Legal software purchasers beware! The sticker price of a software package may look like a bargain. But if you base your choice of law office billing software on price alone, your final costs may add up to an unpleasant surprise. >

Regardless of the ease and purpose of the legal software you’re choosing, or your own skill with technology, it’s important to grasp the price of ad hoc services, charges and other add-ons that make what sounded like a bargain a very bad deal indeed.

First, consider that all law office software requires the following:

Software Training . Training teaches you, your fellow lawyers, and your staff a) the major features, b) how to adapt technology for your particular need c) the bells and whistles of your new legal software.

Say its legal time and billing software . Everyone that will use this software to enter their time tracking, setup matters, billing, payments, special rates and discounts, and the like (we’ll refer to them collectively as -administrators-) must be newly trained. Cumulative and repetitive training can be both time-consuming and expensive.

Software Setup . You’ll need to set up your new legal billing software on all employee workstations. Again, cumulative setups-for new workstations, new attorneys, etc.-can get time-consuming and expensive.

Practice Customization . Customizing your new software to the needs of your specific law office, practice, and state bar requirements is essential. We will cover attorney billing software customization specifically in another post this month.

In our next post, we’ll talk about the hidden costs of the above services.

Author Bio

Easy Soft specializes in helping law firms automate their processes, streamlining repetitive tasks and work flow. Practice management software such as law office billing software and legal time and billing software.