. Again, I think this is software that's probably promoted on this site. This isn't really a site that you can really go through. And I just want to show you here, like what I liked about this site though, it does give you the price and it gives you a demo so you can kind of see what the demo looks like, see what the product looks like. I like that. I thought that was really interesting. So it gives you a little small snippet of a review of this website. And I don't know if every one of these has it. Clio, second, another big firm, you know, the bigger app, the bigger player, depending on how many, what your needs are. Do you need the calendaring? Do you need the docketing? Do you need the file— files incorporated in here? So PracticePanther actually does have that where you can link with Box. So box.com. We have Filevine, another one that a lot of attorneys use. So this is not just time and billing software or software that trust people who have to track trust accounting can use. This is also a lot of other things in here. MyCase, I've used that one. Abacus Next. Tabs3, another one that I've helped take people off of because it's not exactly my favorite. And there's— and the list goes on and on. Needles, Smokeball I'm familiar with. TimeSolve Legal I've been working with. I have not had the opportunity to get into Zoho Suite, but I do have a connection on LinkedIn that I'm actually going to reach out and take a look at. I'm always open to seeing what's out there. But you all know that I like LeanLaw the best that works with QuickBooks Online Advanced. It's one of my favorite app stacks. Legal files. So some of these aren't all just legal billing. But a site that I really prefer is Capterra. So C-A-P-T-E-R-R-A. And this is more of an organic search. So I'm just going to type in here, I'm just going to type in legal and see what comes up. So you have legal billing software, legal billing software buyer's guide, calendar software, case management software, top 20 case management softwares. I I'm just going to go for legal billing, keep it pretty simple. There's 86 results here and I can just click this. And of course, look, Practice Panther came back up number 1. Well, number 1 because it's listing this by sponsored. So make sure you notice that because that means they're paying for this. There's a good filtering system here that you can filter out the list, which is kind of cool, and you can select and compare. So TimeSolve Legal Billing, MyCase, I want to talk to a human. I love that. Abacus Law. Cosmolex is another one I'm going to be reviewing. Zoho Suite again. So you've got— I cannot believe how many are here. LeanLaw. Here's LeanLaw. I can't believe Tabs3. I mean, it goes on and on and on. QuickBooks is in here. So it actually has accounting platform, which QuickBooks you can use for law firms, but it's also not law specific. It's software for everybody, right? Rocket Matter. AccountEdge is another accounting platform. SlickPie. I mean, these are things I've never heard of. PC Law. I'm going to get into that one. Oh, it's interesting. It doesn't have a great review. I will get into that one when we get a little bit further. Coyote. I mean, it just— I just— this— you could be here. I could be here all year reviewing these, right? So I did take a few here. PracticePanther, LeanLaw, and then Bill4Time. Those are Kind of similar, and I can hit compare now. I like this part of it. So you have the filter and then this actually takes the 3 softwares and kind of compares the ratings and reviews. It compares, you know, gives you a few of the reviews and I would actually go in and like look at some of the lower ones to see why people didn't like the software itself. Anytime anything has like all 5 stars, you have to kind of wonder if it's somebody paying somebody to put them on there. I'm not saying that any of these people did. Features and software, features and functionality. Value for the money, which is nice. LeanLaw comes out pretty much on top there. Document management, they don't have document management. So you can see that they're not exactly comparing apples to apples. You can see the, the look of the products. And Bill for Time isn't just for lawyers and attorneys. It's actually just a time billing software. It's an outside product. You keep— you would track your trust accounting in a separate place. Where LeanLaw is all one whole, you know, whole product where it's layered on top of the accounting. And then you can see some other popular comparisons of PerfectLaw versus Clio. And there's just a lot of, a lot of products. So I just wanted to show you that and show you how you could start to figure it out. One of the things that's helpful, check with your colleagues. And if you do reach out to a colleague, so if you're an attorney and maybe you're in court and you're talking to a colleague and you're asking about the software. Talk to the person using it. See what they think about the software, because that's pretty important when it comes to figuring out, does the software really work? Is it crashing like some of the desktop softwares do? Is it, you know, slow when you log in? And a lot of times, slowness in a product can be caused from slow internet too. A lot of times, if you're working from home, it might be the type of internet connection that you have. But really ask, reach out to me. I work with a lot of them. Like I said, I have a preferred one, but I can tell you the pluses and the minuses and the ones that I've had, had the opportunity to work with, and bigger ones and ones you see more often. On that note, I hope you all have a wonderful week. I've got a little post that goes along with this that kind of talks about the steps you can do to go through it, which is kind of what I went through on the video. And next week I'll go back and we'll go into some of the more, more of the softwares. But I just wanted to touch base and give you a little bit of a Another avenue to really check, right? You want to do your homework. Some of these softwares are very, very expensive. So take a look, see what these cost, decide how many users and all. Do the homework. Basically do the homework. Get opinions, check it, check it out, see what other people are using. On that note, I hope everybody has a wonderful, wonderful week. Stay safe and we'll be back next week. Bye now. Bye.
