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New in LeanLaw: April 2021
New in LeanLaw: April 2021

Release Notes: Write-downs, payment allocations, patch notes, and upcoming changes

Doug Schmierer avatar
Written by Doug Schmierer
Updated over a week ago

What's new in LeanLaw this month?

Write-downs

We’ve heard many reasons why you need write-downs: “The client can’t pay my full rate on this matter, and I’d rather take a small loss than send this to collections.” “My paralegal recorded 6 hours of work for a task that should’ve taken 2. I need 6 hours on record, but I can’t charge the client for all 6.” Before this month, if you adjusted the hours billed within an invoice, you would be adjusting the hours worked as well, losing records of the difference. With our new write-down feature, you can change yours hours billed without changing hours worked.

Because write-down tracks these hours separately, you're gaining even more information. In productivity reports, you can see how much time and money your firm is writing down each month, and for what matters and users. We think this information will help you to identify and strategize against areas of loss, improving your firm’s revenue.

To use Write-downs

Write-down is available to all LeanLaw Pro users. To use write-down, you’ll first have to enable it in your firm’s settings. You can click here to reach your firm's Reports Settings page, where write-down is the top-most setting.

Now that they're enabled, you can create write-downs during the invoice building process by clicking on the time entry you wish to write-down and entering a value in the write down field. This new feature has quite a bit of functionality, so we recommend reading our comprehensive write-down article.

Payment allocation details

Ever want to know exactly how the revenue of a collected invoice is being distributed? We've added a new detail called payment allocation which will show you how every cent of an invoice is allocated based on your firm share, origination, and other assigned rates. You can find the new payment allocation feature in your Revenue by Attorney and Revenue by Client and Matter reports. Read more about using it in our collection and allocation details documentation.

What’s next?

We have some exciting features being beta tested right now. Some firms are already trying out these features, but they’ll be available for all once we know they’re bug free. Contact our support team if you’re interested in trying any of these beta features.

New Client and Matter UI

Previously, clients were created and managed from the Matters tab. Our new user interface (UI) introduces a Clients tab for client management. This new layout gives a summary of work in progress (WIP), a complete list of all financial transactions for the client, and more details in one convenient place. We’re very excited about this one, and we think you’ll like it too.

New Reports page

Currently, the Reports page organizes all of your reports on a side bar. This organization style has served us well, but we now have so many reports that users have to scroll to reach some of their favorite reports. Our new Reports page spreads across the page in organized frames, making space for upcoming reports and letting you access your current reports with ease.

Public API

Our development philosophy has always been to integrate with the best cloud applications that can support your law practice. You can already see this in our compatibility with QuickBooks and Gravity Legal. Our next step in integration is to create a public API. A public API will allow you to sync client and matter data into document management systems, like Microsoft's Sharepoint, in addition to many other applications that can help you succeed. It's the latest step in our journey to keep you connected.

Update history

As always, we’ve been hard at work to squash bugs and improve the UI. Here are the patch notes for last month’s development.

April 29,2021

  • Added the write-down feature.

  • Fixed a bug where the revenue by attorney report wasn't accounting for credits.

  • Cleaned up the Fixed Fee Allocation window.

  • Fixed an issue in time entries that caused an "unsaved changes" warning when no changes had been made.

April 26, 2021

  • Fixed an issue preventing users from creating new distributions.

April 19, 2021

  • Patched to silence certain QuickBooks errors while still logging them in the background.

April 15, 2021

  • Added allocation details to revenue by attorney reports, revenue by client reports, and to the distributions tab.

  • Added invoice functions to the new Client UI.

  • Fixed an issue that sometimes hid time entries in the Calendar.

April 09, 2021

  • Fixed a bug preventing multiple users from logging in.

April 06, 2021

  • Fixed a bug that prevented adding new users to a matter.

  • Added a new Include Trust button to the Billing Activity page for matters and clients.

April 03, 2021

  • Fixed an issue preventing users from downloading multiple LEDES files.

April 02, 2021

  • Fixed an issue preventing invoice emailing.

  • Improved Distribution UI.

Looking for more? You can find last month's release notes here.

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