CosmoLex

Practice Management and Accounting in One

Comments: One of the biggest things Cosmolex has done for us is allow us to bring out bookkeeping in-house. We went through 3 bookkeeping firms in 2 years and spent huge sums of money for our accountants to undo the mess they made. Our first year end with Cosmolex and in-house bookkeeping was a little rough but that was mostly cleaning up past mistakes.

Pros:

The product is generally pretty simple to use. Sometimes you will encounter a quirk that makes you wonder "why did they do it like this?" but once you understand the logic behind it you pick up quickly. The software is updated quite regularly.

Cons:

They were purchased by Tabs3 about a year ago and the fact that they are not independent is a little concerning.

I am glad I found CosmoLex, I could not get through a day without it.

Pros:

It's easy to use, intuitive, and the customer support is outstanding. I've occasionally contacted them with feature suggestions and they usually end up incorporating those suggestions - or they might show me how I missed something that accomplishes the same thing. The product works as advertised and I have no regrets.

Cons:

It had a little bit of a learning curve but I had nothing to compare it to. I now find it intuitive, so it's hard to say. Customer support is awesome, though, and they also have videos you can watch that explain most of the problems and issues I experienced along the way.

Very great Practice Management software

Comments: It has been very easy for me to create a matter, do my billing and invoicing, and the client portal is a nice touch that makes my clients believe that our office is sophisticated.

Pros:

I love the instant live support chat function. It helps a lot when i have absolutely no idea how to navigate

Cons:

The pricing is very high compared to the Canadian counterparts

This App is Geared More Towards Transactional Law Practices

Pros:

Cosmolex is easy to use and to implement. Initially, Customer Support was great, but now not so much. Customer support is still better than any other legal accounting product I have used from Lexis or Westlaw, even Clio. The company is generally pretty good about responding to its customers inquiries; but, you typically have to wait about 4 to 6 hours or the next day or two for a technical support person to call you back and sometimes they don't. The billing features are great for a small transactional law practice or family law practice, but not so much for a firm that handles heavy amounts of civil litigation for commercial clients, which requires reporting and data feed back. Trust accounting on Cosmolex is fantastic and allows for contingency fees in PI cases. Overall, its ease of use and simple interface is why we continue to use it. Compared to most legal accounting and billing software, training employees is easy and they offer tons of opportunities to attend free webinar classes and are great at assisting you in getting your employees up and running. Altogether, it is not bad if you have other software or services to cover document and case management, but is expensive considering its deficiencies in this area.

Cons:

The biggest Con is that there is a clear the lack of usable reports, no way to export client data for analysis and forecasting, third party integrations with Office is a work in progress for 2+ years and Cosmolex should absolutely not be relied on for Case Management in a litigation practice. If you are going to use Cosmolex, I would suggest doing so only for the accounting (w/ trust features) and billing for noncommercial clients. Cosmolex provides linking with your Drobox Account but is very limited when it comes to document management and your space is dependent what you purchase from other third-party companies for storage. We use the client portal for our clients to upload new case documents securely, but that is absolutely those are the only documents “managed” by Cosmolex. Docketing for litigation would be a nightmare if you depended on this software (especially for those that have midsize firms or handle multiple cases for companies). Reporting and data analysis is nonexistent. Cosmolex is absolutely not Microsoft Office friendly and has little to no integration with Microsoft products, despite the way it appears on their website. It will not integrate with on premises Exchange Server 2016, SQL or Power BI so you have to enter everything twice and have other software or services to cover its deficiencies. Calendaring features are worthless unless your firm uses Gmail as your firm email and calendaring system. The calendar may now integrate with 365 but does not have a way to customize jurisdictional presets for counting deadlines like most case management software that integrates with your calendar through Exchange. Altogether, the lack of even usable Excel or .PDF reports is the worst thing about Cosmolex. Report features, including AR ledgers and Invoice listing reports for a client with multiple ongoing cases is worthless. There is also no way to segregate your fees for fee recoverable causes of action, which is required in Texas when you are seeking attorney’s fees from the opposing side. Reports in Cosmolex could not be more unorganized. Trying to pull usable billing data over a period of time longer than one year is virtually impossible unless you want to do it by cutting and pasting from poorly formatted excel spreadsheets, which makes it difficult as hell to analyze client data over a period of time. Overall, all legal accounting software I have seen is terrible, Cosmolex is just less terrible than most. I think we are going to be moving on shortly to something else.

Best Attorney Software

Comments: Great program with easy customer support (even a chat feature). The prior legal platform software we used constantly had issues with an expensive yearly update that was required. Cosmolex is cloud-based so no need for updates. there is no need for an additional bookkeeping program for your office expenses as the program will handle that along with your trust accounting.

Pros:

I like that you can handle your everyday office accounting in the same program as your trust accounting. There is no need for a separate program. Our clients love the client portal and they can upload documents directly to the client portal instead of having to bring them into our physical office. Cosmolex keeps each of your client files organized where you can save all of your emails, documents, and share the ones that you need to share with your clients through the client portal.

Cons:

We would like to be able to make one bulk deposit at one time instead of having to go through by individual dates and make individual deposits.