Law Firm Practice Management Software

I have never done this before this is my first go at it so here goes nothing. OK Ladies and Gents, what I am interested in developing is a STANDALONE Legal Practice Management Software System. Now the reason why I have used upper case for standalone is because the majority of the software in the market place is cloud based.

Now as a conservative cautious lawyer type, I hate the cloud for the purposes of keeping sensitive information. Further still, for some of the standalone products out there, they have yearly fees. I would like to develop a program that is out of the box one off fee that is yours to use and keep. Obviously issues of updates and fixes etc will enter into the equation (as I say I have no idea about programming or tech stuff so I'll need guidance and advice). As Windows etc develops new versions of it's OS then we will need to update our product.

There is a list of features that will be required, at the "Queensland Law Society Legal practice management software solutions review" located on the web ;-

[url removed, login to view]

I am open to advice corrections or guidance.

## Deliverables

Law Firm Practice Management Software

Required Features

1. Conflict checking and reporting (ie a report of possible conflict of interest search results which can be distributed or printed)

2. Multiple addresses and contact methods

3. Capture of additional attributes

4. Data integrity functionality

5. Relationship / association linkage

6. Direct emailing from practice

Management System

7. Auditing of changes to clients/entities

8. Experts register (ie facility to register specialists along with skills, region and other attributes that can be searched)

9. Grouping of entities by category

10. Recording of exposure limits against clients

11. Credit checking (ie integrated Credit Check Searching)

12. Capture of bank account details

13. Capture of notes against a client/entity

14. Export of client/entity data

15. Full search and filter capabilities

Matters

16. Reinstate closed matters within full ledger history

17. Record exposure limits for fees and disbursements with alerts

18. Matter locking (ie locking, not closing, a matter to prevent further activity)

19. Multiple clients on matter

20. Contact/entity register on matter

21. View matters associated with selected contact/entity

22. Sub-matter capabilities (ie matters that are linked eg class actions)

23. Matter planning tool (ie a tool like MS Project that can plan the course/stages of a matter, resources to be used, timeframes and budgets)

24. Critical dates register

25. User definable data fields for additional data capture

26. Full search and filter capabilities

27. Registration and maintenance of secure / private matters

Accounting Functions

Trust Accounting

28. Fully compliant with computerised trust accounting act and regulations

29. Full audit reporting

30. Controlled funds management

31. Law Society deposit

32. Protected trust facility

33. Trust journals and reporting

34. Reconciliation of trust account

35. Clearance day calculation reliant of method of funds received

36. Trust transfer and reporting facility

Office Accounting

37. Accounts receivable facility

38. Accounts payable facility

39. Purchase ledger

40. EFT / BPay payment of creditors facility

41. Credit card payment method and surcharge calculation

42. Online cheque requisitions and authorisation (ie authorised online before cheque processing)

43. Multiple bank accounts management

44. Reconciliation of bank accounts and reporting

45. Automated electronic bank reconciliation facilities

46. Multi-currency facility

47. Payroll production Billing

48. Billing Guides

49. Flexible methods of billing eg fixed fee / scale / itemised time etc

50. Variety of billing formats

51. Reprint bill at any time

52. Reprint of finalised bill in a different bill format

53. Exportation of the bill to word processing

54. Fee write up/down allocation eg pro rata or specific value

55. Consolidation of multiple matters into one bill

56. Saving of bill to document management system

57. Rounding of totals to nearest dollar

58. Reporting of bills raised during a defined period

Disbursements & Sundries

59. Input of sundries by non-accounts staff

60. Grouping of sundries for billing purposes

61. Anticipated disbursements facility including reporting

62. Calculation of interest on disbursements

Debt Collection Management

63. Debt collection management facility

64. Application of credit terms

65. Debt aging facility

66. Credit rating facility

67. Generation of debt collection letters at predetermined times

68 . Interest calculation of overdue debts

Financial Management

69. Predefined financial management reports eg P&L, Balance Sheet.

70. Customisable general ledger structure

71. Customisable financial management reports

72. Automatic emailing of selective financial management reports

73. GST compliant to cash or accrual basis including production of BAS

74. Branch accounting facilities

75. Multiple trading company facilities

76. Consolidated reporting on trading companies

77. Recurring charges payment facility

78. Standing general ledger journal facility

79. Assignment of general ledger budgets

80. Asset register

81. Asset depreciation schedules

82. Export to Excel functionality

83. System audit of general ledger transaction vs transaction history

Productivity Reporting

84. Key performance indicator reporting for firm, departments and personnel (KPIs)

85. Record budget against fee earner and reporting facilities

86. Decision making tools (eg Business Intelli gence) including current status and future projects etc (ie a tool that will report, analysis and present information in a variety of formats to enable the firm to make decisions)

87. Dashboard reporting functionality

88. Dynamic budget function

89. Matter inactivity reporting

Practice Management

Time Recording

90. Time recording reports

91. Timesheet entry

92. Clock/timer facility

93. Spell check on time narrations

94. Stored keystrokes and play back

Diary

95. Diary facilities

96. Diary integration with Outlook calendar

Safe Custody Management

97. Safe custody register

98. Check in/out facility

99. Document production in relation to safe custody records (ie mail out facility eg ability to produce a letter to packet holders (clients) advising that their item is due for review)

100. Safe custody reports (eg maturity / movements) (ie reports that show the total of packets held, the status or movements (like released / returned etc) of safe custody items etc)

101. Security controls on safe custody activities (ie security that controls what users can and cannot do within safe custody)

102. Capture of electronic version of safe custody items

Marketing

103. Event management and monitoring of individual marketing campaigns

104. Marketing budget vs costs by campaign

105. Marketing media analysis (ie ability to analysis where matters are coming from, the marketing media which produces the best results etc)

106. Client profiling

107. Referral Register

108. Capture of marketing communications

109. Bulk mail-out functionality

Office Automation

Document Production

110. Precedent library including searching facilities

111. Dictation guides for precedents

112. "Smart" precedent development

113. Variable insertion tool when developing precedents

114. Automated document production

115. Multiple party document production

116. Prompt user for document variable input (ie the user is prom pted for data from the database required to satisfy the document)

117. Capture of variable data into database

118. Variety of field types for data fields

119. Assignment of mandatory data fields (ie data fields created by a user that can be assigned as mandatory)

120. Email production using client/entity/ matter details

121. Preview of precedent prior to generation

122. Identification of parties associated with precedent (ie identifies parties associated with or required for the precedent eg letter to mediator confirming mediation may involve details of other side solicitors and Counsel)

123. Help text on precedent

Workflow

124. Dynamic workflow functionality (ie workflow that changes as the course of the matter changes including tasks being added or removed as the matter requires)

125. Establishment of team structures

126. Automatic assignment of tasks to team members

127. Re-allocation of tasks when teams change

128. Scheduling of tas k in accordance with timeframes

129. Completion of task via To Do list or on matter

130. Audit trail of tasks (ie audit of changes made to tasks by users including such changes as date, reallocation and details of the change)

131. Escalation of tasks

132. Alerts on overdue tasks

133. Automatic trigger of time recording at commencement of task

134. Generation of time entry at task completion

135. Access to generated document(s) via task

136. Automated multiple document production on task

137. Ad hoc task creation including document production

138. Automatic email creation/sending based on events and/or data

139. Background data capture based on events

140. Library of predefined tasks (ie a list of tasks that can be added to the workflow as the matter requires)

141. Task editing

142. Reallocation of tasks to other team members

143. Allocation of Notes against a task

144. Re-calculation of task dates

145. Flagging of tasks to be web report able

146. Visual representation of each workflow

147. Application of conditions on tasks (ie ability to control whether a task comes into a workflow based on criteria (conditions) captured earlier in the matter)

148. Workflow development for secure/private matters

149. User definable guidance/help on tasks (ie ability to include help text on tasks to assist users)

Document Management

150. Document searching using a variety of criteria

151. Full text searching

152. Categorisation and re-organisation of documents (ie ability to be able to view documents by different categories or orders eg grouped by type by author)

153. Previewing of material using viewers

154. Version control

155. Check in/out facility

156. Protection of final documents (ie ability to protect the final version of documents from future editing or changes)

157. PDF conversion

158. Capture of third party material

159. Flagging of documents for brief production

160. Flagging of documents for external access

161. Protection of material for private/secure matters

162. User definable profiling screen

Additional functionality

163. Customisable screen layouts

164. Soft labels on user definable fields

165. Security controls on database

Functionality

166. Cloud computing eg self-service Internet infrastructure (ie full access to the practice management system via an internet browser only)

167. Hosted (ASP) model

168. HR facilities

169. Importation of clients and matters (ie ability to create new clients and matters from importing a list of clients and matters from another list eg a spreadsheet)

170. New enquiry interface (including web enquiries) (eg interface screen to quickly and easily create a client and matter based on minimal information)

171. Configurable data warehouse

172. Data dictionary for end users

173. Controlled and customisable external access

174. Knowledge management / Library facility (ie a fa cility where reference material, seminar papers and other library resources can be catalogued and searched etc)

175. Accessible via PDA device

176. Online help

177. Context sensitive help

Integration with other applications and

devices

178. Cost recovery system eg Softlog / Billback

179. TAPI devices

180. SMS technology

181. Third party precedent packages

182. PDF creator

183. Document management system eg iManage

184. Microsoft Office including Exchange / Outlook

185. Integrated online search facilities (eg Citec) and automatic capture of results and charges

186. Voice recognition software

187. Report writing application

188. Document automation tool eg HotDocs

189. Business analysis program

Numer ID Projektu: #2781324

O projekcie