The largest part of my business as an IT service provider in Phoenix is supporting law firms. We created this IT for Law Firms site to help pull together information to help Law Offices make good decisions with technology and to help people be able to share their experiences. My goal is to encourage this spread of information nationwide and even globally if there’s interest.

So, to that point, one of the areas where I get a lot of questions is regarding what software law practices should use. People get familiar with the software that they’ve been using already and tend to keep using it. Sometimes it’s a great solution, sometimes not. In particular, it’s very common for me to get new clients that end up splitting off from a larger practice to go on their own. Sometimes, they are set on using the same software that they used in the larger firm, sometimes, they’re looking for advice.

So, here are some of my high-level thoughts on the subject, I’ll be looking to post additional items over time to this category or various subcategories of software. I STRONGLY ENCOURGE YOUR COMMENTS. Please help everybody out by sharing your experience.

I’ll start off with a few of the general practice management software (high-level, we’ll drill down later):

Omega: we have many clients using this package – it’s geared towards mid-to-large law firms, although I have some fairly small clients that use this software (where it’s probably overkill). It’s fairly full-featured and clients generally appreciate the support that they get from Omega. Being based in Phoenix, which is where Omega is based, we have a fairly large number of Omega clients.

ProLaw: another good solution with a lot of features. It’s full-featured and seems to work well. It has some pretty-good integrated document management capabilities (which is fairly unique – others have document management, but I’ll actually give this one some credit to say it’s actually pretty good, the other solutions that claim integrated document management have pretty weak document management solutions. The only real knock I have with ProLaw is that we’ve had some issues with upgrades. In particular, I have one client that’s been on ProLaw for years on a Sybase (yeah, I know major groan) database. They’ll help get them upgraded to their latest revision which supports SQL server, which is where we need to be, but the quote is really, really high to do it. Not happy about that. However, the product and the support is generally strong. It’s a good solution.

Elite:have some clients with it. Good solution for large law firms. Very full-featured solution, good support. If you are a very large law firm, should definately take a look at it.

Time Matters:this is a solution that is pretty good at what it does and fits well for smaller firms as well as larger ones, doesn’t have all of the features of the larger packages. Particularly strong at docketing. Has it’s own rudimentary document management system, that nobody uses (really weak). However, it integrates with other solutions such as iManage and Worldox.

Tabs3/Practice Master:Another fairly full feaured solution. Several clients are very happy with this solution. Seems to get good support and work well to integrate to other solutions.

PC Law & Timeslips:  Two solutions that do a good job at caputring billing information. Fairly limited in and of themselves, often used to integrate with a solution like Time Matters.

Abacus, Amicus, others:  They seem to have their place, but I’ve personally seen more issues with these solutions than others. Not particularly recommended (but I’d love to hear comments fighting for the good things they do).