Actionstep vs. Time Matters

ActionStep is a powerful CRM and matter management tool. It provides many other good benefits too. For example powerful accounting and billing, time tracking and document management. Only in highly specific areas, like multiple many to many contact relations has it fallen short. But even in this highly specialized area, so many other benefits are provided that it hardly matters.

The legal world- you need this program. There are plenty of other options out there, but TM is by far the best that I have used. This program works for an office of 1 to an office of 100. I have no clue how it would work in any other jobs, it is designed for legal work.

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• The workflows are great to automate simple tasks like notifying people when an engagement letter is signed.
• Mobility. Because it's in the cloud it's easy to access from anywhere.
• The scratch pad is a good way to take quick notes.
• ActionStep lets you create custom fields so you can make sure the data you need is collected.

• Tie Matters handles event and to-do notifications well. This ensures that all SOL's and due dates are met.
• Time Matters does case management tasks well, including documenting cases, documenting client and opposing counsel interactions and court orders.
• Time Matters does a good job of syncing all case data to a users Outlook Calendar, to ensure todo and event notifications on a users Outlook/phone.

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• ActionStep is difficult to setup. I suggest working with a consultant which increases cost.
• Needs mobile app.
• One of our practice areas, Property Law, request we have a many to many contact relation. ActionStep cannot accommodate this. However, no other software I have reviewed can do this either. ActionStep is the most robust that I have seen and comes closest to making this work.

• The software crashes a lot.
• The plugins for Office and Adobe are unstable.
• The whole software package appears to be built for the year 1995.

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There is no unpaid support. They insist on a service contract for support, either with the manufacturer, or with a re-seller.

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I have worked with a lot of software. Each one has a different focus. ActionStep is better at workflow and task automation that the items above, in my opinion. However, having gone through many different deployments, what really matters is identifying your key requirements and needs. Then evaluation software against those. Once you have your requirements and software, focus on using that software to fix issues in existing workflow. This, when compared with ongoing training, is what it means to invest in software. Simply purchasing ActionStep or any software without identifying needs, problems in workflow or an investment in training is not a good plan. Neither is comparing the vendors to one another without knowing all of your specific needs.

So Juris and TM are both LexisNexis products. I dislike Juris greatly and the only thing we use it for is billing because we already had it and it was compatible with TM for billing purposes. Juris doesn't allow you any kind of document storage or management. You can make a "note" but what good does that really do me? In my opinion, Juris is good for billing only (not client management) and there are other options like QuickBooks that really outshine it.

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• I love the workflows that can be deployed for practice areas to ensure consistency. This has reduced new employee onboarding time and increased the speed at which we can complete matters.
• Since ActionStep lives in the cloud, and we have O365 our firm is very mobile without spending lots of money in TS or other such infrastructure.
• Creating the workflows is a bit complex, so this increases the overall cost and makes an ROI take longer. I suggest spending a bit more initially to get everything setup and working with a consultant to learn how to do this on your own during that initial setup.

• Time Matters has allowed attorneys to focus on research and writing, rather than wondering where a file is.
• Time Matters has allowed for more efficient communication between team members on a case.
• Time Matters has ensured hot documents are tagged and accessible.

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A de minimis incentive was given to thank the reviewer for their time. The incentive was not used to bias or drive a particular response, nor was the incentive contingent on a positive endorsement. More Info