PracticePanther Legal Software Reviews

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.

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.

Super easy to use! We love that we can create custom fields for a contact or matter and have really enjoyed the automation portion of the software. The templates are easy to create and automatically pull the information from the contact and matter sections that we need.

Under Matter, instead of editing the whole section, it would be nice if I could hoover over the field I only need to update.

I also wish I could highlight text in the matter or notes section.

I create multiple matters under one client and some of the information in the fields is always the same. It would be nice if I could select an option so any time I create a new matter for that client, the information in the matter auto fills for any new case going forward.

That it made time tracking and billing easy

Too many glitches in the software that caused serious issues with my pricing and billing

This product is awesome! We literally could not practice law without all its features

We had a had time integrating multiple small payments into a single account. Everything as manual

I've been a PracticePanther user for four years now. The most important factor in my selecting PracticePanther was the ease of use. With my prior software, I had to hire independent contractors and pay for "maintenance agreements" just to have access to the help desk. With PracticePanther, their support team can assist. More important, they have videos that will walk you through the process of setting up the various systems and integrations. Finally, I love the integrations. PracticePanther integrates with Microsoft Office, Box, Dropbox and Quickbooks. Your information stays in it's original locate with seamless access from PracticePanther.

Initially, there was a big push to produce new features. I'm not seeing new features coming out as frequently. However, I would note the quality of the new features, e.g., workflows with conditional logic and e-signatures.

I like being able to bill, take credit/debit card payments, and tell clients their balance with the app while in court. There are simple reports and a great dashboard to see how much is outstanding, to be billed, and the amount in my trust account. Practice panther has cut down on the time it takes for billing and made my office more efficient.

I print checks directly from practice panther, which takes several steps, but it makes it easy to add the cost to the client's billing. I would like the software to allow a report of vendors/payees' payments over various time periods as it does with tags and categories.

I like the intuitive interface, clean look, and the ability to customize my own workflows.

I would like to see a private server capability added in instead of having to rely on Box. One that we can access via VPN would be helpful. I wish we could add in a bit more automation customization. For example, I would like to be able to send my clients a customized email with attachments and helpful info before specific events, rather than the generic reminder email. I would also like the ability to create conditional logic in certain events.

They add features on a regular basis and have loads of training. The support staff is super helpful and if they don't know the answer they will try to find it. I understand that every system is different and every one has it's pros and cons. I really think once we utilize every single feature this program has we will be a much better law firm.

The email integrations phase in and out on working. It may simply be the plugin I have for Gmail but that can be a struggle.

PracticePanther has helped keep my firm organized. We handle a large number of cases and we needed software that could help us manage them all, stay on top of tasks, and store information efficiently. PracticePanther has also been key in allowing for rapid growth in my practice.

My favorite feature is the payment plans through PantherPayments. My collections are significantly higher than some of my colleagues and it helped simplify this process. We can easily set up payment plans that automatically pull funds from a credit card or bank account which means I don't have to spend a ton of time chasing clients for money that I could be spending on their case.

I started out practicing solo and quickly grew to more staff. Every firm has growing pains, so I was initially worried about acclimating new staff to PracticePanther. Thankfully, those hesitations were put at bay and we've been able to use the platform with ease.

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.

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).

Being able to integrate all of the features expected of a legal management software in one, but in such a intuitive way.

Nothing. I am very happy with it. We've been using it for 2 years and they keep adding great additional features as we and other request them, but its still not clunky.

The software is simple its flexible and allows for use across platforms so Mac Windows etc
The support team superb
Since using we have seen a 45 per cent increase in billable hours

Nothing, it's great software nothing at all I don't like

Our entire office, from attorneys to support staff to office administrator, have all commented how intuitive and easy the software is to use. There is no doubt that our attorneys and paralegals have become more productive from using this software. Also, the reports for A/R, billable time per user, and many others are extremely valuable. We are a new firm, and this is our first (and last) billing software for our office.

If there is one thing I am "disappointed" with, it would have to be the add-on we purchased from Law Tool Box for court rules. When we first started using it, the rules for Nevada (where we practice), were almost all incorrect, or useless for our civil litigation practice. Despite providing Law Tool Box with all of the information on the proper court rules that apply here in Nevada over a month ago, they have still not made those changes. We have not been able to use or rely on it for anything. A great concept, but not functional. Useless.

The software sure does “look” nice. But it really missed the boat on some of the more nuanced features of a law practice. For example, when applying a discount to an invoice, the discount must be applied to the total invoice (fees AND costs). Discounts cannot be applied to just the fees. Why in the world would any attorney want to apply a discount to client costs advanced on behalf of the client??? When I inquired about this, their answer was “just put in a discounted custom rate for the matter”. This response is completely unacceptable since I may only want to apply a discount to one invoice rather than all work done on the matter! This is just one small example of the half hearted attempt of this company to make a legal management software. This is just one of several problems with the “features” of the software. The timers are always so buggy. The software is just not refined at all. None of the features were well thought out. It’s like the programmers decided “Hey! This is a cool feature to add!” But never really fined tuned any of them to a fully functioning feature that could work well. They all sort of work to only about 50-60 percent functionality. It should not come as any surprise, though, since neither the founders nor anyone else on the management team has any experience in the legal industry. The company would be well served to hire some actual attorneys to advise them on how to fine tune their software to make it a truly great legal software.

The lack of any real understanding of the nuances of a legal practice by the founders and creators of the company and software.

Unlike a number of the cheaper practice management software programs on the market today, Practice Panther has a wide range of functions within the software which are easy to use. Instead of just having "Tasks" or "to-dos", PP allows you to create Activities which can be "Events" "E-mails" "Phone calls" or "Tasks". On the Task front, PP allows you to set sub-reminders that can send you e-mails or text messages in advance, like say "7 days before," and "3 days before," for a filing deadline. I also think it is pretty fantastic that PP shows whether a time entry has been completed for EVERY SINGLE ACTIVITY marked "completed" or "in progress". This would be incredibly useful for practitioners (mostly civil) managing staff and trying to deal with staff not accounting for all of their time in billing. The "mail sync" function is also easy to use, and allows you to e-mail out of your native software (MS Outlook, GMAIL, etc) and simply "bcc" the client matter itself. When you do this, the e-mail is automatically saved into the matter. Almost every other program out there that I have used requires you to use their client messaging portal to get the same functionality.

The templates are easy to use for creating documents to merge out of PP also. Think client engagement letters, releases, and basic letterheads that you use in every file. We don't use PP for accepting payments so I cannot comment on that portion.

1. Matter pre-bills or invoicing. In many civil cases there will be a time when you need to prepare a billing report to present to the court solely for a claim of attorney's fees. In other software that I have used, you can run a report for a set period of time or type of billing entries which will then create a printable draft invoice-looking document. You would then be able to slap an exhibit sticker on that document and use it for your attorney's fee request. I haven't found a way to easily do this in PP yet, and it seems like you would have to utilize a draft invoice which captures all time billed in the matter. I could be wrong.

2. No Batch Entry System for E-mails. PP has a GREAT syncing system that works with your native e-mail so you can BCC messages into the matter when you send or receive them. However, if you forget to include the mail-sync in your BCC line, or don't forward a message to the mail-sync, there is no easy way to subsequently get the e-mails into the matter in PP. What I mean is this: say you have a number of e-mails from someone that weren't saved into a client PP matter and instead lived in your Outlook before the client actually hired. You would have to manually forward each one of your emails to the mail-sync to get them into PP.

Additionally, if you are a federal criminal lawyer and use CORRLINKS to communicate with your clients you will know that you can't forward out of that system. PP doesn't let you copy/paste emails so your stuck.

Practice Panther has a fairly intuitive interface for daily billing entries, templates for monthly billing and accounting for your trust and operating accounts for your clients. The learning curve was minimal in comparison to other systems I tried and the program was more responsive over other programs I tried over the internet. Tech Support and help files are easily available on every page. I found daily entries both fast and easy and the online billing system linked with LawPay is magnificent and has worked flawlessly for me. I was very skeptical of "secure" cloud-based billing and accounting but after more than a year it would take a lot to pull me away from Practice Panther.

There are two cons to this software to be aware of. First, there is no single backup system to backup and restore all your files with just a few clicks. While complete backup is available, it requires you to go through far too many steps to make sure you back up everything. I have not yet had to restore anything to Practice Panther but I am wary that a system that requires multiple steps could have glitches in trying to restore from their backups. It is more than possible that if a restoration were required it might involve more "downtime" for a practitioner than he or she would like in order to get back up and running. This is where I think they need to most work. Secondarily, their billing review system has an issue that will throw practitioners off. If you create a bill several months ago and you go back to look at the bill to see what the retainer balance was at the time of that bill, the historical bill actually pulls up the retainer that exists now. That should not occur on a historical bill. Once a bill has been saved, the bill should not change unless you intentionally change other things in your billing. An old bill should never show the current balance of the retainer. It should show the remaining balance of the retainer at the time the specific bill is generated.

never any data corruption issues like Timeslips. Time consuming backups not necessary, can have users tracking time while billing is being run.
Web Based and can enter time tracking from anywhere on any computer or on your phone.

Some report features not available but over the past two years greater functionality has continued to be added

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

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

There are too many to list. On the top - great customer service. I'll say that again - great customer service! Ability to have Panther open in two or more screens to perform various tasks at the same time. Ease of use. Being able to create work flows. Customizable (not sure if that's a word, but it is true.) Multiple time entry screen. Being able to export time and expense entries into an Excel spreadsheet. Mobile app for on the go. Tasks and deadline reminders to my cell phone. Oh - and a great price! Plus the Practice Panther team is always updating and improving the software. Tutorials? Super helpful.

Probably the most annoying thing is that when I come in to work the dashboard is not updated to reflect the new day. I have to refresh. There are a few fields that don't let me edit them (because I messed them up and now want to clean them up). Um.... maybe when I lose my time entries because the computer goes down, but I'm not sure I attribute that to Panther. Perhaps an auto save in the background?

This is a really easy to use program, that covers everything from client information, billing, document management, time tracking, and reports that are actually used a lot and simple to both run and understand. It comprehensively runs our entire office and makes our jobs A LOT easier. Plus, it's accessible from any phone, tablet or computer wherever you are.

E-mails pose a little difficulty in responding back and forth, because you have to start a new e-mail each time, although it may be because we don't have ours set up right. But it's still workable, and when they are saved into the program, it's as clean and easy to use as the rest of the program.

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.

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

Super simply to use. The dashboard snapshot of a case if fantastic. You can see how much is trust, the next task, etc.

I absolutely loved the software until issues began developing with how it syncs with Box. Files and documents would go missing. Every time we reached out to tech support we were told "user error." It didn't seem right. But then, after paying careful attention, we began to show it was NOT user error but the software remapping the location of various folders into places that we weren't looking. Half of the call was spent convincing tech support that it wasn't us, but them. They would then look into and find out that it was a software glitch.

So many features and components of administering a law practice are included with PracticePanther that make the daily operation of the business more efficient. I used to use separate billing software, calendaring software - including court calendars for assorted federal and state courts, and task management software. PracticePanther replaced all of them and combines them in an easy to use format. Plus with the credit card payment feature, I now get paid faster (more than 14 days quicker on average) than I have ever been before. It is like having a part-time office administrator on staff.

I love PracticePanther's suite of features, but I wish it interfaced with my factual and legal research software so that engaging in online research could be automatically timed and the results saved in a way that is accessible through the PracticePanther website. For example, I use CaseText and if PracticePanther had an interface with CaseText, whenever I logged in to do research, I could enter the matter code and the time I researched was automatically billed to that matter and any cases I downloaded were linked to the matter in PracticePanther, I would be even more effective and efficient in getting work done and getting paid for it.

This software is great right out of the box, so to speak; there is no box. But as I have needed something extra I have made suggestions and the company actually improves the program. New additions come up as other users make suggestions as well. The program is very intuitive and therefore easy to learn and use when you are a new user. But with time I have learned that it can do so much more than I realized at first. The customer support is great at teaching users how to do some new task and the You Tube training videos is a great way to learn how to make your practice more efficient using options that you might not otherwise know are available. Overall, this is the best law office management software I have used over the last 15 years.

Rarely, there have been times when I wanted to create a report that the program was not able to generate and I would need to export a current report to excel and then modify or add data to get the report that I needed.

Our team has a number of favorite features, being able to access Box via the Panther Mobile app is a big one, and being able to shoot text reminders to clients about appointments and deadlines is another favorite, but how much time Panther has shaved off of our billing cycle is definitely the top. Using Panther, we have cut in half the time it takes to review and approve pre-bills, invoice the client, and get paid.

Being a larger firm and having migrated case management software several times already made the transition and adoption challenging. Practice Panther allows for very easy import and export of information as csv files, which is great for producing your own reports, but created a lot of front end work massaging data from the previous system in order to import into Panther. As of Summer 2018, the QuickBooks integration is a little basic and still needs some work.