PCLaw by LexisNexis is desktop-based legal practice management software with integrated billing and legal trust accounting—but you can take it to the cloud through private hosting. It helps lawyers manage legal matters, track time spent on clients and cases, and reconcile trust accounts. Our PCLaw review will cover its key features, including time and expense tracking, client and contact management, and mobile timekeeping through the PCLaw Go app.
Prices are unavailable on the website, so you have to contact the provider to request a custom quote. User reviews rated PCLaw a bit low. Some find the software too complex or glitchy while those who gave positive feedback mentioned its excellent features in document management and trust accounting.
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Pros
- Is desktop-based but can be run in the cloud through private hosting
- Includes built-in trust accounting features
- Tracks time on the go with PCLaw Go
- Supports different billing formats, including Legal Electronic Data Exchange Standard (LEDES)
- Provides many useful online self-help resources
Cons
- Lacks built-in features for managing payroll
- Has no drill-down options in some reports, such as cash flow planner
- Lacks upfront pricing
- Has poor user reviews due to lack of invoice customization and the expensive annual maintenance plan
PCLaw Alternatives & Comparison
Users Like | Users Dislike |
---|---|
Document management | Expensive annual maintenance plan |
Trust account reconciliation | Software bugs and glitches |
Calendar management | Steep learning curve |
From those who left an online PCLaw review, we found that many users aren’t impressed with the platform. Some complained that invoices aren’t that customizable and that the Annual Maintenance Plan is expensive. Others commented that the program is a bit glitchy, explaining that it constantly crashes.
Meanwhile, those who left positive reviews like that the program is easy to navigate and that it contains all the tools that a lawyer needs—from calendar management to trust account reconciliation. PCLaw earned the following ratings on several review websites:
- G2.com[1]: 3.5 out of 5 based on around 50 reviews
- Capterra[2]: 2.7 out of 5 based on about 70 reviews
The PCLaw pricing information isn’t disclosed publicly, which is one of the major reasons why it took a hit in our pricing evaluation. Since pricing isn’t transparent, we also can’t fully assess its affordability.
You will need to contact LexisNexis directly to request prices or a customized quote. Factors that may affect prices include your practice area and the size of your business. However, since plans are customized, we believe PCLaw to be scalable, especially for large law firms.
PCLaw vs Competitors
We compared PCLaw with its competitors, LeanLaw with QuickBooks Online and TimeSolv with Xero. Here are the results of our evaluation:
PCLaw vs Competitors FSB Case Study
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PCLaw Custom priced
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LeanLaw Starts at $50 per user per month
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TimeSolv Starts at $43.95 per user per month
In our evaluation, PCLaw takes the lead in practice management features. It has excellent trust accounting features and three-way reconciliation for trust accounts. It fell short in client intake forms since it involves a lot of steps when integrating with Microsoft Outlook. We were unable to assess PCLaw’s affordability because prices aren’t published. Consider LeanLaw and TimeSolv for transparent pricing.
In accounting features, it’s tight, but we still declare PCLaw the winner here even if it’s slightly below LeanLaw and TimeSolv. The reason is that PCLaw is a legal accounting software with built-in accounting features, whereas LeanLaw and TimeSolv rely on third-party accounting software integrations. PCLaw’s user review rating is just above average since customer feedback is mixed in the criteria.
Its ease of use is also above average because it’s not clear whether support channels are included even if users won’t get the AMP membership. Hence, we didn’t give PCLaw a full point in our evaluation for customer support. Overall, PCLaw is a good pick if you prefer an all-in-one desktop accounting and legal practice management software.
PCLaw offers a comprehensive set of accounting features—it can process invoices, bills, and payments. However, since it’s desktop software, it cannot email invoices directly from within the app and connect bank feeds, which are two reasons why PCLaw didn’t get a perfect score in this criterion. However, we only see these missing features as a minor thing, and law firms can find a workaround.
Overall, PCLaw’s other features outweigh these two missing features, and we still recommend this software. Let’s look at PCLaw’s salient features:
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
TIP: Microsoft 365 should be installed on your computer to use the PCLaw dashboard features properly.
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.
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.
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.
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.
We also observed that PCLaw’s reports don’t look modern, especially with the font used. While we may be nitpicking, we believe that some users would prefer having a presentable report from the get-go. We hope PCLaw will improve this in the future.
PCLaw is an excellent practice management software. Its score took a slight hit because of the client intake forms. This form is similar to the client portal that other cloud-based practice management software offers. However, with PCLaw being a desktop software, the process of communicating with clients within the software has many steps and requires integration with Microsoft Outlook.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
PCLaw scored above average in our evaluation of ease of use in part because it is an all-in-one program that doesn’t require an accounting integration like LeanLaw and TimeSolv do. However, its interface can be overwhelming or too traditional if compared to other software. If you didn’t receive training before using PCLaw, you’ll have to spend considerable time learning how things work.
PCLaw’s Annual Maintenance Plan (AMP) program is expensive, as users have noted. However, AMP offers local training, centralized customer support, videos, and directory to independent consultants. Hence, we recommend that you weigh the cost and benefits of getting this program.
How We Evaluated PCLaw
As part of our roundup of the best law firm accounting software, we evaluated PCLaw across four different criteria:
10% of Overall Score
25% of Overall Score
A good legal accounting software must-have features that enable law firms to manage invoices, bills, and payments. It must have adequate accounts receivable, accounts payable, and banking functions to manage cash flow, revenues, and expenses.
25% of Overall Score
20% of Overall Score
In evaluating user reviews, we looked at user review websites and checked reliable feedback. We weighed the positive and negative comments and assessed if the complaints were indeed present problems of the provider.
20% of Overall Score
The overarching goal of ease of use is to give users a smooth and easy experience in using the software. This involves an outstanding interface, multiple customer support channels, and a detailed knowledge base. We awarded a higher ease-of-use score to all-in-one software that doesn’t require an accounting integration.
Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs)
If you want the mobility and accessibility of a cloud accounting solution, then PCLaw is better when hosted in the cloud. With private cloud hosting, you can access and work on your books wherever you are, as long as you have an internet connection.
PCLaw is generally easy to use, but it uses special legal-specific accounting terms, which can be overwhelming for new users or those who don’t have a background in accounting. However, with a little practice, you’ll find PCLaw a delight.
PCLaw is great for law firms that need an all-in-one solution and are willing to pay more for quality software to manage cases, clients, billing processes, and financial reports.
Bottom Line
PCLaw is the most comprehensive legal-specific accounting software we’ve reviewed. It allows you to manage the different aspects of your legal practice, from matter management to trust accounting and billing. If your firm is currently using separate platforms to juggle these processes, you can cut costs and streamline your workflows with PCLaw.