CosmoLex Reviews

I most like that the accounting software is integrated.

I least like that I cannot create word documents or any documents within the software.

Bing Law loves this program. User friendly and easy to navigate through. Beyond helpful for accounting.

Bing Law would like to see more options in the pull down menus for billing matters and for the case matters.

I actually liked this software for the most part in my first year of use. There were a lot of bugs. For instance, the email linking doesn't actually do anything, you have to manually sort and link emails. This is disappointing because it was basically sold to me as something that you could customize by adding rules like emails from x email address should be sorted to x client. But I otherwise found it fairly easy to use and I liked the functionality of invoicing, etc.

I am giving this a poor review for the following reasons: (1) Cosmolex is really only price-efficient if you are a solo attorney. When I added a staff member and tried to add another timekeeper, I was told my price was going to effectively double!! As a result I am now trying to switch programs which is a huge headache, but the added costs made Quickbooks actually cheaper and Quickbooks has way more integrations and a payroll feature. (Plus you can find email archiving for FREE if you are a small business that takes care of that functionality for Cosmolex.) (2) They were not upfront about the pricing issues. I was told that the reason it cost money to add this timekeeper was because my previous timekeeper had been "grandfathered in" and that I should have learned about this pretty drastic change in an "update section." First, why wouldn't I have received this in an email? Changing the price and price structure of a product should require actual notice! Second, when I chatted someone to find this "update" they could not find it or direct me to it. (3) The lack of integrations (and the integrations they are getting) is really problematic. For instance, they now integrate with Net Documents, which is pretty expensive. For a product that must be targeted almost exclusively to solos as a result of the pricing structure, that doesn't make sense. Why not integrate with Box or Dropbox? And to not have a payroll integration or to work with existing payroll companies is difficult.

I love using CosmoLex for invoices / billing!

I haven't had any negative experiences at this point.

Everything was in one place. I didn't have to generate bills in one package, enter them in another for tracking income, and then pay them in two places as well. It is also great to be able to write a cost check in a case and have the expense "attached" to the client's accounting file/bill in a seamless matter with just an additional click or two. We were promised an easy migration with all the support we needed, and that is what the team at Cosmolex delivered!

Our accountant was also able to access the system for his end of the year work and add all of his journal entires and such and close out the books quickly and easily. The ability for us to generate P&L reports and other important accounting documents literally on demand is also pretty awesome.

But the best part about Cosmolex, by far, is their incredible support team. They have never been stumped, and I've done my best to do just that! Every time I have a question, I get a prompt and complete answer, generally by phone, from one of their support staff who know me and my firm on a first-name basis. I don't think I could be nearly as effective in a dual-role position without this software!

I can't think of anything additional at this point; they have added all MY wishlist items! I think the only thing they could add at this point is a "hotline" 24/7!

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.

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.

Billing/Invoicing/Payment management and Account reconciliation features are what I like best -- easy to stay on top of the flow

I don't have a "least" -- I find CosmoLex easy to use and it does everything I need to keep our office well managed!

It is Easy to use and has logical organization.

Certain features are very difficult to correct mistakes in, and the existing videos and articles are not helpful to me in resolving.

Cosmolex lets me have the bigger picture in one piece of software. I can easily see how my business is doing from the dashboard.

I would like to have a report that shows trends and exports to excel so I could create graph charts. It would also be nice to be able to produce an invoice showing the work put into a fixed fee matter.

Integrated trust and general accounting and easy bank recs make it a winner.

Almost too many features so a steep a learning curve.

Client portal is a terrific feature (when working), the ease of time entries is terrific. Very simplistic interface for invoicing and collecting fees. Integration with LawPay is cool.

There's lots of bugs and seemingly easy fixes that get overlooked and/or ignored. The portal will shut down unexpectedly and/or clients cannot access multiple matters without additional email addresses. There is no function for recurring billing (i.e., ongoing or payment plan clients). Customer service is a nightmare to deal with and takes weeks to complete simple tasks.

I tried various other platforms including PCLaw and Clio, but they lacked in usability or functionality compared to CosmoLex. PCLaw is outdated, slow and not cloud based, while Clio lacks firm accounting functionality and though they advertise quickbooks syncing, there are major issues with the syncing that requires a great deal of work by the end user.

CosmoLex is able to do virtually everything Clio can do with respect to practice management and even has a few unique features. However, where CosmoLex really shines is with its built in accounting system. As a Canadian Lawyer we require certain functionality that our American counterparts do not and CosmoLex has done a great job of meeting our needs. CosmoLex can properly deal with our HST/GST/PST issues and payments as well as offer us accrual based accounting as we are required to use by law.

There is NO other cloud based platform with an all-in-one solution for Canadian Lawyers. This is a time and money saver for any firm.

I would like to see document generation (of all sorts), multiple clients per matter, the ability to generate Client I.D. Forms from the contact information.

Also helpful would be the ability to attach scanned receipts, cheques, and bills to accounting entries similar to the functionality in QuickBooks.

Some minor efficiency changes like being able to select certain options when creating an entry rather than having to re-open it afterwards.

It does front and back office and IT WORKS. Very little technical support needed on a regular basis. It allows clients to make payments online through an invoice link and cosmolex is partnered with LawPay.
Also integrates well with outlook exchange and all programs like google, onedrive, dropbox ;
allows all emails to be saved to the associated matters for easy access.
billing process is fairly simple
the invoice links are keeping receivables down as client's can pay their bills 24/7.
bills are able to be emailed easily and in bulk;
invoice reminders and trust deposit requests are easily sent out without the need to draft letters individually to the clients.
I could go on and on......

Hard to complain about much with this program. It depends on your needs. For me there are still some features I am used to from my server based program that are not availableyet in this cloud based software, but there are lots of things in the works. It seems each month a new feature is released that I had learned to live without or work around. The things I am missing right now are invoices saved automatically to a matter in a hard pdf when initially generated. The original invoice cannot be recreated unless you physically print or save a downloaded copy at the time they are generated.

I like that it is easy to get around the program and many things are self-explanatory. I also appreciate the tutorials that are available.

1. I sat down with our accountant and went through the chart of accounts - we wanted to erase some of the accounts that we wouldn't be using, but the system prevents it. There are so many similarly named accounts, that I am concerned about how I will make sure I am using the ones that my accountant prefers (as an example, there are at least 3 or 4 options for accounts related to payroll).

2. I don't like that I can't select the option to not allow duplicate checks for our business checking account

3. I don't like that when I click "save and next" when entering checks that the program does not automatically bring up the next check number. I have to hit "save" and then go back in and "add" another transaction in order for that to happen

CosmoLex made going out on my own much easier. I particularly like that I don't need additional software on the accounting side of things.

I would like an easier method of doing conflict checks. I wish there was a stand alone tab for adding consultations in for conflict check purposes only.

Cosmolex is extremely user friendly and I love the help videos!

I have not found anything I would say I liked "least" about Cosmolex.

I like that the program has both accounting features and has the ability to hold all of our client's information in one. The accounting features are very easy to use. The support videos are very easy to use and if I need to speak to anyone they usually call the very same day.

I would like the calendar to be able to send emails to all of the attorney's as right now when I calendar an event in one attorney's calendar it will not let me send him/her a reminder unless you put the event on another person's calendar. The point of putting stuff on the calendar is so they see the event and they have reminders

I chose CosmoLex primarily because it is both a client management system and accounting system in one solution. Additionally, CosmoLex pays my monthly LawPay access fee. All of this really helped my small, but growing practice save some money, while getting all the tools I need.

I had to take down my website credit card payment link, but CosmoLex "prefers," and everything is recorded easier when, you process credit card transactions through their portal. There should be a way for me to accept credit cards on my website, like through native LawPay, or on the app.

Cosmolex integrates the accounting software and features we needed with the management of our law practice. Support takes care of any issues that arise quickly and efficiently.

Some parts of customization are not intuitive and assistance from customer support is sometimes required. Luckily, customer support is quick and easy to access.

Easy-to-use interface
Accurate trust accounting
Broadening functionality
Complete integration of functions
Growing compatibility with other class-leading applications

The only thing I am wishing for is the ability to generate documents from the Cosmolex database, but this is coming I am told!

Built in accounting was the biggest deal breaker for our choosing CosmoLex. As the bookkeeper, fed up with our clunky old software, I was looking for a new system that would be a modern and practical take on practice management and CosmoLex was the only one I found that had accounting built in. Being cloud based allows us to bill time or check in when out of the office and though we had looked at another program that was cloud based, CosmoLex offered greater flexibility and it looks great, to boot.

Our office would love to see some updates for the calendar and tasks - specifically a central office calendar that is the default view. We are composed of two attorneys and two support staff where we are all working on the same cases. Short of adding each event to four individual calendars it would great to have everything on one sort of "home" calendar where we can all easily view and comment.

I like the Ease of use and customer service.

This product is not widely used by accountants.

A great leap forward from our previous (non-cloud) software.

None. It's at least as good as the prior software in every way.

I was reluctant to subscribe to a practice management solution, but now can't envision getting along without it. It has everything I need from time tracking to accounting right at my fingertips.

I occasionally run into accounting difficulties in terms of writing off charges or editing past transactions, but I'm not sure that's a drawback of CosmoLex as much as it is my ignorance of accounting best practices.

Incredibly easy to use. We use it to manage our trust account (although I know it does so much more), and the reporting complies with the multiple states in which we hold licenses.

Why can't the font be easily changed for the address printing on checks? Due to the font, we cannot use a window envelope when mailing; we have to address another envelope.
Also, would like for it to separate different trust accounts out easier to run reports.