PCLaw Reviews & Insights

Score6 out of 10

12 Reviews and Ratings

Community insights

TrustRadius Insights for PCLaw are summaries of user sentiment data from TrustRadius reviews and, when necessary, third party data sources.

Pros

Efficient Time and Expense Management: Several users have praised PCLaw for its straightforward and easy entry of time expenses and invoices, especially after the initial setup. This feature allows users to accurately track billable hours and easily generate invoices, saving them valuable time and effort.

Customizable Invoices: Users appreciate the software's ability to fully customize invoices, tailoring them to their specific needs. This flexibility ensures that firms can present professional-looking and personalized invoices to their clients, enhancing their brand image and client satisfaction.

Intuitive User Interface: Many reviewers have found PCLaw's user interface to be well-designed and intuitive, making it easy to navigate through the software. The intuitive design helps users quickly locate the information they need, improving overall productivity and user experience.

Reviews

6 Reviews

PCLaw still has it all

Rating: 8 out of 10

Incentivized

March 9, 2022

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

PCLaw is a robust legal accounting program used in many law firms worldwide for the management of time and billing, trust accounting, and overall firm finances. I have used this as a controller in many law firms in North America along with helping implement and train on the system.

Pros

Client trust management
client billing management
firm accounting

Cons

PCLaw tends to run into data stability issues which can cause unbalanced accounting and client reports.
PCLaw is a desktop solution and has limited cloud support
In my opinion, PCLaw is becoming very expensive and the company cannot justify the cost until they have a system that does not have the instability issues and can work in the cloud.

Likelihood to Recommend

Overall, in comparison to the other legal accounting solutions on the market, PCLaw is still a better choice. It is a very comprehensive legal accounting program that provides the ability to customize reports and billing and track all the aspects of a client file. At the moment there are few products that even come close to the usefulness of PCLaw.

Verified User

Consultant in Finance and Accounting (1-10 employees)

Vetted Review

22 years of experience

Skip PCLaw

Rating: 2 out of 10

February 9, 2021

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

PCLaw was used by all members of the firm, including attorneys and members of the support staff, for case management, time entry, and billing purposes. We could view pertinent documents, manage client information, and track our time within PCLaw. PCLaw allowed us to carefully monitor the progress of hundreds of cases across a variety of practice areas.

Pros

Users can easily navigate the software
Helpful technical support is provided during business hours
Accounting features generate detailed reports on expenses and payments
Cost-effective for small to medium sized firms

Cons

The software frequently crashes and freezes
Documents are difficult to view within the software
No software integrations
Does not accept online payments

Likelihood to Recommend

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.

Alexis Dudek

Paralegal in Legal at Maddy & Nester PLLC (1-10 employees)

Vetted Review

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terrible support, but an older version works well once it is running without issues

Rating: 1 out of 10

January 22, 2021

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

Our firm is an association of independent practices (myself and one lawyer for now, but we plan on having a third lawyer before the end of the year). The other lawyer has been with PC Law for years, though I have been using Cosmolex. I decided to make the switch to PC Law to make things easier across the firm as the assistants will work on files for both lawyers.

Pros

Quick - reports generate faster than Clio or Cosmolex
Efficient data entry
When set up properly, it speeds up a lot of different tasks

Cons

Outdated - user interface is not very intuitive and appears old
server based - IT needs to be involved to solve some issues
support is very slow to respond

Likelihood to Recommend

PC Law is well suited where your support staff is already familiar with it. If you will be training your support staff to use PC Law, it takes a fair bit of experience to be able to use it efficiently. It also requires a server, so if you are a smaller firm and you do not already have a server, there are probably better alternatives.

Verified User

Professional in Legal (1-10 employees)

Vetted Review

1 year of experience

PCLaw: no frills, all functionality

Rating: 7 out of 10

Incentivized

September 21, 2020

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

PCLaw is a wide-ranging application for billing and accounting. It is nicely linked with practice management software, such as Lexis Nexis Time Matters. It is a very powerful application capable of managing accounts receivable as well as a time input system for users of a firm. The ability to link the software to practice management means all clients and even time entries synchronize.

Pros

Link to practice management software to synchronize clients.
Provide structured and organized system for accounting.
Excellent tool for capturing time entries and keeping employees accountable.

Cons

Linking system is prone to issues.
No significant investment in updated features or functionality in several years.
Could use a facelift, but function over fashion.

Likelihood to Recommend

Law firms are extremely well suited (as the software was designed primarily for them) for PCLaw. It pairs and links to their practice management solution (such as LexisNexis Time Matters) and is one of the few billing and accounting software for law firms that works well. There are only a handful of competitors, which might explain why the software has not had any significant investment of features or functionality in quite a few years.

Derek Schroeder

Service Manager in Information Technology at Kloud9 (11-50 employees)

Vetted Review

8 years of experience

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LexisNexis PCLaw - Streamlining Law Practice Management

Rating: 8 out of 10

Incentivized

September 15, 2020

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

LexisNexis PCLaw is used largely by our accounting/billing department to address issues related to capturing billable hours (and comparing to/ensuring time entries are accurate), maintaining client trust accounts, and streamlining collections. It is also used by certain lawyers and paralegals to create a central database or repository for select cases that stores contact information, events/calendar info, deadlines, and case facts.

Pros

Streamlining billing/collections
Centralizing case information into a repository
Capturing billable time

Cons

Generating bills sometimes comes with errors that are not easy to identify
Troubleshooting errors in billing is sometimes tricky
No other issues!

Likelihood to Recommend

LexisNexis PCLaw is excellent for streamlining the billing process from the capture of time entry (in order to compare billable entries to time spent, etc) to generating pro formas to sending out finalized bills to tracking collections. This is probably its greatest strength. It is also nice for providing a centralized repository to store case information but is used by a completely different subset of people in this regard.

Jaime L. Regan

Associate Attorney in Legal at Harris Beach PLLC (201-500 employees)

Vetted Review

1 year of experience

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PCLaw is a good find for a smaller firm

Rating: 8 out of 10

Incentivized

February 28, 2018

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

As a small firm, and being the office manager, I am the main user of PCLaw. I input the time that our attorneys forward, expenses, invoices, and bill at the end of the month. At my previous firm, we had 40-50 employees, so multiple people would have access to PCLaw in order to input time and work on billing. Usually, the accounting department would have full access, and the support staff/attorneys would be able to input time and run reports.

This software is easy enough to use that we do not need to hire an accounting professional to be able to run on a day-to-day basis. It is very easy to put in lawyer's time and get bills out quickly to clients, which helps our cash flow.

Pros

The software can hold a decent amount of matters, which works great being an IP firm with multiple (sometimes hundreds) of matters for each client.
Entry of time/expenses/invoices is very easy once the software is initially set up.
The software allows you to fully customize your invoices.

Cons

Like I said in my pros, it can hold a lot of matters. But, if your firm is very large, PCLaw may not be the best option. My old firm grew to the point where they had to switch because they had too many matters for the system to hold.
The software is definitely dated, and I have some issues with crashing and other weird/buggy behavior. I have to set the default printer every time I log on in order to avoid multiple pop-ups when trying to print a document/report (which definitely doesn't take much time, but it can get annoying).

Likelihood to Recommend

If you're a law firm who has a lot of clients/matters, PCLaw may not be available for you. My old firm grew to a point where they had to switch to Juris because they had too many matters in the system. If you're a smaller firm who needs an accounting software that is easy to use and can quickly get bills out to get you paid, this is a great product.

Sean Conroy

Prosecution Paralegal and Office Manager in Legal at Lewis, Reese & Nesmith, PLLC (1-10 employees)

Vetted Review

7 years of experience

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