David N. Ventker, Review: PCLaw for Small Firm Acounting/Time-Billing
TechnoLawyer member Diane Sherman asks:
"What is the best billing program for a solo practitioner? I am not interested in integrated practice management software. I just want a billing program that is easy to use and which won't require me to hire costly consultants and spend hours of my otherwise billable consulting with the consultants."
My response is as follows:
I left a larger firm, went solo 4 years ago, and now have a partner and an associate — we have been using PCLaw from the beginning. I have been quite pleased with the integrated time and billing/accounting features of the program, and the technical support has proved to be a pleasant surprise (if you have been reading TechnoLawyer for any length of time, you'll find poor technical support is a major complaint with competing products). Though the developers have added various "practice management" features over time, these are not the strong suit of the program, and we generally ignore them.
The cost of a single license is $250.00, and adding additional licenses if you add paralegals or other lawyers is an additional $250.00 each. The program is very stable, works well on a peer-to-peer network if needed, is fairly easy to understand, and can be customized to suit your needs without much difficulty. When I can't figure out solutions on my own, a call to tech support generally provides the answer.
Hope this helps.
David N. Ventker
Ventker & Warman, PLLC
Norfolk, VA
www.ventkerlaw.com
[Publisher's Note: TechnoLawyer member and PCLaw CIC Matt Stone has written a white paper for LexisNexis entitled Improving Back Office Efficiency with PCLaw Version 8, which you can download from his Web site. — Sara Skiff]
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