The Ultimate Legal Accounting Software Showdown

Welcome to Accountants Law Pod, where accounting professionals and law firms converge, hosted by Linda Artesani, Sarah Prevost, and Steven Libhart.

Welcome back, everyone. Well, we have a fun little topic today, but before that, Steve and Linda, how the heck are you?

Go, Linda.

Good.

I'm energized. I feel like I feel like I got a good night's sleep, even though my ring said I did not. It said that I got no deep sleep. It said I was awake 15 times. I don't remember any of it. So I don't know if my ring was loose, not right, or I don't know. I feel pretty energized. I'll let you know at 5 if I'm still energized. But, um, yeah, I mean, it was a nice weekend. Patriots won.

So, boo!

Don't boo!

Well, for him.

I understand why people hate the Patriots. It's the same reason why people hated Dallas years ago, because they were You know, America's team. And now the Patriots just like resurrected themselves from the dead. So without—

The score was so close this weekend and they were playing in that 5-degree weather or whatever in the snow. And oh yeah, literally we were sitting here, we were sitting here yesterday afternoon and this massive cold front came in with all this snow and wind and just covered everything. And the field was covered. They couldn't even see the lines on the field.

You couldn't see. I think they lost because they couldn't see the players. that were wearing white outfits. I mean, when you're— oh yeah, because they were in white, which they were saying in the beginning it was going to be a disadvantage to the Patriots. And I'm like, or maybe not, because, you know, they were into the wind or whatever. I, I don't know. I don't really like football. I just watched it because it was the Patriots, and then the next game I went to bed.

So— oh well, that was only my game.

I know, that was the West Coast.

It was only a 3-point loss, so that, you know, let's put it in perspective.

You don't want to lose on that time. Yeah, it was a good game until the weather got so bad, and then it became a It's a game against the weather.

Yeah, it really— yeah, that's very true. And ours was just as good. But— and I have no idea how I turned this into ultimate legal accounting software showdown, but here we go.

Come on, you can come up with a segue. Oh, it is kind of early for you.

It is a little bit, but—

Well, we're recording this— we're recording this at the end of January, which we should be clapping and dancing and running in circles because we made it. I mean, we're in the last week of January. The 1099s are almost done.

The year ends are Are you trying to jinx us here? What's going on?

Don't say the word 1099s. That's evil.

I know, I know. But next year, the $2,000 limit. All hooray.

You know, I don't even know how much that's going to affect me.

I know. Exactly.

I'm sure it will take care of the little ones. But we've had some interesting ones, you know, as a sidebar before we get into the topic. But we had one guy, he's insisting he doesn't have to give us his W-9. It's like, it cracks me up to read his reasoning behind why he doesn't need to give us one. I'm like, Who is this idiot that doesn't think they need to give us the W-9 and that's going to stop it? I don't know.

And we, we accounting people get stuck in the middle between the client and their client, their vendor. And then, you know, we're, we're evil and bad because we're asking for them. That's the dichotomy I don't like about them.

Right. Because the client should be getting that. Yeah.

I had a client send me an email on Friday. Well, how come you didn't tell me about this one when we did the audit in mid-December? And I said, because you used the vendor on the 27th of December. You know, it's— you, you know better. Yeah, don't shoot the messenger here.

My Lord. Well, today's a fun topic, closing the door on those 1099 friends.

Wham, done.

And moving towards software. And we're gonna do a topic about a showdown between software, um, top 10 discussion pieces that we sort of want to highlight. And, um, our amazing Tierra here put together. It's a pretty cool bracket. Yeah. And I think it's a fun twist. It's just a start. We can always twist it up the next year and the year after that. But I'm thinking about the bracket of March Madness because I do love my basketball, my hoops.

I can close my eyes and tell you who the winner is.

But oddly enough, unbeknownst to Linda and I, is this being our topic because we don't really We let, you know, Tira sort of helps us with that. We actually had a funny moment with the software question throughout the weekend that, to be honest with you, cracked us up that this fits into this whole segment here. So anyways, so I guess we're— however you all want to start. I mean, we've got on the left-hand side, we've got several, and I'll list them out. We've got LeanLaw, TrustBooks, Clio Plus Zero. So she's putting those together. Cosmolex. It could be Clio plus QBO too. It doesn't matter, but that's the idea. QBO Zero, MyCase, and Zolo. So QBO Zero is being the accounting ledger. So that, that in and of itself will be interesting to have a discussion because Lynda and I have seen those as their own. So this is kind of a funny twist. And Zolo Suite's on here, which Zolo Suite's not one that I've actually danced around with too much.

No, me either.

So, Steve, I was gonna throw it to you. Why don't you tell us what you want to start with, what your most experience is in, or where you feel like you're most comfortable? With what?

LeanLaw and TrustWerk?

Yeah, or just any of those software, like any of the brackets.

LeanLaw and, and, uh, Clio. LeanLaw and Clio.

And—

Well, that's in a different bracket.

I know, I know, but those I'm not, I'm not going to waver on that.

Have you ever used Trust Books?

No.

Oh, oh, it's okay. So, all right, Sarah, LeanLaw and Trust Books.

Go for it. Yeah. Trust, I mean, Trust Books, honestly, I get the purpose. It's not bad for what you're, what you're required to do. However, it's so much exhaustive work on our side. You attempt it. It's, it makes sense, logical sense. I get the reasoning for it. We do have— we do find that Linda and I have seen it with— you've got a practice management software plus trust books. I've never seen it set aside.

You used to have it with Clio. You could pay for it and have it be in Clio for free too.

Is it tailored more to smaller practices?

I used to call it the punishment software because in Florida it was created by an attorney in Florida.

Okay.

Like the Florida Bar grasped it. and used it for clients who maybe had a bar problem, and they said, okay, you're not using software, you're going to use this one. It's—

I—

it looks like babyish, like it looks like very basic, very plain. It's a lot of manual entry, so it's very— I mean, it's black and white, so it's not— it has not— no fancy anything on top of it. It's very basic.

Mhm.

But I, I wouldn't tell clients Use it to—

when you're doing a reconciliation. Yeah, it can be dangerous actually in that regard. I will say not such— I understand the purpose of it, but I don't think it serves it well when you have multiple amounts at the same dollar and you're, you're relying on somebody putting this data in. Uh, you can go sideways pretty quick now.

So it might not be a good program for a good software for, uh, an immigration firm.

Oh, God.

No. Yeah.

Family law.

No.

Family law.

Very basic. I think it's kind of inexpensive too, right, Sarah? So it's better than a spreadsheet. Yeah.

It does say it. So when I went on their site, it says legal accounting simplified. And just kind of give us an idea of pricing. It's actually not that inexpensive, I'll be honest with you.

Well, I think somebody bought it. I don't think the same gentleman owns it.

Okay.

Yeah. So Tier 1 is just trust accounting, CBR compliance, one-click reporting. It's $59. So $60 a month.

Oh, yeah.

No, not—

Tier 2 is firm plus trust accounting. So clearly they're doing that additional layer and it's $80 a month. So it's not cheap.

Because when it was with Clio where you could do the click the add-on, it was only like $20 more or something like that.

Yeah, $20 more.

I never understood why you'd need that with Clio. But it was there.

But their third tier—

To be several years ago.

They have 3 tiers now. Okay.

3 tiers. Bank reconciliation service. I don't know what that means.

Oh, it had a bank reconciliation. Remember? It kind of had that. Oh, I remember that, Sarah. We looked at that, and it was something done, like, in India, and they actually reconciled. Remember? Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah. $250 a month.

Yeah.

Yeah. So anyways. Now let's go to the green. Go to LeanLaw.

The green.

LeanLaw, you two work a lot. I mean, I work with it too, but—

Well, you kind of handle all the Clio people, so I handle the LeanLaw people.

Yeah.

I like it. I don't know about you, Steve. I like that.

I love LeanLaw.

Yeah, it's very— for me, it works in my head. It is just the billing software, though. So you're not getting— if you want to have a place to communicate with your client, You want to have a place to store your documents. You want to have— there's some templates, but not a lot of templates in there. If you want that, you need a Clio. You need to have the practice management tools. If you're going to do it with LeanLaw, you have to get other software, which there's a lot to be said for not having all your eggs in one basket. I get that.

Exactly.

Exactly.

I like LeanLaw because it's a 2-way sync.

Yeah.

That I love. You make a change over here, it's— the change happens over here. So it'll happen in LeanLaw, happen in QuickBooks, or It doesn't connect to Clio, though we've talked to them. Sarah's been trying to get them to do that. It has the ability that it pushes into the sub-liability account automatically. So it creates this, you start a client, it makes you create a matter, and it makes you, and it creates the accounts in QuickBooks if they're not already there. So that's beautiful.

It's just—

It is beautiful.

Very few clicks for that. Where you can run into problems is if there's existing data and you're trying to build out lien law and somebody's not paying attention. And just the slightest little thing like a dash or a space, and now you've got 2 of these clients and matters and liability accounts in lien law, and then you, you're duplicating. So that's one of the kind of drawbacks. A lot of times the trust account breaks. I think I find that it happens like, why didn't this come over? I have to go in and hit fix the trust accounting. That does happen. I don't really know why. When you do the billing, It can be very slow at times if you're doing the billing at the beginning of the month, which a lot of clients do, and you have a volume, it can be slower to process. It processes, but it can be slower to process. I've had problems with doing the billing and then having it sent out through LeanLaw. I've had to jump back into QuickBooks to send the emails out sometimes.

Ah.

That will break on me sometimes. I think that's improved, but when it first came out, that wasn't the greatest feature. There's a lot of reports in there for, uh, for mid-market size firms. There's a lot of data you can get in there, although that is not, oh, I figured this out by myself. I popped in and it makes sense very easily. Uh, there is a window with all of the different reports, and I think that's very clear when you go in there, what reports are what. Like, this is the practice management, you know, practice area ones. These are the matter ones.

Mm-hmm.

I think that's in there. I don't even know if they still have that, but they had a place where you could build your own in the very beginning. It was supposed to be so great. Had many— had a few meetings with them, and I never could follow that, make my own reports in there.

Pretty detailed. So, Steve, in your reasoning for you— so Linda has listed quite a plethora of really amazing things that they do.

I love the 2-way sync. I think it's I really like building workflows for clients, for attorneys and for accounting staff in LeanLaw because of the 2-way sync. It's so easy because it makes your brain think a little bit backwards with trust accounting than what you're accustomed to doing with other types of software.

Yeah.

They have different levels of reports, to your point, Linda. I like— and to your other point about not having all your eggs in one basket, you can take a LeanLaw and maybe a LawToolbox. And use those. So if you're a smaller firm, you know, those are some affordable options for different packages that you can have in-house to, to take care of your clients and do your workflow and all that. But LeanLaw has been really nice. Now, sometimes attorneys get a little mixed up if they don't pay attention, to your point. If, you know, they've really got to pay attention to how they're billing, when they're billing, you know, not posting a trust payment as a payment payment. You know, those sorts of things.

You got to teach them how to use the product, right? Payments, or at least the person doing the billing, they need to go into LeanLaw to process the payments, go through it. You can filter down by who has trust, pay those out, get that total, put it over there. It goes into undeposited funds. Beautiful. Create the bank deposit. That should match what you had in LeanLaw. I think those things, and I love the, um, the approval, so you can start with billing. And go to drafts, have an approval step. And I think there's even one in the middle of that. And I use that with all the clients. We go through all those steps, you know, do the billing, put it together. They go in and do their edits or whatever. It's very flexible on like if they're writing stuff down or going to build later. I think that's so easy. I find it to be a product that if you show a client how to use it, you're not having to go in and tell them a million times over how to, how to use it again. They, they just pick it up very easily, even if LeanLaw teaches them. I don't see them coming back to me going, I don't know how to use this. It makes sense to them like it makes sense in my head. So I think I love the product. I really do. I think it's a great product.

The expense side of it is really nice with the client cost. And so, okay, so with them, with LeanLaw, day one, move them over. Their core is $55 per user, and you get quite a bit with that, to be honest.

And you get the accountant seat, so you don't have to pay to have the accountant on your file. So glad you mentioned that. One login. Love it.

Yeah, that is a huge plus. Uh, the Pro is $75 per user, and there's quite a bit in the Pro.

Yeah, you don't want to not have it.

Um, and then the custom pricing is when you're getting into these larger size firms. Um, so yeah, I mean, there, there are so many great things. This is a— to me, it's a, it's a core product. And really, to them—

And their migration wasn't bad though. I've done one migration with them. It wasn't bad.

Yeah, their whole thing though is Billing. Please understand that if you're listening to this, a lot of people think, why don't I just go— their core product is billing. So if the, if the client does not need all the extra things like some other products that we're going to mention here, they don't need that. And this is what they need. This, this really works well.

It's a great one for small firms.

Yeah. Not just small, Steve. They can go up to like 100.

Oh, you're right.

Small, medium, large, I mean, and extra large. I mean, they are, they are there for the—

they can go up to the higher sizes.

Yeah, you're right.

I didn't, I didn't want to plug them into just small firms, but when the dataset gets large, you're gonna have to reach out to them because part of the utilities, it's reading all those customer names. And if you have a lot of them, reach out to Fred and then turn off some of those features that will kill you.

Reach out. I love Fred.

Call Fred.

Well, you know what, that's one I'm glad you mentioned, Fred, because they're I like it that they have retained their staff over time. And you, uh, the one thing I don't— one thing I don't like about their customer service, and this is not just LeanLaw, it's with every software these days, is you can't get a real person as easily as you used to. However, with that said, they've got the pretty much the same core staff that they've had all along, and they care. They really care about their customers and following through. So kudos to them for that.

So they get some checkboxes for all of those things, I think. They didn't need crossbooks. That was easy.

Okay, so LeanLaw fits that next bracket. Okay, so do we want to go straight down or do we want to go to the bottom?

Go straight down.

You want to go straight down?

Yeah. And I think, I think you can just say Clio in this one. Clio versus Cosmolex because—

Yeah, yeah. So, um, next. Well, that's easy because they're different.

I mean, they're completely different.

They are. Uh, one thing, well, in some ways they are in a lot of ways they are. One area they feel somewhat the same is when they're adding that accounting layer to it. But with CosmoLex, it's a very closed-loop system, right? It's, it's an all-in-one. You don't typically have too much— like, you have your general and your trust inside of it, and you're doing your reconciliations inside of it. So the idea is that all of your accounting happens in there. Realistically, that's not how businesses work with that system. And in addition to that is the reconciliations are very challenging. They are.

And you're talking about CosmoLex?

CosmoLex. They're just really, really challenging. CosmoLex.

For example, I'm waiting, Sarah. Do you remember when something's found down the road? Let's just say last March, like a year ago from whenever this lands, and you're like, oh, that's a duplicate. That one shouldn't have been in there.

Yeah.

You need to get rid of that. Now I have to unreconcile all of the bank all the way back to last March and then re-reconcile all the way through. So they get an X on that one for sure. They do have a 3-way reconciliation built in because they have all 3 components there.

That's a—

that is a plus. But with CosmoLex, uh, you're the only person I know that got in there and moved around because you're so good at like brand new software. Whenever Sarah gets software, I don't care if it's it's from 1985 that we're going into or something like this. She goes in and she goes, oh, let's just go. Most people, you get in there, it's like, this UI makes no sense.

Yeah.

Where is the bank register? I just want to see the bank register. I want to see the bank register by, you know, by IOLTA versus operating. I want to see, and it's not laid out as easy as you think it is. Or where are the matters? How do I get to the matter page to see the matter? It's just not.

And I think that's not the logic that we would have as an accounting professional. Plus you have to pay for us to be in there.

And for reports. Remember, you have to pay extra for certain reports. You don't just get them automatically. Yeah.

I think the biggest— that one of the biggest downfalls is being compromised in that way when you have to undo all of those reconciliations.

Oh my gosh. I can't imagine.

Now I will say Cosmolex, out of all the all-in-ones, is hands down the best all-in-one. If you want an all-in-one, Run from the others right now, especially any of the ones that are kind of new or, you know, I mean, like Clio Accounting, or I'm talking about MyCase decided to drop into that too, and that didn't go so well. If you want the all-in-one, I think Cosmolex is the one I would tell somebody if they really wanted it to go to that one.

That's the— The only downside I keep hearing is, um, the way, first off, the cost, uh, for every user, not every user needs those certain levels. If you have a paralegal, whatever it is, because of the reporting and all the other other things. But also sometimes it's the movement and understanding ledger.

Mm-hmm.

It is a little bit confusing because you have an operating ledger, you have a trust ledger, which in every software is like that, but just the way it's displayed and the way bills are handled and what it means to move around in there. I have heard firms, it's quite a bit of training. They offer great training, but it, it does have some nuances similar to what we were just discussing with Lima, where you're going to have to train and really understand how you interact. And I think that's going to be true of a lot of softwares in general. It's a learning curve no matter what you select.

Well, if you're a new attorney out there, do not— none of these are plug and play.

Oh yeah, please don't.

You know, you've got to— there's— you can't just turn it on and, and expect the world to be all rosy. It's— you've got to learn the software. You've got to really investigate how it's going to work for your type of law that you practice.

Yeah.

And so if you're looking at Clio, I mean, all in one, it's an all-in-one. So I mean, it's a practice management tool.

Yeah.

So it does your billing, but it also does your client communication. I mean, we, we could show a little heart for Clio because he, Clio is definitely one of the ones that we use at our firm. So we specifically targeted what we feel are the best ones with the best integrations with, with QuickBooks. And hands down, that's LeanLaw, uh, Clio. And Clio is probably the queen of, or the king of it because they are so invested in AI. Right at this time, and they've decided to take a path with an AI that is something that's specific to their industry. So it's not ChatGPT pulling you the answers. They actually paid to have this program that somebody had been taking all the case law over the years and putting it all in a database, and it's pulling the data from that for when you're—

Isn't that amazing?

It's incredible.

And I mean, incredible. That is definitely a So in the thing though, just kind of going back on the pricing. So with Cosmolex, but to your point, Linda, you've got something that's closed loop law firm management, but you've got what I would say Clio Law Firm Management plus, plus, plus.

Yeah.

To be fair, because there's so much going on in there. There's so— I mean, we learned so much with it, but standard user, $119. So $120 per user for Cosmolex.

Cosmolex?

Yep. And Elite is $140. And it's got the workflow automations that give the difference and Matter templates and Matter budgets.

Does it have AI in it, Sarah?

Nothing's touting that. The thing that they've got going on is calendaring and task management, client portal integration with your, your calendar.

Which a client portal in the world that we're in is super important.

That's important.

Closed place that you can communicate with your clients, share documents with your clients, and you're Safe from the bad guys. So, yes, that's a great thing.

Yeah.

Does Clio have matter budgets?

There's something here in Cosmolex. I will go—

I like that. I like that Cosmolex has that.

Matter budgets, you must have to pay for an extra software for that.

Probably.

Yeah.

But boy, how useful would that be for a small to mid-sized firm, especially?

Yeah. Yeah.

You know?

Yeah.

Yeah.

So how would we rank? I mean, you could tell more things, Sarah, that you love about Clio. It's a one-way street.

Oh, with Clio, there's, it's, I mean, it's the longest. I mean, everyone, our longstanding listeners know this, is the longest product I've been on. It's one that I've always leaned into the most just because of the way that it works. It works in my mind similar to what you said, Linda, with LeanLaw. It's a firm management in my mind. Everything starts there and comes over into your ledger systems. There are some pluses and minuses like all of the products we have just mentioned.

Everyone.

Every single one of them. I think the thing that leads the way, as you've brought it front and center, Linda, is that they are constantly innovating, constantly looking for better ways. They have a lot of money behind them.

Yeah, exactly.

You know, their AI tool, there's amazing things with that. There's their draft systems. Then they have the tapping in with the case, the courts on some of their states and so forth that they're bringing forward.

It's a little Salesforce product too. I mean, yeah, that's there. So some of the drawbacks to Clio, though, I think you will hear this from clients when we are talking to a client that we know is not in a great software. And we'll say to the client, you know, have you considered Clio? And this is the typical answer we get. Uh, I, I, I tried that, enter like the number 15 years ago, 10 years ago, and it really didn't work for me. Um, and then I heard you never connect it because it's a disaster when you connect it. It can be a disaster if the person doesn't know what they're doing.

I was going— I'm glad you brought that up, Linda, because I was going to mention when I was teaching law firm accounting classes 15 years ago, I would tell people, be careful of Clio because it was so prehistoric back then compared to what it is now. I mean, to your point, they have really come a long way with their software. But, you know, 10, 15 years ago, I would tell them, let's find something else, you know, and I'm really happy with how they've progressed and how customer-oriented they are.

Well, yeah.

And they—

I mean, the thing about integrating, and we've had this conversation so many times on the Accountant's Law Lab too, some people firmly, I will not connect it. I refuse to connect it. It just makes a mess. of the file. It can be messy because of the one-way sync. So the client could do something in the invoice and go back and, you know, enter an invoice, go back later and make a change, and it's going to send another transaction over because it doesn't know the other one exists because it doesn't read the other side. That can happen. You just have to know how the system works. Or if they make a transfer matter to matter, you have to attend to and do a little bit of housekeeping there to make sure it presents itself properly.

Well, the big I would say though, the big things though, Steve, is when you're looking at this product, it has— Clio has the most ability to tap into a whole plethora of other apps.

It does.

It plays nice in the playground.

Yeah, it is huge.

You can build your app suite and I'm—

I love how they've developed it.

Yeah, I'm not going to skip over accounting. It's not one that we feel like—

It's not ready yet.

Quite where we would like it to be. I know it's their forefront and that's what they want to do. But I do think as far as account trust management, account management, visibility, learning, 90% of the people that we work with still aren't in the full segment of the core product.

Yeah, they don't use it to the fullest extent too. A lot of the clients don't. And I think just going to Clio's conference, which is also amazing, You go to their conference and you walk up and down the aisles where all those apps are integrating. I couldn't— I was blown away the first Clio Con I went to because I couldn't believe how many software were there.

I know, right?

That could connect to Clio. And so if your practice area is lacking in some of the feature set that's in Clio, I bet you there's a software that's out there that you can layer on top. Their reporting wasn't great, but there's a company that's whole company is just building out reports for you and just, and it's not even that expensive and you could, Use that company to build out what you need, and you're right there. And then there's other workarounds because it does dump every transaction into the trust liability account 1, just like it dumps the legal, which they all do. You have to do that extra step if you want to present it like Sarah and I and you like to have it. You want to have the sub-liabilities, you do have to do that extra step. You know, use the reclass tool. It's not a big deal. But overall, I would say I would recommend Clio. We recommend it all the time because it's our favorite software.

Take care.

Yeah, it does have a lot of pluses to it, and it's just, it's not a software that's going to be gone tomorrow either, because some of them out there, the newer ones, you don't know if they're going to be around. So, I mean, remember that when you're— or, or are you going to grow with it? Yeah, because a lot of people come in a little tiny firm, and the next thing you know, holy smoke, they've got 15 employees, and you need a software you can grow with.

And clearly, so what What big thing is too is when you're looking to modernize, really, we're coming out of something that is a spreadsheet and this and that, and you're going to court or you're sitting next to colleagues and you guys are talking and you don't have the same realization rates. You don't have any idea what you're looking at as far as how to run a firm.

This is going to be a really long video if we keep going because the next 2 are just accounting software and we could battle that out. I could tell you 15 reasons why QuickBooks is better and You can tell me 25 reasons that—

Well, if we drop down to the lower half.

The lower half. We can save the other one for a different show.

Let's skip the 2 in the middle there, QBO and Xero, because there are other products that I actually would slate into that. Let's go to MyCase and Zoho Suite. But MyCase specifically, interesting enough, is a product that a lot of firms are using.

Yep.

They really are. That, and if we maybe re-update the bracket and do MyCase and Panther.

There you go. Yeah, you could compare Rocket Matter or, you know.

Yeah, let's do Practice Panther in my case. Those 2 products are definitely boutique firm style products. Those 2 products try to play nice with QuickBooks. I don't know if they play with Xero at all. Not interested in knowing because I don't like what they do with the integration. Interesting enough, we got a question over the weekend where I participated in a question over the weekend where somebody was trying to figure out how to work the MyCase integration. And I'm going to be honest with you, there is no working with it. You just got to figure it out a little bit.

You just connect it and then hope for the best. And if pieces of it break, I have a client in it and I hate it. I, because I know all the software that's better out there than what they're using. And first of all, it's very expensive as software goes. It costs way more than Clio and LeanLaw. And then it has Terrible. The way it works, if I have a client pay me part of the fee but they're not going to pay the full amount for whatever reason, can't do that. In my case, doesn't allow for it. So now you have a problem there. Or I get all my payments in and then I have them— I want to put it in my undeposited funds account because I'm only going to take one pile of checks to the bank. Well, guess what? You have to find a way to change every single transaction inside of QuickBooks to say not the bank.

That's really compliant.

Or the undeposited fund account, because they're all sitting together, all sitting individually in the bank account. You cannot select the undeposited or payments deposit account in the setup of MyCase. It doesn't let you. You cannot pick that account. It has to be a bank account. So that sucks. What else about it sucks? There's a lot of things.

Yeah, it goes on. I mean, Practice Panther has some Practice Panther. Can't have software.

Can't have software. Yep. Yeah. Can't have a credit card in Panther. I think I know why people buy Panther. It's so pretty and has a cool name. That's your 2 reasons that you'd buy Panther.

Wait a minute. Back up. Back up. Back up. What about the credit card?

You cannot have a credit card account.

You, you, you can.

You have to make it a bank account. It's— there's a horrible workaround. So what happens is if a client has their advanced client costs and they put them in, Panther makes it a check and pushes it into the operating where it will never clear because it was paid by a credit card.

Oh my goodness.

Yeah.

And it's— oh wow.

Okay.

Have you, Steve, have you worked with MyCase or Panther?

I've worked with MyCase. I did a really massive, massive trust cleanup project in MyCase. And a couple years ago, was it 2 or 3 years ago, they were, they were beefing up MyCase and looked like they were going to try to And then that kind of just faded off into the dust somewhere.

I think it got purchased.

I think it got purchased by law. What is it, Sarah? 8 o'clock in the morning or 8 AM? Yeah.

Oh, by 8 AM? Really?

Okay.

My case did. Yeah.

I think that's kind of what happened to it. Yeah.

Yeah.

No.

Who would be the winner if you had a My Case Panther?

Honestly, I would, I would take, sadly, I would take Panther over it.

You take Panther? I would take MyCase over it, over Panther.

Well, because I, at least I know how to work with that and there's a little bit more flexibility and I don't feel as compromised. I feel very compromised with MyCase in the integration. If we're talking about the integration, if we're talking about working within the product, but they changed the product, both products recently.

Oh my gosh.

Yeah.

You can't find anything now with MyCase. They completely changed the UI. It does look prettier, but you can't find anything.

So also, you have a credit card company who owns— yeah, a software. Uh, I don't, I don't know. Steve, what would you take in, in your opinion?

Well, you don't need a tiebreaker.

I would have to say my case because I don't know that much about Practice Panther other than what I hear out on the street, you know.

But I really hear out on the street. You know what, I will say bad on Panther. Shame on you, Panther. Your accountant seat is not that great. And, um, it's a user seat. Um, where I think my case is a little different, right? You have to pay to play in my—

no, you have to pay for it. You have to pay for it.

And Clio too. I mean, all of you guys, listen, we're not in it to do the work the way the law firm is.

No.

Take note. We're in it for multiple reasons. We're in it to support.

And you know what? Yeah. Your points there, boy, do I get passionate about this. We as accountants, as law firm accountants, are promoting your products.

Yes.

And then you charge us to have a seat to use your product and counsel the attorneys how to use it. That just burns me. I just—

I'm like, attention, the whole thing. Let's be honest though, I get it. You need to make a dollar, and some people are pretty, pretty unkind. I think if—

But you can make a lot more dollars From us by letting us in and having a seat at the table.

I think the problem with that— If I'm doing billing though, if I'm doing billing in a product, yeah, my seat, you should be, as a firm owner, you should be paying for my seat.

The problem with it is that they didn't build the product to have the accountant view seat and all that. And that is the issue. That's what Clio said, why they can't do it, because Clio, you have to pay for it. I'm sure my case was built the same and Panther was built the same. So now you can't unring that bell. where lien law was built for that. They took that into their thought for that. But I think with— I often wonder if you had 4 attorneys or 3 attorneys sitting here, how this would land with attorneys. Because now this is the accountant side of looking at these products. But do the attorneys like— I don't know how much my attorney really likes the software. Is it worth it? You know, to change is expensive.

Change is expensive. We know that.

Change is expensive and time-consuming and scary. And eventually we know it's worth it. We've moved enough people around software that we know it's well worth it, but it is painful and it is expensive to the business owner. And that has to be thought into that process. So I say if you're a bookkeeper out there listening, maybe you want to specialize in one of the ones that aren't that great. I mean, I definitely think you should know Clio because 85% of your clients are going to come to you in Clio. Or nothing.

And it's underutilized. Every time you say that ring the bell thing, that song pops in my head. I literally end up with that damn song in my head.

But this is a great topic and great. And I know she's updated the—

Oh, has she?

Yeah, of course she did. You know, T. So it's all updated to what we just said.

And she's going to have another talk. Yeah, we're going to do NA on QBO and Xero. Thank you very much. Because I would— I haven't even said my feelings on Xero, but there isn't enough time in this hour. Thank you so much.

I think when we rework this chart a little bit, we ought to have a couple blank boxes and see what gets put in there.

Well, I'd love to see what our listeners think. I'd love to hear what other softwares— I know we know a lot. I would love to hear what other— on the accounting side, what other softwares you are interacting with, what are your pluses and minuses? And I really would like to hear if there are firm owners out there.

Attorneys. Yeah. I'd love to hear what the attorneys think about this.

Tell us what you like. We'd like to know. Yeah.

I've worked with 2 firms that have Rocket Matter and really like it.

Really?

There you have it.

I'm going to not say a word.

I know, I know. But they love it. Both of them love it.

And listen, I got a beef with Smokeball. And if Smokeball is listening, y'all better reach out to us or something because I'm going to tell you what. product for what it costs.

Nice, Sarah.

It's what it costs and what you're doing.

Yeah, they need to—

we just need to come to Jesus moment, please. So anyways, all right, well, Tierra, take this out.

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Thank you.

And if you're one of the owners of the softwares that we talked about, we'd love to have you on as a guest.

Absolutely. Correct us.

Yeah. I mean, really, that's— I mean, we have our opinions too. We'd love to share with you. It's like, But yes, absolutely. It would be nice to have you all on. And thank you guys for—

Thank you.

Today. I appreciate it.

Thank you. Take care.

Bye.

Bye.