Top Tools For The Lawyer In The Cloud
Rocket Matter
This project-management service includes a vast amount of tools for the practicing lawyer, including:
- Calendar
- Time, project and expense tracking
- Invoice management
- Accessible on mobile platforms and PCs
- Multiple billing
- Phone message system
- Integration with Skype
- Document/note creation and management
- Tag system
Clio
Clio is a service that allows users to efficiently manage their projects and monitor billing. It has tools to help manage client reports and other data. It includes a sharing feature that allows lawyers and their clients share documents online. Clio offers a 30 day free trial. Each user will pay $49 per month once the trial period is over.
DropBox
DropBox is one of the premier, and most highly recommended, cloud services available. It was designed for maximum accessibility and is so easy, anyone can use it. Files can be shared and synced between multiple computers and mobile devices and it integrates into Windows effortlessly. Lawyers can easily share documents and files with their clients and staff by simply dragging and dropping files into a shared Dropbox folder. The 2GB plan is free, although for increased storage space, there is a charge.
Evernote
Evernote provides some of the best organizational tools you can find. Documents can be time-stamped, date-stamped and tagged for easy searching at a later time. There are a vast amount of resources such as:
- Encrypted communication between lawyer and clients
- Online credit card payment for legal fees
- Legal invoicing
- Automated documenting
- A vast library of documents organized by state
- Calendar
- Snapshots and photos can be attached to notes and tagged
- Audio capture
- Website clipping and archiving
These are just a few of the tools that can be useful in this line of work. As always, search out the service that has the set of tools that best suits your company's functionality.