Newsletter - Law Practice Management Accounting Software - Rhode Island
Please Note: This newsletter was originally published in 2008. Some of the links may not be up to date.
The Profit Point Group Newsletter
Lawyers generate a lot of paperwork and burn a lot of midnight oil - these result in (of course) a lot of paper and great use of electricity to run lights to read it by. This puts lawyers in a unique position to do something good for the environment by reducing their paper consumption and using energy efficient lighting products.
The great thing is that in only a short time, these environmentally friendly actions can reduce costs. Learn how in two of our articles below, but first an uplifting essay from Mario Villella on just some of the good things lawyers do for the world.
Why I Like Lawyers, by Mario Villella
There is a moral belief that virtually every single person I've ever met says they think is true: "Human beings do bad things." Now, there is much debate as to why this is true.
Some people believe we learn bad behavior from our environment. Other people think bad behaviors stem from our genetic code and the general health of our minds and bodies. Other people think the problem is a spiritual problem in our natures that all people have when they are born. Whatever the cause, most everyone agrees that people do bad things that damage other people and their property on a regular basis.
For this reason we here in America (and every other nation and people group for that matter) have laws. Civil and Criminal laws are set up to:
- Restrain and/or deter people from doing the bad things they have a proclivity to do.
- Punish people who choose to hurt others.
- Compensate people who are the victims of abuse or negligence of others.
And every single person who works in the field of law plays an important part in doing those three things. Police officers, judges, legislators, jurors, and military personnel, politicians, and investigators are just a few of the many people who commit a large portion of their life to this process of restraining evil, punishing law breakers, and protecting innocent victims. And for the most part, the people who hold these positions are respected for the important work they do.
There is one group of people, however, that play an equally important role in this system, and yet for some reason they are not given the same respect. The group to which I'm referring is: Lawyers. Lawyers are repeatedly joked about, often held in derision, and sometimes openly hated. This is tragic.
If it weren't for lawyers:
- Innocent people who are unable to defend themselves in court would be convicted of crimes they didn't commit.
- Guilty people who are especially talented in deception would not be punished for their crimes.
- Companies would be able to advertise falsely with no consequence.
- Food and drug producers could easily distribute harmful products to the public.
- Divorces would be an even more difficult process where the spouse with the least amount of intelligence and/or communication skills would simply lose out on their fair share of the assets.
- Artists would have their creative works stolen and/or reproduced without permission and they would be unable to seek out any sort of just compensation.
- The constitutions of the federal and state governments would lose their significance. Their power would slowly erode away.
- Crime would escalate, as people realized no one was professionally or occupationally committed to prosecute crimes with quality and excellence.
- Legal errors would virtually never be overturned through the appeals process.
- Victims of negligence would rarely see restitution.
- Governments would be able to abuse their powers over the citizens in their jurisdictions.
I really could go on and on. But to sum it all up, lawyers help restrain evil, punish lawbreakers, and protect innocent citizens. Sure, there are corrupt lawyers who abuse their role and actually help further evil, protect lawbreakers, and punish innocent citizens. But that is true of all of the "law" professions; there are corrupt judges, police officers, legislators, and politicians. Frankly, there are corrupt people in every field, even those outside the legal profession including doctors, firefighters, teachers, priests, janitors, and journalists. The reason this is true goes back to the first point: Human beings do bad things.
The fact that some lawyers are "corrupt" isn't evidence that we "don't need lawyers." It is actually evidence supporting the other side. We do need them. As long as there are corrupt people in any field in this country we need lawyers to help us to restrain and punish them while protecting the victims they hurt.
Doing Good by Saving Paper — and Maybe the Planet
Paper-making is one of the most water-intensive industries. A recent story on National Public Radio highlighted the large environment footprint left by the paper industry.
Why is this important to lawyers? We consume a lot of paper. And that paper took a lot of fresh water to make.
Leaving environment concerns aside, paper costs money to buy, process, and store. When we minimize our use of paper, we save money and potentially become more efficient by reducing the cumbersome flow of paper through our offices.
No, this isn't an article extolling the virtues of scanning and other technologies that will help your law firm become paper-less (or at least use less paper). Instead, think about how a minimal change such as adjusting the margins on some of your documents could save paper. Microsoft Word comes with the default left and right margins set at 1.25 inches. What about reducing them to an inch or even .75 inches?
Sure, many documents to be filed with courts or public agencies have margin requirements, often an inch all the way around. But law firms produce much more paper than what they filed with courts. What about correspondence, inter-office memos, billing worksheets, and draft copies?
Think margin fiddling can't save enough paper to make it worth the effort? Think again. See the study from Penn State University and the student paper from Michigan State University on the new Change the Margins web site. This is the kind of "low-hanging fruit" that can be plucked by anyone with minimal effort that, multiplied by the number of law firms in this country, could make a significant environmental difference.
Doing Even More Good by Saving Electricity
In law offices, light bulbs tend to be on for the entire eight-hour plus workday. That is the ideal setting for energy-saving Compact Fluorescent light bulbs (CFL's). Prices on these bulbs has dropped from $9 to $25 in 1999 to $2 to $3 per bulb today. A CFL that burns just three hours a day will save $5 a year in electricity according to tests performed by Consumer Reports. In law firms where bulbs burn more than twice as long daily, the savings would more than double that amount.
Two of the biggest drawbacks of CFL's are on their way to being solved. First, there are now CFL's that can be used with dimmers. For example, GE makes a line called "Energy Smart Dimming Spirals" that will work with a dimmer switch. They tend to be more expensive to buy than ordinary CFL's, but they still save money in the long run. The package will indicate whether the CFL can be used with a dimmer switch. If it doesn't specify "dimmer compatible" on the package, don't use it with a dimmer.
Second, CFL's contain environmentally-dangerous mercury, a neurotoxin. Programs to recycle mercury from burned-out CFL's have been slow in coming. Some communities are starting such programs. Until one comes to your area, consider Sylvania's mail-in CFL recycling program. It costs a bit more than buying bulbs at a retail outlet, but it prevents mercury from contaminating the environment.
Like changing the default margins on certain documents, switching from ordinary incandescent bulb's to CFL's is an easy way for every lawyer to save money at the office and home, and do good for the environment in the process.
Amicus Attorney 2008 and Amicus Accounting 2008 Launched
Amicus Attorney 2008 - Small Firm Edition is designed specifically for small law firms and solo practitioners. This easy-to-use practice management tool ensures legal professionals stay on top of their practice and keep control of their day - effortlessly. The Small Firm Edition ensures all daily tasks (calendar, to do lists, contact list, communications, time entries, tasks, notes and more) are organized and stored in one integrated system. Recommended for up to 10 users.
Amicus Accounting 2008 is a powerful and easy-to-use time, billing and accounting software application for law firms. Designed to combine legal billing and accounting into a single program, the standalone Amicus Accounting 2008 can be partnered with Amicus Attorney 2008 to provide a total front office - back office solution for law practices. Keep track of your time and expenses, generate bills and write checks, manage your receivables and payables - Amicus Accounting lets you do it all quickly and easily. Other benefits include its full trust accounting and robust reporting features and an optional payroll add- on.
For Amicus Attorney 2008 and Amicus Accounting 2008 pricing, including upgrade discounts from earlier versions, contact the ProfitPoint Group.
Amicus Attorney Tip of the Month - Time Tracking from Your Calendar
If you bill hourly for your time, or you like to track all of your time whether the file is billed by the hour or not, then if you effectively use Amicus, you can capture all your time on the Calendar. Once the time has passed for an appointment, a small blue timesheet button will appear in the upper right corner of the appointment on the calendar. Simply clicking on that will create a time entry for that event. This is one of the reasons why it is so important to assign all calendar events to a file, as the file is already filled in on the time entry.
Another handy shortcut - have the person who creates the event entry make the description of the event text that would be acceptable in a time entry. For example, if you are attending a mediation with a client, if the person who creates that event simply puts Mediation in the title of the event, then when you create the time entry, the description simply says Mediation. When the event is created, if the title is entered as "Attend Mediation with client", then that becomes the description of the time entry.
There is also a preference in Amicus to automatically create a time entry when a to-do is checked off as completed. To see how this is set for you, go to File, Preferences, and then to the Calendar tab. The same thing is true for the title of the to-do - the time entry is simpler if the title of the to- do is something that would be acceptable on a time entry.
The third place you can post time from the Calendar in Amicus is the Communications Page. If you click on the down pointing black arrow where it says "To-Do", one of your options will be Communication. On that page, you will see all telephone calls, telephone messages, and saved sent and received emails. You will also notice that anything that has NOT had a time entry done will show a small blue time entry icon in the upper right hand corner. Simply click on that and you will get a time entry dialog box and you can complete the entry.
Of course, when you have completed the review of your time from the calendar, all of your time entries appear together in the Time Sheets Module so you can make sure you have accounted for your day.
PCLaw Version 9 Tip of the Month
Lexis Nexis has released PCLaw Version 9. This new version has been rebadged as "Lexis Back Office - Powered By PCLaw", and at a glance offers the following new features:
- PCLaw now has an arrangement with Payment Processing, Inc. (PPI) a major credit card processing house to integrate credit card functionality inside PCLaw at no additional cost. This means that using PCLaw lets you easily accept and process credit cards without having to lease expensive machinery. If you don't yet accept credit cards, but have been wanting to do so, we'll provide you information as to how to apply to PPI in the near future. This will be a tremendous advantage to small firms that need to accept credit cards.
- Lexis has also teamed up with ADP for payroll processing. This will replace the integrated PCLaw payroll module. Support for the current Payroll module will cease on January 1, 2008 (that is, there will not be any 2008 tax updates).
- There are two significant improvements in terms of billing. First, you now have the ability to define memo fields to print on bills or pre-bills, as well as the ability to override those fields on the fly. This is an option that has long been available in QuickBooks. In addition, you can now define a group of clients and/or matters to bill at once via the "Bill Flow Manager" (terminology borrowed from Billing Matters). This lets you, for example, define a set of bills that a given attorney is responsible for and the attorney can review them prior to printing them - as opposed to manually marking them up and having somebody else make the changes.
- The bank reconciliation function and statement has been significantly improved in that you can add service charges on the fly and your checks and receipts have a cleaner display.
- Comparative reports are available so that you can set up pre-defined report searches for individual reports.
- The Template Editor has a new look for the toolbar to help you find items easier. And, finally, by default all elements are selected upon first displaying a template.
Like previous versions of PCLaw, the update is offered free to all firms with a current support agreement with Lexis Nexis. For more information about PCLaw Version 9, contact the ProfitPoint Group.
Time Matters® 9 Launched
Get a clear view of your practice with Lexis Front Office powered by Time Matters 9.0. Increase your firm's productivity and profitability—and maximize client satisfaction—with scalable, streamlined, robust tools to help you:
- Manage and share client and matter details across your practice—contacts, parties, documents, calendaring, e-mail, research, phone records and more—using a user-friendly interface and strong, secure, centralized database
- Easily integrate with your back-office tools and other practice software
- Adapt for your firm’s changing needs with flexible security and accommodations for growing staff
- Work from anywhere with Palm OS®, Windows® Smartphone and BlackBerry® wireless device integration
Lexis® Back Office powered by Billing Matters® 9.0 billing and accounting software shares a database with Lexis Front Office powered by Time Matters. Use centralized billing, a payables process manager, trust accounting tools, timesheets and a full range of reporting options to create a virtually effortless billing cycle.
Time Matters® World Server 8.0 is a server-based practice management system that allows universal access to your firm’s most critical information from anywhere in the world through a Web-based interface.
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