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New in LeanLaw: November 2021
New in LeanLaw: November 2021

Release notes: Reviewer, Invoice Summary, mobile improvements, and more!

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

What’s new in LeanLaw this month?

Reviewer

Much like the Responsible and Originating statuses, you can now assign a user to be a matter’s reviewer. Reviewer is used with the Show Matters for User filter, found on many pages throughout the product. This allows a firm to keep track of who should be reviewing a given matter, and allows reviewers to filter out matters and focus only on the invoices they need to review.

Reviewer is only available on LeanLaw Pro. For a more detailed article on the Reviewer feature, click here.

Invoice Summary

We've added a new option to the triple dot menu on your invoices called Invoice Summary. Invoice Summary provides a quick total of each user's hourly contributions and the costs of their services for that invoice. This feature is especially powerful for firms that allocate fixed fees according to the hours worked (more information about hourly fixed fee allocation can be found in last month's release notes).

Invoice Summary is available on LeanLaw Pro and Core. To access Invoice Summary, click the three vertically aligned dots on the far right side of an invoice; this will open up an options menu. You can then click on Invoice Summary to view the invoice's summary of hours and charges.

A gif showing a user accessing Invoice Summary from the Drafts page.

Quality of life changes

We've made some changes to the product which we hope will make your life easier.

  • Block billing is now available on the mobile app. It works the same way as it does on a browser--simply enter an hour value between two braces [ ] while entering a description on our mobile app, and LeanLaw will automatically add it to the hour total of your time entry! View our article on block billing here.

  • Disabled users can now be selected with the View Matters for User filter in reports. Although disabled users have always contributed to reports for which they had relevant data, you can now also filter to view only their data.

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.

Deposit Report

Our new deposit report can be sorted by your operating account or by your trust account(s). When viewing the operating account, you’ll see all payments made for all matters in the firm. When viewing a trust account, you’ll see all trust deposits recorded in LeanLaw. We hope this report makes your lives a little easier when you’re verifying your accounts.

QuickBooks Status Dots

Something our users have missed in our new and improved client and matter layout is the column on the Matters page that showed whether a matter was connected, had a broken connection, or hadn’t yet been connected to QuickBooks. We’ll soon be bringing this feature back with an added filter so you can sort out the Matters that need attention!

Public API

We’re continuing to develop our public API that allows the retrieval of bulk information from firms, such as client contact information, client and matter lists, and more. Developers can use this to securely integrate LeanLaw with other programs, like Sharepoint. The API is in closed beta; please contact LeanLaw if you're interested in exploring it.


Update history


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

November 30, 2021

  • Released the Reviewer and Invoice Summary features.

  • Adjusted the export fields in Download LeanLaw Data function in Settings > Firm Info.

  • Fixed an issue that caused Responsible users' initials to not show up in the Receivables Report.

  • Fixed an issue in the Matter Rates report that would cause the columns to be misaligned if the firm used Matter IDs but not Client IDs.

  • Fixed an issue in the Compensation report that caused the Date and Archived headers to be cutoff when printed.

November 22, 2021

  • Added the block billing feature and the enforced rounding feature to our mobile application.

  • Added an internal check in the Time Entries page that will inform the user if the page failed to load all time entries.

  • Moved some Save Changes buttons in Settings to make them more consistent.

  • Fixed an issue the Expense Templates page of Firm Settings that disabled the LEDES codes dropdown.

  • Switched the user permission Auto-Assign Users to Matters to not be enabled for any role by default.

  • Fixed an issue where the user permission Auto-assign Users to Matters would sometimes assign users as originators or responsible users.

  • Optimized a performance issue in our public API testing environment.

November 15, 2021

  • Fixed a webhook issue that caused some difficulties in creating invoices and logging in.

  • Fixed an error that caused some reports dealing with payments to not load.

  • Fixed some LEDES 2000 codes dealing with cl_id, cl_lf_id, and tk_level. Also fixed an issue where dollar signs would be added to the descriptions of some time entries that had LEDES codes.

November 14, 2021

  • Moved some LEDES codes for IP and trademark from the activity category to the task category.

November 9, 2021

  • Fixed an issue where the Show Matters For User filter would show only matters involving the active user if no user was selected. It now properly shows data for all users in the firm.

November 8, 2021

  • Added the ability to select inactive users from the User filter in all reports.

  • Added support for the Billing Period custom field to invoices created with step-by-step billing and the Invoice Builder feature.

  • Changed the Calendar's hour summaries to distinguish between Billable time and Non-Billable time.

  • Fixed a bug where the Show Matters for User filter would show all matters if a user was selected without Responsible, Originating, or Reviewer being selected as well.

  • Corrected the time format in LEDES 2000 codes.

  • Optimized the billing system to make it faster to undo invoices with hundreds of line entries.

  • Fixed an issue when changing a fixed fee matter into an hourly matter where some of the time entries wouldn't switch to Billable.

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

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