CARET Legal vs. Filevine

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

Filevine is well suited if you want to have a practice management program that is not Clio and that is difficult to use, lacks essential features, and is overpromised. It is not suitable for heavy litigation. What kind of legal practice system refers to the core elements as "projects"? Not matters or cases?

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

Incentivized

• Create detailed reports that are fully customizable
• Create different project types for our different kinds of cases
• Customize each project type for each type of case so they only have needed information
• Being cloud-based storage for all case files

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

• In my opinion, customer service is as bad as I have ever experienced anywhere. Even the IRS is more responsive than Filevine.
• In my experience, their staffing and personnel changes so frequently that even if you do find someone who is responsive they either leave the company or are reassigned.

I think the layout is easy to navigate. There are just a few small things I wish were easier, like making contacts directly from the app, or utilizing the search bar for a specific case rather than all cases

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

Filevine is much easier to learn and use, the user interface is more appealing (with bigger fonts and easy-to-understand icons), and its customization feature is easier to use and understand.

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

• Loss of several thousand dollars
• Wasted time from numerous high pressure sales calls