CosmoLex Unleashed: Streamlining Legal Practice Management And Client Communication From Intake Through Billing
CosmoLex combines general practice management with billing and accounting features, providing firms with the means to manage matters efficiently and ease the headaches of administrative work.
Image courtesy of CosmoLex.
CosmoLex is a cloud-based practice management solution accessible on any device that eliminates IT worries and consistently provides a fully updated platform with modern functionality. CosmoLex combines general practice management with billing and accounting features, providing firms with the means to manage matters efficiently and ease the headaches of administrative work.
Users have intuitive options for managing contacts, email, calendars, tasks, and documents. CosmoLex also provides fully integrated invoicing and payment solutions, thorough trust and firm accounting, as well as business and compliance reporting. A highlight feature that makes CosmoLex an attractive option is the secure client portal, including chat and two-way document sharing, allowing firms to collaborate with their clients efficiently.
Matter Management
Users logging into their CosmoLex account see a dashboard with three tabs to decide what data they want to view. The three tabs are named Firm, Me, and Recent Transactions. The Firm tab provides a snapshot of unpaid, unbilled, and overdue items. See Figure 1.
Figure 1: CosmoLex Dashboards provide a central place for users to retrieve information for the firm or a particular matter. Key features include a snapshot of billing information and the Money Finder, which finds unbilled time.
The Me tab offers information a user needs to manage their work, such as a list of matters, tasks, and time to be billed.
The Recent Transactions tab displays the latest bank transactions and can be filtered by date, bank, type, status, and amount. Access to Recent Transactions can be restricted, allowing only users with permission to access bank account information, in which case, a user would only see the Firm and Me tabs. Users’ personalized dashboard and matter pages display all related meetings, due dates, and deadlines to help them stay on top of critical tasks and ensure nothing gets overlooked.
CosmoLex offers comprehensive legal practice management (LPM) software designed to assist modern law firms. Users can review information from a broad firm overview or an individual matter-centric level. CosmoLex places individual legal matters at the heart of the firm’s law practice management. Every email, task, event, form, billable item, and transaction is tagged to its proper client matter to ensure all records are organized and associated with the relevant case. Create customized task workflows and apply them to new or existing matters. Firms can control who performs specific tasks and when they need to be completed, safeguarding efficient deliverability. This matter-centric approach establishes a solid paper trail, compliance, and the ability to resolve client disputes effectively.
Users can examine information related to a specific matter by selecting it to access the Matter page. View general billing information pertaining to the case and use the navigation panel to find documents, tasks, or calendar activities. This centralized approach eliminates the need for multiple applications to get information and work on a matter. See Figure 2.
Figure 2: The Matter page provides users access to all information needed to work on a matter and eliminates time-consuming efforts like hunting down a contact’s information or a particular document.
This all-in-one solution brings calendar management and matter workflows directly in line with case management. Meetings are automatically invoiced to the corresponding matter, and workflows can be customized easily for each case or practice area.
Time, Billing, and Reports
CosmoLex streamlines time tracking, simplifies billing processes, and enhances overall efficiency for law firms. Integrated features deliver seamless management of legal matters while maintaining compliance and accuracy. CosmoLex does not rely on other accounting applications, providing a complete LPM solution for law firms of all sizes and practice areas.
Time can be captured on the go from anywhere on any device using timers. Attach each task to a time entry and matter so billable hours are tracked accurately. CosmoLex encourages easy expense tracking of hard and soft costs, streamlining the process and empowering users to post expenses as they occur.
Money Finder helps users keep track of billable items that may have been missed. It automatically scans practice management records for unbilled time on completed events and triggers alerts on a user’s CosmoLex dashboard. With this function, users can mark events, tasks, notes, and more as billable as they are created during a typical day in your office. Once that item is completed in CosmoLex, if a time entry has not been created, the CosmoLex Money Finder will remind users daily on their dashboard, providing an opportunity to recover money that may otherwise go uncollected.
CosmoLex includes legal-specific components, including trust accounting, so a firm can generate professional invoices directly from the platform and email them to clients for seamless communication. Additionally, users can easily monitor retainer expenses to ensure accurate accounting. CosmoLexPay allows firms to accept client credit card payments through a secure client portal. You can generate reports effortlessly, either on demand or as recurring reports delivered on a schedule. Reports can be filtered by date, matter, timekeeper, and many more options. See Figure 3.
Figure 3: CosmoLex’s reporting feature allows users to quickly create reports out of the box and customize them via filters.
The Future of CosmoLex Lies with NextGen!
The latest iteration of CosmoLex is called NextGen, highlighted by a user-friendly and adjustable design to tailor the application to the specific demands of a firm. NextGen features include user-adjustable views to filter, sort, and change the columns of any data table. Configurable dashboards display the data that matters most to a user, and stored views enable users to access their favorite data visualization method each time they check-in. Custom fields allow a firm to define and report on data attributes, and global search facilitates locating any data in the application quickly. Document templating and assembly and shared views let teams collaborate on the same data using CosmoLex merge fields and Microsoft Word. User security features like two-factor authentication (2FA), password expiration, and password history are required.
NextGen is still in beta, and users are free to leave and rejoin the NextGen experience whenever desired. Any modification to a firm’s data in one version will automatically be reflected in the other.
Integrations and Security
CosmoLex offers seamless integration with several third-party apps to provide additional options for email, document storage, calendar, billing, payments, and more. Some popular third-party apps integrating with CosmoLex include Microsoft Excel, Office 365, Google Drive, QuickBooks, LawPay, and Dropbox. Connecting your CosmoLex account to these apps can streamline your workflow and increase efficiency.
CosmoLex is SOC-2 compliant and has designed the security for its platform using bank-grade 256 SSL encryption. Other protocols include account-level security, 2FA via SMS, and role and user-level access privileges. Backups are done automatically every few hours with encryption and built-in redundancies.
Latest Developments and Updates
· SMS messaging is available to send invoices; firms can include a payment link, reminders, retainer requests, and general two-way communication.
· Split Billing is a helpful tool for those representing multiple parties that share the responsibility of paying for legal fees by defining what parties are involved, their portion of fees/expenses, and then performing the split at the time of invoicing.
· Ethical Wall is a feature that allows you to shield certain matters from being accessed by specific users.
· The new Balance by Expense Name report provides balance information relating to expenses.
· The User Announcements Panel is a new panel providing an area that displays user announcements.
· Client Intake Forms can now be customized for each firm to meet the needs of all their practice areas.
Pricing
CosmoLex provides an all-inclusive pricing model that gives users access to all new features as they are added and comes with a 90-day money-back guarantee. Licensing is based on annual or monthly billing of $89 or $99 per user, per month, respectively. Each account comes with built-in credit card processing, a free bookkeeper or accountant login, unlimited training and support, as well as unlimited file storage. Client relationship management (CRM) and document-sharing modules are available for an additional monthly fee, and payments will incur a processing fee.
Who is CosmoLex?
CosmoLex is cloud-based legal billing software for law firms offering advanced practice management, billing, and accounting features. It is part of ProfitSolv, a collection of best-in-class software solutions for professional services firms, allowing the freedom for growth and innovation. CosmoLex provides a comprehensive suite of solutions, including practice management, time and billing, payment processing, and CRM software products. CosmoLex is based in New Jersey and is growing with more than 250 clients worldwide.
Why Buy CosmoLex?
· CosmoLex has over 15 years of legal-specific accounting experience, providing firms with the latest technology.
· CosmoLex becomes a business partner, not just another software vendor. CosmoLex continues to work with a firm to ensure they are fully supported for the best and most consistent results.
· With the introduction of NextGen, CosmoLex becomes even more customizable. Law firms can tailor the application to their specific needs, and the user-friendly interface ensures that legal professionals can navigate the software efficiently. · CosmoLex is the exclusive legal practice management software endorsed by the Canadian Bar Association.
How Can CosmoLex Help You?
Schedule a demo today to learn more about CosmoLex!
