PCLaw is offered as an all-in-one billing, legal accounting, and matter management solution, from PCLaw | Time Matters, a joint venture spun out of LexisNexis in collaboration with LEAP in 2019.
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CosmoLex
Score 9.0 out of 10
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CosmoLex in New Jersey offers their legal practice management application which supports all business administration needs, as well as accounting and billing internally, without needing to integrate with accounting software.
PCLaw is well suited for small to medium sized law firms with minimal accounting and bookkeeping needs. The software provides basic case management functions, and I've encountered issues with viewing or organizing new documents. The software crashes and freezes often, especially when multiple users are trying to access it at the same time. The user interface is a bit outdated but still very easy to navigate. You have to pay more for the cloud-based version of the software and it does not allow software integrations or workflow automations. I would recommend using this software only for billing/accounting purposes and subsidizing case management with more modernized products
CosmoLex is very well suited for the solo or small practice where you just need a little more backup to keep you organized, or where you still intend to do your own taxes or like to have a lot of control over your activity and your output. It may also be well suited for a larger practice where the task management pieces would be more useful but, a lot of those pieces get in the way in a solo practice. It is also great for anyone who wants a strong trust accounting program built into their daily activities.
The software may not be pretty, but it works. It could use a facelift but the functionality is still there. Personally, I would like to see an investment to make it prettier, but again, function over fashion. It is not a client-facing application, so internal use does not need to be razzle-dazzle.
There is far too much reliance on symbols versus words, and it is sometimes difficult to navigate to the function you need. CosmoLex offers great support, knowledge base, and training, but sometimes you just don't have an hour to spend learning how to do a basic function that you have forgotten, and you just need it to WORK. It would be great to have the option of having word labels instead of picture symbols. It would also be great to have full functionality in the smartphone app. It just is not good. Not good. Pretty much everything keeping me tied to CosmoLex is on the money management side.
I've always had positive phone calls with PCLaw support. I usually have my questions answered within a few minutes of my phone call, and rarely have to go into very much detail
I think that CosmoLex actually relies so much on its stellar support infrastructure that it forgets we don't actually want to have to use it. Just make the darn thing easier to navigate and understand, and you won't need all that client-facing support. You can choose chat, email, phone, knowledge base, embedded training videos within the different pages, but darn it all, I just want it to be more intuitive instead.
PC Law is quicker and cheaper. With CosmoLex, I found that I waited a little longer for reports and documents to generate and for transactions to be saved. In all other areas, I found CosmoLex to be better as it is more intuitive to use and the user interface is clean and easy to use. CosmoLex does not provide a receipt when receiving funds for some reason, which is something that I like about PC Law. When entering data, you can enter the data for multiple entries at a time whereas with CosmoLex, you enter the data for one transaction/billing/expense/etc, and then you have to save it before going on to do another entry. This doesn't take too long, but there is often a delay of a few seconds which is very frustrating when you are used to the speed of PC Law.
I used CosmoLex over PC Law mostly because it was cloud-based, and I used it over Clio because the accounting for Clio required the use of both Clio and QuickBooks which made for very inefficient data entry. CosmoLex is slower than PCLaw when inputting entries, but I believe that in the long run, it will be better as CosmoLex is better situated to move forward with new technology.
