PCLaw Review: Features, Pricing & Alternatives 2023

From the dashboard, you can see frequently used features and view certain aspects of your firm and client matters. There are three tabs on the main dashboard: ​​My Practice, My Clients, and My Business:

• My Practice: Provides quick links to key tools for managing tasks, calendars, clients, and phone messages
• My Clients: Shows the summary of recent information and activities related to clients and matters, including account details, email, and calendar events
• My Business: Lets you instantly access data and tools used to monitor key performance indicators (KPIs), such as work in progress, bank balances, and billable hours

PCLaw’s dashboard (Source: PCLaw | Time Matters)

PCLaw has built-in features for managing trust funds and trust account reports. It allows you to

• Write checks and receive client payments
• Reconcile trust bank journal balances to your client trust listing
• Set up multiple bank accounts for client trusts, firm funds, and Interest on Lawyer Trust Accounts (IOLTA) accounts
• Export your accounting data to QuickBooks and generate different types of reports on trust accounts

By default, PCLaw includes one general bank account, one trust bank account, and one petty cash account. If needed, you can add a new general bank or trust account easily by clicking Options from your PCLaw homepage and then selecting Lists and then Bank Accounts.

Adding a new bank account in PCLaw

PCLaw features a client trust ledger that displays trust fund activity for each matter. The report provides a balance of each trust account within the matter, including matter and client totals.

The client trust ledger contains three tabs: Common, Matters, and Other. You’ll find most of the commonly used options on any law report in the Common tab, including matter, client, responsible lawyer, and matter totals. The Matters and Other tabs contain report options that are not commonly used, such as totals for trust matters with trust balances and all matters with activity.

Common tab of the Client Trust Ledger (Source: PCLaw)

PCLaw allows you to reconcile your bank account statements to your bank journals. You can import your bank statement values in the Select Account window of the Bank Reconciliation section or use the data from your previous reconciliation.

The bank statement reconciliation screen in PCLaw shows all marked receipts, marked checks, and new errors entered for a certain period. You can then compare the sum of the marked items against your bank statement balance to see if your records are accurate. Note that if you have two or more trust accounts, you need to run a separate trust listing for each account.

Bank reconciliation section in PCLaw (Source: PCLaw)

The program supports different billing methods, including flat-fee, hourly, retainer, task-based, and contingency billing. Using electronic billing, you can create invoices with the specific formats required by third-party platforms, such as LEDES, Litigation Advisor, Nationwide, Examen, Tymetrix, and PWC. If you’re struggling with payment collection, PCLaw integrates with PayPros for easy credit card processing.

If you need to invoice one-time clients, then you can use the Quick Bill module. The Quick Bill window allows you to create invoices instantly for new or existing matters.

Quick Bill module in PCLaw (Source: PCLaw)

With PCLaw, you can manage all case-related matters in one place. It has a centralized platform, where you can store contacts and critical information about cases and your firm, organize events, documents, and communications, and track to-do lists and deadlines associated with matters.

Matter Manager provides all the tools you need to handle every aspect of matters, including client management, billing, split matters, and taxes. The PCLaw team has added six new billing cycles in the matter management module to provide additional flexibility for firms with unique billing requirements, such as semimonthly, semi-quarterly, and annually. The new version allows you to choose from 12 billing cycles.

The tabs of the module include Billing, Settings, Summary, and Events.

Main tab of Matter Manager (Source: PCLaw)

PCLaw allows you to track billable time and expenses by using either traditional timesheets or timer plugins. With the new Time Entry Advisor, you can review billed and unbilled hours and then generate multiple time entries. This feature is useful for teams that enter work information throughout a billing period and wish to send them all at once later. Time entries can be recorded in a timesheet.

Timesheet in PCLaw (Source: PCLaw)

3.1

On App Store

PCLaw has a mobile time tracking application, called PCLaw Go, which allows you to enter and capture time remotely, perform routine tasks, and review accounting data. If you are using the on-premises version, you need to install the PCLaw Connect Manager Windows app―formerly PCLaw Go Manager―before you can use PCLaw Go. You can check out the PCLaw connection manager installation and configuration guide on the PCLaw | Time Matters website.

The document manager is an optional module that lets you store and manage your documents, emails, saved research related to matters, and precedent templates. Documents that you saved to matters appear on the Document Management tab. If you’re a busy lawyer working with countless legal documents every day, then you should enable the document manager in PCLaw.

Document manager in PCLaw (Source: PCLaw)

PCLaw can help you get more clients with its matter intake forms. The program enables you to email an intake form to a potential client using Microsoft Outlook, then you can import the collected data into PCLaw through Microsoft Word. You can even create follow-up tasks and appointments, as well as conflict checks, during the intake process easily. Intake forms can be sent out as an email attachment, printed, or posted on screen.

Starting a client intake form in PCLaw (Source: PCLaw)

PCLaw includes 50 standard reports to help you gauge the financial standing of your firm. You can create general business reports, such as a cash flow planner, A/R reports, A/P reports, and productivity reports. Legal-specific reports include time listing, invoice journals, billable time summaries by a working lawyer, and billing realization. You can customize your reports based on your firm’s situation or requirements.

On the downside, we found that some reports in PCLaw don’t have drill-down options. For instance, the cash flow planner only reports on the short-term cash position of your company. It shows the general balances of your accounts but has no summary of each section.

Cash flow planner (Source: PCLaw)