CARET Legal vs. Time Matters

Well-suited to a small to midsized law firm setting. Would also recommend for management seek easy ways to keep track of a large volume of business and to track which staff are doing what. The software isn't the best suited for running a lot of complex reports--we can obtain simple information in the reports, but sometimes we find ourselves pulling certain data from Zola and working with it in other software environments instead.

Incentivized

When we first started with Time Matters, there were very few other options and it fit the bill. But it didn't really progress with the times and there is now a need for synching with IPhones that was not envisioned back then. Additionally, the number of users is limited to what you purchased and it is not simple to just pay to add a user if a company grows. They MANDATE that you have a service contract which is costly and may not be necessary, and if you want to upgrade to a newer version, they insist that you pay for the contract RETROACTIVELY (!!!) without having use of it.

Incentivized

• Provide me with instant list of assignments.
• Easily record billable hours.
• Monitor the work of colleagues whom I supervise.

Incentivized

• It stores data that the law firm uses.
• It really doesn't do anything really well, so it is hard to answer this question.

Incentivized

• The email integration feature has never consistently worked.
• I can't toggle easily between viewing all time and just my time, have to use the filters.
• Pulling reports to capture certain notes/details not perfected yet.

Incentivized

• The program would benefit from better customer support.
• The program would be stronger by providing for more detailed roles, which you could assign to different users.
• The program would benefit by being easier to integrate with non-Lexis products. Sometimes this crosstalk causes issues.

Incentivized

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

Incentivized

I didn't have the ultimate decision-making power to choose Zola. Clio was more expensive and may have offered a more robust platform, but with some options we didn't need. Westlaw was good for case management, but we would have likely still needed separate software to patch together something like Zola. Zola support isn't that great, but we rarely need it.

Incentivized

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.

Incentivized

• Collections have been better overall.
• Verifying staff work has been made much easier, potentially leading to more efficiencies.
• The software itself is costly.

Incentivized

• We had to spend over $100,000 to customize Time Matters to work correctly with our medical malpractice and mass tort teams because the out of the box solution didn't work for both teams. Consultant costs are then required to maintain the customizations with each version upgrade.
• I feel that we did not get any ROI on the licensing renewal costs because support is bundled with it and the Lexis Nexus support team wouldn't support of system because we used SQL replication.
• Migration Costs to leave Time Matters for a cloud solution were high because of the complexities of the Time Matters software.

Incentivized