Legal Technology

Many clients prefer to pay their lawyer by credit card. Lawyers can get paid faster by allowing them to do this. However, there is a hitch. What if the client is paying a retainer? The credit card processors charge service fees which are deducted directly from each transaction. This violates regulations which require the full…

Problem and Impact For a small firm or solo lawyer, the time spent creating bills is time that is not being billed to clients. Because of workloads and time constraints, firms will sometimes delay sending out bills for many months after a matter has closed. This can badly affect the firm’s cash flow. A related…

Sharing office space with other lawyers outside your firm presents unique challenges to protecting client privacy. Here are some technical issues to consider. Network Your office local area network (LAN) is a potential source of compromised privacy. Information sent down a LAN cable from your computer could be seen by one of your co-tenants on…

The special requirements of law firm accounting can be daunting, as the LSUC Bookkeeping Guide illustrates. http://www.lsuc.on.ca/WorkArea/DownloadAsset.aspx?id=2147490537 Many people mistakenly believe that Quickbooks cannot handle law firm trust accounting. This myth is put to rest in the book “Law Practice Accounting Using Quickbooks” by Lynette Benton. http://attorneystechnology.com/quickbooks-books/law-practice-accounting-using-quickbooks/ Clio can send data to Quickbooks and they share accounting…

Lawyers should be aware that email could theoretically be read by third parties in transit. Law Society of Upper Canada says encrypted (secured) systems should be used for especially sensitive communication: http://www.lsuc.on.ca/with.aspx?id=2147491197 If your laptop computer is lost or stolen, any confidential information stored on it could be compromised. The Canadian Bar Association “Guidelines for…

Many lawyers try to keep all their practice information in Microsoft Outlook. But Outlook can only do so much. For example it can separate information by contact, but it cannot separate items by Matter. This is where legal practice management software begins. Clio:  Cloud-based Integrates with Google Apps or Outlook Matter tracking Time tracking Document…