Best Legal Billing Software: What's Right for You?

It used to be that those involved in the legal profession had no choice but to draft their own bills of cost. Preparation and taxation of bills used to be an extremely time-consuming process required as a major part of law firms daily working procedures.

Filing, Paperwork and the ubiquitous spreadsheet programs were the order of the day. Thankfully, in recent times, technological developments have simplified the process.

Larger law firms are able to outsource to cost consultants, but smaller companies are often unable to budget for such costs. This is where legal billing software designed around e-billing and timekeeping management can provide an answer.

Why should you use Legal invoicing software?

The ability to capture and monitor hours of billable time is a major part of the legal profession. It can be an extremely time-consuming and manual process in producing invoices.

Legal billing software is designed to solve these problems. Let’s take a look below at some of the main benefits that legal billing programs should offer:

• Secure online access (SaaS)
• Simple client and contact lists creation
• User-friendly and requiring limited training
• Instantly retrieve data
• Security of a backup system if data becomes corrupted or lost
• Ability to bill multiple clients at the touch of a button
• Fully automated 
• Reduces time spent on billing drafting

What legal invoicing software is the right fit for you?

We are confident in our own products, we know what they do and who they suit best, so let us give you our view on which software is right for your needs based on what’s out there at the moment.

Here’s a quick rundown on the features list you can expect of each platform, what you should expect as standard when considering your legal billing software, and where each of their strengths lies...

Profit Protection

There are a variety of platforms out there who provide profit protection in claims management, it’s a fairly standard feature, so you should expect your billing software to provide this functionality by default

Net Positive

Be wary on this part, the only legal billing software we’re aware of that currently provides this feature is our own Bilr software. Our software providers will list a price close to our own, but that's likely their upfront annual price.

Experience

You should ideally look for providers who have been in this industry for the long term, you cannot buy experience, so it pays to ensure the platforms creates have plenty of experience to pass on within their platform. The Bilr team has been in the legal software industry for 15+ years, serving Fortune 500 clients, providing over $500M in added value.

Admin Control Features

This should come as standard for every type of software, but make sure you check out the details...some are more comprehensive than others. Our legal billing software product offers a large compliment of admin features. So make sure the one you choose does too.

White Glove Customization

An important service - often missed. Bilr offers this service, but we’re unable to locate any other legal billing software that also offers this partnership-style approach. What this means, in short, is our ability work with your team on features that are not present in Bilr, but would add value for your law firm. Available at a minimal cost.

Voice-Enabled

This feature is important as it reflects the importance of your time. Voice-enabled billing software can be a fast productive tool for many, there aren’t currently any other platforms that provide this apart from Bilr, as far as we're aware. Mobile-enabled, on the other hand, is available across the range of platforms. We’re proud of our 5/5 star rating on our mobile-enabled functionality. Others vary in their ratings, but it’s worth checking them out along with what feedback they’ve received.

Automated Billing

We have machine learning baked into Bilr, which enables your law firm to avoid costly billing compliance mistakes. Some other platforms also have this functionality built-in. So if this is an important aspect for you, then watch this space on Bilr, or opt for another existing platform.

Low Monthly Cost

Others provide a monthly cost to their products - which is great. But we’ve struggled to find anyone that competes with https://www.getbilr.com for the lowest priced platform. Abacus and MyCase however, do have some competitive pricing in this area.

Automated Billing

A good standard product should always include automated billing. You will - or should, at least, find this as standard across the board.

Custom Integration

Thankfully, all the available platforms offer this feature. So if this is important for your billing processes then it’s not a factor you need to worry about. It’s a default feature all platforms incorporate.

What about other features?

Looking at other important features, we’re proud to say that Bilr offers the following, whereas only some offer these too. We believe these features and benefits were important aspects required in finding trying and using invoicing software.

Here’s the remaining features to look out for, all things we offer:

• Intuitive UI/UX - We’ve spent years working to ensure our
  platform is easy to use and provides the best user experience.
• 24/7 Premium Support - Bilr is global, other platforms appear to only offer business hours support.
• Price Beat Guarantee - We will always beat other platforms on pricing.
• Free Monthly Trial - we offer that as standard, MyCase does
  also offer a monthly trial.

So how do the available products compare?

There are, of course, many companies offering legal software but let’s take a look below at how ours stacks up in terms of overall value when compared to other standard case management software.

Decades of experience

Our years of experience helps us to stand head and shoulders over our competitors. It shows in our software across all the features, and as a legal tech innovator, it means we have a thorough understanding of your business - while helping you to run an efficient and profitable legal invoicing process with the expert knowledge gained from our many years in the industry.

Free one month trial

Few platforms offer your company the chance to try before you buy! We understand the importance of having the chance to try our software completely free of charge for a month to really see - and test - the benefits of using our software for all your legal billing requirements. Get in touch and book your personalized demo with our skilled advisors today.

24/7 customer support

Unlike other legal software companies, our team is available around the clock to help you with any issues or questions you have when using our software.

Voice-Enabled

Many of our competitors are mobile-enabled but our super-smart software is not only enabled across mobile devices, but is the only legal software on the market which is voice-enabled.

We’ve used state of the art artificial intelligence and machine learning to give you a more seamless, time and cost-reducing experience.

To Finish

We don’t claim to be the best at everything, but we know what we are good at. When stacking up against other platforms, we’re extremely happy with our product offering and we continue to strive in bringing the very best value for money to you in our claims invoicing software. Why not get in touch now, we’d be happy to help, [email protected].

About the Author

Gary R Markham is co-founder and Chief Executive of Legal Solutions Group, which designs, develops and deploys an array of in-house legal technology tools. He is the author of Timekeeping for Dummies, regularly speaks at conferences, panels and symposiums, a Global Director of the Hedge Fund Association, a recent recipient of the Keys to the County of Miami Dade. Gary has over 20 years experience in FinTech, specializing in spend, expense management, vendor and allocation and apportionment software solutions.