LexisNexis Firm Manager Pioneers More Effective Approach to Law Firm Calendaring with Microsoft Office 365 Integration
Raleigh, NC (PRWEB) April 16, 2015 -- LexisNexis® Legal & Professional, a leading provider of content and technology solutions, announced today the LexisNexis Firm Manager® has released an entirely new way to ensure important deadlines are uniform across attorney and law firm devices. According to an ABA Study – Profile of Legal Malpractice Claims – calendar related errors are the leading cause of malpractice actions against lawyers, accounting for more than a third of all malpractice claims, and with more than 70% of claims filed against firms with five or fewer attorneys.
“Calendar synchronization is a necessary evil for any busy attorney that needs to be aware of his calendar in and out of the office,” said attorney Mike Clark of Clarke Griffin, LLC, a small law firm in Portland, Oregon. “Most of my calendar reviewing takes place outside the office and away from my computer. Syncing to my calendar on my phone is one way I’ve been able to stay independent.”
The Firm Manager product makes synchronization easier and more reliable by leveraging a new integration technology for the Microsoft® Outlook and Microsoft Office 365™ calendars. For the solo- or small law firm attorney, this provides a more assured way to ensure important events, such as docketing, are synchronized across individual law firm devices, including computers, tablets, mobile phones and the law firm calendar in the online practice management solution.
Any docketing capability a Firm Manager client uses, for example from rule-based deadline management systems such as those provided by LawToolBox.com, Inc., to automate deadlines for state and federal court litigation with an Office 365 calendar, will be automatically reflected within Firm Manager.
“When an attorney in a court room makes a calendar change on their mobile device, the change will be uniform across all their calendars and devices without taking any further action,” said Susan Harman, vice president and product champion for the Firm Manager team. “We’ve been able to do this by working closely with the Microsoft team to leverage their newest application program interface (API) and thus eliminate for our customers the hassle of downloading and installing plugins.”
The feature is squarely aimed at helping small law firms reduce the risk of malpractice and gaining potential discounts some malpractice insurance carriers offer for using such practice management software. The update is in keeping with the Firm Manager focus on working closely with attorneys in developing the core features most important to small law firms.
The calendaring improvements are not the only update the Firm Manager team rolled out. The new software release also includes a new billing dashboard that provides two snapshot views of accounts receivables. The billing dashboard gives attorneys an at-a-glance view of the financial health and status of client accounts, a sizable challenge for the time-strapped small law firm attorney with competing priorities.
“A billing dashboard will make running my business easier because I’ll have at my fingertips the financial information I need to know how much money I’m bringing in, how much I will be bringing in, and which clients I have been working for without pay,” said Mr. Clark, the attorney with a small law practice in Portland. “Having this information in an easy to see one-page dashboard saves me time and lets me know the productivity of my firm without my time spent analyzing the data.”
About LexisNexis Legal & Professional:
LexisNexis Legal & Professional is a leading global provider of content and technology solutions that enable professionals in legal, corporate, tax, government, academic and non-profit organizations to make informed decisions and achieve better business outcomes. As a digital pioneer, the company was the first to bring legal and business information online with its Lexis® and Nexis® services. Today, LexisNexis Legal & Professional harnesses leading-edge technology and world-class content to help professionals work in faster, easier and more effective ways. Through close collaboration with its customers, the company ensures organizations can leverage its solutions to reduce risk, improve productivity, increase profitability and grow their business. LexisNexis Legal & Professional, which serves customers in more than 175 countries with 10,000 employees worldwide, is part of RELX Group plc, a world-leading provider of information solutions for professional customers across industries.
LexisNexis helps professionals at law firms and legal departments of all sizes manage the business element of their practice or departments with innovative software and mobile solutions for customer relationship management, competitive intelligence gathering and assessment, time and billing management, matter management, client analysis, legal holds and more.
Frank Strong, LexisNexis Software Division, http://businessoflawblog.com/about-us/, +1 (919) 415-3071, [email protected]
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