PracticePanther Legal Software Reviews

"Great Practice Management Platform"

Pros: PracticePanther offers one of the best and most intuitive user interfaces of any practice management platform out there. It's easy to use and find what you're looking for. The interface can best be described as elegantly simple. But, interface aside, Practice Panther offers a robust set of features from time tracking, document generation, client document sharing, and a lot more.

Cons: PracticePanther is a major player in the case management game, but it is overpriced with what it currently offers. It has very few integrations, and that is very a very important factor to consider in today's legal tech market.

"Great Software"

Comments: The software is very intuitive and easy to use. PracticePanther has clearly thought of the details to make day-to-day practice so much easier. I highly recommend this software!

Pros: Document automation is AMAZING. Once you have your templates uploaded and custom fields set, it can cut down your drafting time by a lot. As a new solo practitioner without a paralegal, this is invaluable.
The customer service is fantastic. The software has a chat feature where you can type a question if you cannot find the answer in their extensive help center. I always receive a response the same day, and usually within a couple hours at most. The help center is quite extensive, and has both videos and text articles.
I love the invoice reminders feature. It is automated, so I don't have to remember to send an email to a client if they have not paid!

Cons: Some of the "syncing" features are not actually syncs. For example, the sync with Outlook's calendar requires that you invite your PracticePanther calendar. It does not communicate directly with Outlook. Same with LawPay. If you enter a payment through PracticePanther, it will sync with the software; if you send the LawPay link directly to the client, it does not record that as a payment in PracticePanther.

"Developer Issues"

Comments: Overall the program is subpar. It is great for simple billing tasks but customer support response time is lacking and the developer has limited the software to basic usage. Every time I raise a question about something simple that is not available I get the standard "that is a developer question" Will be looking for other programs to utilize that are geared more towards our needs.

Pros: The product is easy to manipulate and anyone can migrate through entering time.

Cons: Their billing templates are not interchangeable. I have clients that use different placements for the law firm id/customer id. Contacted customer support (as there is an option to copy the template) to find out how to reverse the 2 columns and was told that it cannot be done and that he would bring it up with the developer. I highly doubt that that is the case since I never received any response back. This means that each month I have to go into the ledes file and reverse the numbers in the 2 columns. Very time consuming and not realistic if you have more than 1 client utilizing ledes billing. Also, their reporting is horrific as you cannot create your own customized report.

"Practice Panther has really helped us get organized and stay on top of our client projects."

Comments: It has helped us organize and stay on top of our client projects so we can draft documents in a more timely manner. It has also improved our communication within our firm on projects and tasks. We like the customization options. They are constantly updating it to become more useful.

Pros: Simple to use - small learning curve. The customer service is fabulous! I love that I can access the program from anywhere (especially on my iPad) and that the view is fairly consistent so I don't have to learn another view.

Cons: It is a bit inflexible to adapt to an estates and trusts practice. For instance, for estate planning for a married couple we have to place the Matter under only one of their names - we would prefer to be able to show the Matter under both, instead we do a work-around through Relationships and a custom Spouse cell.

"Slow and often times down."

Comments: When it's working properly, it is easy to use and intuitive. Unfortunately, it gets hung up a lot when you're trying to sort activities and task lists. It seems to be down quite often on Monday mornings. At least once or twice a month in the last six weeks or so. It's down right now (Tuesday, July 2, 2019) and my firm of 27 people cannot use the software. It was down last week for over an hour. Yesterday, it was getting hung up when I was trying to view the "task list" and there are several tasks that I needed to complete for my clients. In the past, the calendar kept getting hung up and our front desk team of three people had to keep our clients on hold for extended periods while they were waiting for the program to load. We went through their customer service channels and ask them nicely and with increasing urgency to please resolve the issue. Nothing happened until we posted a negative review and they fixed it within a day. Then they caused by telephone and asked us to take down the negative review. I'm starting to wonder whether they actually work weekends in order to do system maintenance of the program is not down during the week.

Pros: It's very intuitive which makes it easy to use.
It integrates well with Law Pay.

Cons: It gets hung up a lot.
The program is down for long stretches during the workday.

"Very good product"

Comments: Integration went very well on the whole. Functionality is very good. We like the ability to generate billing entries easily after sending or receiving e-mails. We really like the product. Only criticism is the inability to continue an e-mail string within the saved e-mail folder on PP.

Pros: Integration went very well on the whole. Functionality is very good. We like the ability to generate billing entries easily after sending or receiving e-mails. We really like the product. Only criticism is the inability to continue an e-mail string within the saved e-mail folder on PP.

Cons: Integration went very well on the whole. Functionality is very good. We like the ability to generate billing entries easily after sending or receiving e-mails. We really like the product. Only criticism is the inability to continue an e-mail string within the saved e-mail folder on PP.

"Easy Even for Me"

Comments: Having begun my career at a time when I tracked my activities with handwritten notes in a hardbound red diary, I was skeptical of the service and worried whether it would be more complex and troublesome that it is worth. It has wound up that PP is completely intuitive (even for an old guy) and ever-so-much more efficient than scribbling in a journal or just keeping a spreadsheet. I'd recommend to any SME/law firm

Pros: PP makes it extremely easy for me to track my time, to access data such as time/fees accrued for a client to date and for the time to be exported to a bill. Seamless.

Cons: Sometimes it can be tricky (for me) in terms of retrieving precise slices of data across clients, but I don't go beyond the basic features of timekeeping often so my skills aren't sharp yet. I really have no complaint for my purposes, which are primary the keeping of time.

"After Shopping Around, I chose PracticePanther"

Comments: I asked around my legal community and the overall consensus is that no modern law firm can live without a practice management software and this is even more true for the solo and small firms. The amount of time saved cannot be emphasized enough. This was what every lawyer I talked to said and it has been my experience since starting using PP. I spend less time managing my practice, my billing is more accurate, my clients are more likely to pay because they have more options and my number of billable hours per month is increased.

Pros: I spent a lot of time looking at the various available platforms. I requested trial versions and I tried out several. I also took recommendations from other lawyers and chose PracticePanther for a couple of important reasons. One - They have the best tutorials and their customer service people are constantly available. And Two- I was not pressured to complete my trial in 20-30 days. I was given unlimited access to test out three clients for as long as I felt I needed to truly experience how the software would integrate into my environment. It works very well, makes me money because it frees up time for more billables and streamlines my income so I can concentrate more on making money and less on collecting and paperwork.

Cons: I have not come across any cons as of yet, not that there aren't any, but I am still a little new and have not utilized every feature yet.

"Easy to use and a great tool for increasing automation"

Comments: I have been able to organize my clients and matters and have a central place to look for all information that I need. I have also been able to save time by using the document automation features and client intake forms. My clients really like having the client portal. I also love the integration with LawPay and Quickbooks because it makes bringing in money and organizing the money so much easier than it was before I had PP.

Pros: I really like the automation features including document templates and workflows.

Cons: In workflows, I haven't figured out how to make PP let you create an event that includes the date and time. It seems to default to all day events. I'm still working on figuring that out.

"Fabulous! They made our transition easy, fast, and convenient."

Comments: Seamless integration with Office 365, Box (and Dropbox), Quickbooks, LawPay, and more. We are capturing more of our billable time and the client portal has decreased the time between invoice and payment resulting in higher collection rates. They also have a wonderful support team that really cares about making your user experience the best it can be.

Pros: I cannot say enough good things. There are so many Pros! Seamless integration with Box, Quickbooks, LawPay, and Office 365 (Outlook, Word, Excel, etc.). Transferring/Uploading client & matter information was easy and amazingly fast. We were up an running after only a few hours from creating our account. Our clients appreciate the Client Portal including being able to securely upload documents, send secure messages (rather than using email), receive invoices, and pay online. We left another law firm management program, Rocket Matter, after only 2 weeks due to poor integration and non-stop headaches. I was worried Practice Panther would end up being much of the same, but I could not be happier we decided to jump to Practice Panther. Their tech support team strives to find solutions rather than simply telling us "no." Every time I wonder whether Practice Panther has the ability to do something, their team finds a way to make it happen. We are extremely happy with platform.

Cons: A few of the features were not immediately intuitive, but as we use it more and learn about all its features the happier we are with our choice.

"Could be better"

Comments: It is a great software for small firms who are very technologically advanced. Our challenges have come in the implementation and document management side. The software has massive potential If your willing to wait for new updates which I believe are quarterly.

Pros: Visually appealing, sorting capabilities, client portal and payment reminders. Also like that they are constantly trying to improve.

Cons: Quickbooks online configuration , lack of reporting, document integration, invoicing and the migration

"I am thrilled with the ease I can conduct business, track hours, set reminders, and bill clients."

Pros: And Justice Legal provides family law, domestic violence, and criminal legal services to clients seeking understanding and guidance through difficult situations, so clients can find a better path on the other side. That path may connect clients with resources to address personal challenges, destructive choices, needed skill sets, or boundaries. The founding partner of And Justice Legal, graduated Magna Cum Laude from Georgetown University's School of Foreign Service in 1983 and is a member of Phi Beta Kappa. Ms. Rhodes received her Juris Doctorate in August 2000 from the University of New Mexico School of Law. At graduation Ms. Rhodes received the Atkinson Kelsey Award of Excellence in Family Law in recognition of her drafting and lobbying the first statute in New Mexico to require the domestic relations courts to consider domestic violence prior to awarding custody of a child. After 17 years of practice, Practice Panther has assisted me in opening my own law firm with the many work flow tools and customer communication and educational opportunities. One of my favorite features is being able to move seamlessly from using PracticePanther on my Microsoft Word computer in the office to my iphone when I am on my way to Court. It makes it very easy to capture billing with the built in timer while at Court and then to take a snapshot of the receipt for parking and attach it to a client matter as an expense.

"Some good functions, some less good and some missing."

Pros: 1) Multi currency.
2) Generate case numbers automatically.
3) Rather good case handling.
4) Ability to add cusom fields.
5) Integration with Chrometa (but it is not that good)

Cons: A) Doument generation from templates. Why not use the Word merge fields? If so, you can remove empty lines, use if ... then ... else clauses and a lot more.
B) No real good way to generate my own code to be called.
C) Does not prevent double import of time records from Chrometa (huge draw back).

"Never lose track of your time"

Comments: I can keep realistic records of actual time spent, and detail about what I've been doing, which enables me to make a very credible motion for award of attorney's fees when we win.

Pros: As an attorney, I love the power to keep track of time--in real time. I can start a timer to record time spent on behalf of clients, or, I can input the time spent on tasks where I didn't have time to start the timer before jumping into an issue.

Cons: After I got accustomed to the features, I like everything about it.

"Better than Clio, Better than anything on the market, Fast and Easy!"

Comments: Many saved hours and freedom from frustration! Peace of mind seeing my trust balance and $ due/ $ paid on the dashboard.

Pros: Fast, easy to use, intuitive program, excellent, responsive customer service. After struggling with software that was too oriented to litigation law firms and didn't work for my IP practice and use of flat fees, software that didn't give me the reports I needed to run my business, and software that took me 2 hours to create invoices that displayed what I needed them to display, I found Practice Panther. It tells me what I want to know when I want to know it, and invoices are so quick and easy to create and customize on the fly. Perfect syncing with Quickbooks also keeps data entry at a minimum. Answer to my prayers!

Cons: There are still one or two reports I haven't figured out how to create; and I am still unsure how to work with PP and Quickbooks when it comes to billable expenses paid by credit card. I suspect these "cons" have more to do with me learning some of the more advanced, newer features, particularly dealing with cost accounting, and less to do with limitations of the software.

"Great functions and integrations, but a smidgen 'clunky'"

Comments: Overall it is great practice management software, I just think some of the functions are clunky (for lack of a better word).

Pros: Integrations with Gmail and WealthCounsel have been absolutely critical and it is so easy to send a client an electronic invoice/receive an online payment. I also really enjoy the workflow function - this is amazing for task tracking and automatically tracking deadlines. Another great feature is the Activity Dashboard that keeps you on track with daily activities.

Cons: It takes a bit to fully immerse yourself in this software and utilize all functions. The template function is a LOT but once you do it a few times you can figure out the ins and outs.

"Practice Panther the Easy Way to Get Significant Advantages In the Market"

Comments: Great!

Pros: Ease of use, iphone ap, customer service, training videos, layout

Cons: I honestly cannot think of anything I don't like

"Best integration with Office 365"

Comments: Everything we need is here, trust accounting, case reporting, financial reporting, customizable fields, document automation, etc.

Pros: Practice Panther out performs on integration with Outlook. Users can send email from within the platform and the email will send in outlook, as well as be saved in the PP file. Similarly, emails that are received can be added by a drag and drop that resides on the Outlook side. It also has better document automation and work flows than the competitive products.

Cons: The dash board at the matter level could be better. All of the information is there, but one has to move from tab to tab to find it. I'd like a "status" feed at the top (with the ability to generate reports for all open matters and current status) instead of the feed that is at the bottom of the case dashboard (which we don't seem to use).

"Best firm management software on the market with the most personable company behind it!"

Comments: Easily the most user-friendly law firm management software on the market with an awesome company and support staff behind it. Keeps me organized and streamlines everything from contacts and calendars to billing and invoicing. Changed the way my law firm runs.

Pros: User-friendly - Learning curve is easily the lowest of any firm management software out there
Support - Short training videos and support chat are right at your fingertips and easy to use so you get the most out of the software. Support staff are personable and very responsive - no waiting for days to get answers
Integration - Easily syncs with commonly used products like Quickbooks, Gmail, Outlook, and other legal software
Price - The price is competitive and gets you more bang for your buck compared to other software out there. They also partner with other companies which allows them to add little freebies, like covering the cost of your LawPay account if you use it. I expect they will keep giving cool incentives like that. This software and company have changed how I run my law firm. I'm a believer and I hope they continue to do great things.

Cons: Still developing - PP is still developing so you do run into hiccups sometimes, but it is still the easiest firm management software to use and I have not had an issue yet that was not resolved by a quick chat session with support staff. They are continuing to add features and developing the product all the time, so I am excited to see what they do - really looking forward to seeing what they do with voice command integration

"Why did I wait so long?"

Comments: Until we found PP, we were posting our files in OneDrive and having to search for things that we should not need to. Quickbooks is inadequate for billing legal-type work and there was no way to run any kind of conflict check without making a spreadsheet and manually adding new clients and inquiries. Now, all we do is put everything in PP. There we can see the progress of our cases, billing, calendars, tasks assignments, project plans and do conflict checks based on more than just the case caption or attorneys. Each case has tag options for identifying the type of work we are doing or any other significant aspect of the case and we can use that also for finding things within the matter or inside our entire database. What's more, it works with OneDrive, so all of our documents are accessible within the program.
This is just what we needed and more...

Pros: As a small practice, I needed to organize and implement an office management system that I could use if my assistant was not here. This software is the most intuitive, responsive and useful that I have tried...and I have test driven four of the top recommended products. I have everything I need in one package; whereas, other companies require additional packages to connect to email and form templates. The learning curve has been very small. Both of us here have not had any training yet and are up and running (for the most part) after only a week or so. Now we will be taking advantage of the great training videos and one-on-one training to hone our skills and use it to its fullest extent.

Cons: So far, our experience has only been positive. Graphics are simple and somewhat old-fashioned, BUT they work great for finding things...that's what counts.

"Solo Practice Law Firm"

Comments: Practice Panther has been great with helping me stay on track with my QuickBooks accounting; and staying organized with client files. As a solo practitioner, it was important for me to be able to do all things necessary to maintain a viable business, and perform at a peak level for my clients while juggling every hat. Practice Panther has exceeded my expectations.

Pros: Ease of use, and tutorials that allowed me to quickly gain the requisite knowledge for utilizing each feature were absolutely critical to starting my law firm. One of the greatest assets to Practice Panther is its amazing team. I love the one on one trainings, and how many of the features I had questions about were already on the agenda for discussion (provided by the team member conducting the training ahead of time). Thus, saving me time, and only needing me to add additional ones, if necessary. I love the tutorials, templates, pop ups, and live chat features. Live chats have been so helpful in a pinch when I encounter a new challenge with things like linking two client matters together. I love how links to possible video tutorials pop up, while I am waiting for a team member to reply, to see if my question can be answered with one of the step by step videos . I use those videos for future references all the time.

Cons: There is nothing I do not like about the software. I only had one hiccup with syncing the LawPay feature with Practice Panther, and one of my client's could not submit their credit card payment online. There was an additional step after your LawPay account is approved, and you must go into your Practice Panther account settings to select the banking accounts that you want to use with LawPay. There were no instructions for this step in the process. However, this appeared to be more of a LawPay issue due to the 3 day time delay for approving the LawPay account. Because Practice Panther is so easy to use, I was actually able to figure out where the problem was, and get my client's payment through within a few minutes. Both Practice Panther and LawPay were quick on responding to the issue, and did an amazing job.

"Practice Panther Time Keeping and Billing for Attorneys"

Comments: I have always been terrible at time keeping and billing. I have probably left Hundreds if not Thousands of dollars on the table by failing to properly keep track of my time and billing. With Practice Panther I am encouraged to keep track of my time and billing because it is fun and easy to do. And I am now on top of past due bills, who is paying on time, and when to prompt clients its time to pay up!

Pros: I really like two features the most. First, is the absolutely fabulous customer support that I receive. I get answers within less than 60 minutes from the time I contact them. Second is the ease of use. Practice Panther is almost intuitive in its use. If the answer doesn't jump out at you, there are tons of training videos available and the online customer help is spot on.

Cons: I use the basic Essential Monthly Plan. It is the lowest cost but the value is exceptional. I do wish I had some of the additional features in the higher priced plans but those don't fit my budget currently. Those features I can supplement with my own documents or programs.

"User-friendly software but there are still room for improvement to effectively serve larger firms"

Comments: (continued from Cons) This sorting function for customized fields will potentially save us a lot of time. (3) Tags are great features, but the ability to sort the data using the tag is very limited. When you search using multiples tags, the software only recognize it as Tag 1 "AND" Tag 2, and gives you data that has BOTH tags. For instance, it's only "Show data that has Tag A AND Tag B". You can't do "Show me the data that has Tag A OR Tag B". You can't search data that DOES NOT have the specific tag either. If the search function in Tags was more comprehensive, it will allow users to expand the usage of tags and give users more flexibility as to how we can efficiently search the data we need. Practice Panther Tech Support has been aware of the suggestions listed above. However, there has not been any update on the progress, and we do not know if these functions will be ever available. We definitely would like to see them implemented very soon. I am open to revise this review once these functionalities become available.

Pros: This software is intuitive, easy to navigate and very user-friendly. Tech support is promptly available and they are very patient. Practice Panther continues to make improvements on the software and they listen to their customers feedback. They have fixed our issues with our calendar being very slow to load. It's fast now and working very well.

Cons: There are still room for improvement in terms of features and functions. (1) The format (layout) of the calendar is not user-friendly for mid to large firms with more than 10 employees. Everyone's events are scattered across the calendar and overlap with each other which makes difficult to identify availability for specific staff. Events are displayed with different colors assigned to each staff. It's hard to follow 10+ different colors on computer screen and it is definitely not working for staff who are color-blind. It's really difficult to see who has appointments at each hour throughout the day. We suggested to have columns for each staff so that it only takes a glance to identify who is available when, just like how calendars are in Time Matters from Lexis Nexis. (2) Sorting function for customized fields is not available unfortunately. What makes this software great is the customization you can make to fit it to your exact needs. However, customized fields are not sort-able, and without the sorting function for the customized fields, data is not as valuable and usable as it should be. As a legal administrator who manages the data and runs productivity report for legal staff, we are currently spending a lot of time downloading the information from the software to MS Excel, sorting and manipulating the data in Excel, and finally coming back to the PracticePanther to make necessary changes within the software. (Continues to overall experience)

"Honest review by long-timer user"

Comments: The customer service and instant contact with support is phenomenal. If ever a software group was to learn and incorporate customer feedback into upgrades, it's Panther. Owned by attorneys, so they know what is needed for efficient software.

Pros: We switched from a non-windows type software to Panther and it was a breath of fresh air. Very user -friendly and logical.

Cons: Switching from our old software to Panther was very difficult. Panther was not able to migrate over our documents from the old software, but rather we did a data dump to an external searchable file.

"Great Program"

Comments: We are using this as a conflict system as well.

Pros: The program is very easy to use. The transition from our old client management was an ease and quick process.

Cons: The only issue that I have is that the secure message notices are not always received via email.