Rural Lawyer

Finally, a SaaS Practice Management tool whose pricing makes sense. Caseload by Blackletter offers subscriptions that range from free to $50/month. For $0/month, 2 users can work on a single active matter. Other plans increase both the number of users and the number of active matters. Don’t like limits, then the $50/month plan is for you – unlimited users, unlimited matters.

Caseload must have project management genes somewhere in its origins because it is very work-flow oriented and offers graphical outlines of each active matter showing task order and deadlines. Caseload does not offer many frills – invoices are fairly plain, no multiple billing rates, and there is little to customize. But it does provide the basic tools for matter & contact management, calendaring, to do lists, billing, and file storage.

The user interface has a few rough edges – it is not always possible to move from one subsection to another without making use of the browser’s back button and you may have to scroll down the page to reach the “help” button. Other complaints – there does not seem to be obvious way to import/export data, no tutorial is provided, there is no way to classify a contact as opposing party, and conflict checking is rudimentary bordering on primitive. While, the price point helps to mitigate the software’s flaws, my overall feeling is that Blackletter may have jumped a little to soon when they released this version.

At $260 per month per attorney, VLOTech is a significant step up in price from rival practice management SaaS offerings Rocket Matter and Clio. However, if you are interested in having a true 100% virtual practice, VLOTech is a far more complete solution.

In addition to the standard practice management and billing features, a VLOTech subscription includes a dedicated IP address, dedicated hosting, a firm web site, and secure client homepages that can be used to facilitate client communication.

For more information on the potentials of practicing law online,  VLOTech offers a free ebook. Keep in mind that the 100% vitual practice is a radically different paradigm for the practice of law, so check with your local PR board to see what gotcha’s exist in your jursidiction.

Recently, I was asked to recommend a computer to a colleague and as the conversation progressed, the main question did not center on the typical Mac v. PC or Dell v. HP v. Gateway v. etc questions, rather the question was: how much computer do I need anyway. Like any law school graduate, my Pavlovian response was – it depends.

I told my colleague that the first step is to specify your mission and then let the software guide you. The problem with this approach is, as my colleague pointed out, it requires one to know what software they are going to run and allows little room for future growth. So, were there any rules of thumb that would lead to a solid middle of the road computer – something better than your $300 home PC and something a step down from that killer game machine or desktop supercomputer?

By the end of lunch, we had our rule of thumb – Look at the minimum specifications for the latest version of Microsoft Flight Simulator then double the processor speed, quadruple the RAM, 20x the hard drive size, and 8x the video card memory card size.