Since the practice of law is a very complicated business, enlisting the aid of law office software is a necessary and smart investment. There are a lot of things that an attorney needs to keep track of. And some mistakes can be costly to either the client or both the client and the lawyer. Fortunately, law office software can ease the burden.
Law office software applications come in different shapes and sizes and offer different functionalities. Most include features for time and billing, document management, practice management, and law office accounting. Others only provide some of the above while still others only focus on one area like time and billing or document management. The trend of software development in law office software, however, is the integration of all the above functions and even more.
But if you are a lawyer who is just starting out with your law practice or are flying solo so to speak, there is another option to these specialized law office software. Since you probably have MS Office already and know some of it’s features, that could be a nice place to start. You can configure each application to your needs and even integrate some or all of them using VBScript or VB for applications (VBA).
For example, you can configure MS Excel to act as your billing and accounting software, MS Word for your document management and communication, and MS Access for your case management. The individual Office applications can also be configured to communicate with each other. After a client’s bill has been calculated with Excel, a function could be made to call Word to print out a mail list, do a mail merge, create a letter based on a template with data from Excel and Access, and so on. The list is almost endless.
However you do it with whatever software, law office software applications should be an integral part of your law practice. This could help you a lot with erroneous billing, missed deadlines, misspellings and whole lot of pitfalls. Don’t leave home without it.
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