What is Chaos Software?
Chaos Software is an enterprise-level legal practice and case management software program. Its core features offer tools and information designed for case, matter, and practice group managers as well as partners and professionals at law firms. It organizes and better enables the management of billing, calendars, contact lists, workflow, and document storage. Along with the suite of program features, users have an online help section and a knowledge base for ongoing support, along with online training and recorded webinar resources. The online and mobile platforms bring together intuitive, effective, and secure software that affords an enormous time-saving advantage to busy legal professionals . It helps law firms manage their practices and cases more effectively while enabling them to efficiently manage the enormous amounts of information comprising a legal matter. Chaos billing software makes it easier to create and send invoices based on the customizable, client-specific billing codes and rates. The software includes standard invoicing and payment tracking features while allowing for flexible invoice generation based on criteria like time spent and billing codes. Invoices can be sent electronically as email or via paper mail. It also makes it easier to track time spent on a matter by updating from a smartphone or computer without interrupting workflow.
An Overview of Features of Chaos Legal Billing Software
Time tracking is essential for a lawyer, and this will enable you to record your time against cases as you carry out the work, ensuring that all the work is invoiced accurately and that nothing is forgotten. Lawyers find that when you allocate time to certain clients, it really propels billing forward and reduces the chance that clients are unexpectedly surprised and shocked when they receive an unexpectedly large bill. The application tracks time for different clients, projects, specific tasks and for general work. This is useful when you do work that sometimes has to be charged out on an hourly basis, rather than fixed fee (this often crops up with complex cases where additional work is needed unexpectedly). Time can be tracked across different work and the cross-charging is very simple, just drag and drop when creating your invoice. You can track time against workflows as well, which can also be very useful when you have to generate repeatable processes and maintain consistency across the organisation or department. With your time tracked and recorded efficiently, you shouldn’t then have to spend hours fighting with your accounting software to create the invoices. You should be able to simply click ‘Generate’. For those who would be responsible for training and onboarding people, they shouldn’t have to spend too long on controlling specific guidance over what the software does with the invoice creation – unless they really want to, Chaos is set up to make things as simple as possible. There is a great deal of customisation possible with invoices in the software, from how they look to enabling you to add attachments if needed, or even to track and manage invoices – all within the same software, no need to transfer different information or data between systems. An easy to use reporting tool is also included within the software, so if you need to show what you have done, you can simply run a report based on any number of different parameters (such as lawyer or date) and quickly generate a summary or an itemised report to give to a client or to keep internally.
The Advantages of Using Chaos Software to Bill for Legal Services
Embracing software like Mastering Chaos can offer many advantages for a law practice, especially when it comes to legal billing. The adoption of Chaos Software in a legal practice can facilitate the transition from the old way of billing (i.e., billing in a Word or Google document and copying & pasting hours / time slips manually into an invoice) to the new way of billing (i.e., auto populating a timecard into a master invoice). This not only makes the billing process more efficient, but it can reduce errors as well. Efficiency for everyone in the firm creates efficiency in sales and billing. It also leads to less revenue lost to billing errors. Mastering Chaos Software will help you to control your billing and allow your firm to work to its maximum productivity and profitability.
The Disadvantages of Using Chaos Software
While the advantages of using Chaos Software are compelling, the integration into a law firms existing processes can have challenges. As with the integration of any new software there has to be a level of user adoption we need to address. Things like; who will be responsible for implementing the software and ensuring that it is used properly, how long will implementation take, how will this affect the staff who are currently in charge of billing and whether they will continue in that role once a new system is in place.
The second stage of introducing a new billing system is data migration. Sometimes getting data from the old software to the new may require extra work that was not initially considered. For example , if you do not import old data from your previous software, then you may lose access to certain information or may find it difficult to manage certain aspects of billing.
You will also have to make sure that everyone using the new billing system has been trained on how to use Chaos Software effectively. This may involve hiring an outside trainer to come in or setting up a consistent time for your staff to get used to using it.
Case Studies: Harnessing Chaos Software Successfully
One of the most impressive things about Chaos Software is their widespread use among law firms. In fact, over 1000 firms (some with tens of thousands of lawyers) use Chaos Software. They offer a selection of case studies on their website about just some of the firms that have benefited from adopting Chaos Software. The first firm to discuss their experience with Chaos Software is the international law firm, Stewarts. Stewarts is quite large – as they say on their site, they have over 200 lawyers and staff globally, and have the capacity and capability across diverse practice areas. According to the article about their experience with Chaos Software, Stewarts has been able to see an immediate improvement in productivity after adopting Chaos Software. They also report that their client bills "make a great impression" and that the information is updated automatically which allows their lawyers to focus solely on their practice, rather than worrying about further edits to the client bills. The next firm is the 21st largest in Texas, Gardere. Gardere is another large firm with approximately 220 attorneys and 400 supporting professionals. According to Gardere, implementing Chaos Software has exponentially increased the time savings for their billing process. The ability to invoice within minutes allows the attorneys to focus on their practicing law, and not worrying about spending hours manually inputting information to create accurate client bills. Another firm that experiences the benefits of Chaos software is Hughes & Causton, a leading provider of intelligent legal services based in the UK. The things they like best about Chaos Software are the streamlined billing process and their clients’ satisfaction with the accuracy of the bills. Their revenue cycle is now streamlined so they have flexibility with their billing processes that they have never had before. Last but not least, another firm that benefits from Chaos Software is Gates & Partners – an international partnership with over 35 years’ experience. As they explain in their case study, Chaos’ ability to automate many of their functions allows them to realise savings across the board. Their lawyers can now focus on their primary tasks while Chaos handles the time tracking and billing processes. This means their clients can be billed accurately and on time.
Emerging Trends in Legal Billing Software
As legal practices continue to embrace new ways of working, it is likely that there will be an ongoing push for legal billing software to keep pace. Real-time collaboration, hosted software and mobile access are all trends that have either recently been introduced or will be required in the future. These new systems will need to be able to support constant connectivity, a broad range of devices and apps, and they will need to provide advanced security for client confidentiality even in the mobile realm.
As an example of how these demands are being considered, we can look at a relative newcomer called Chaos Software. Chaos have positioned their product to be highly intuitive and cloud based , with a focus on providing features for lawyers to both manage and organize their time. Central components of their offering include functionality for managing time on your phone, easily tracking billable hours and providing detailed reports on efficiency and usage patterns. Everything is accessible and manageable from wherever you are, and security and user interface have clearly been a focus.
It is likely that as advances in cloud computing continue to filter through to the practice of law, these huge demands for flexibility and usability will be a central focus for all billing software providers.
