All Collections
Product Announcements
New in LeanLaw: February 2022
New in LeanLaw: February 2022

Release notes: Distribution locking, bug fixes, upcoming performance updates, and more

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

What’s new in LeanLaw this month?

Distribution Locking

This month we updated our distribution feature to support better record preservation.

Previously, whenever you changed the status of one of your distributions to Distributed, this would prevent any payment from being added to, or removed from, that distribution.

Now, in addition to its previous functionality, as long as a distribution is in the Distributed status, it will lock all allocation totals for that distribution. This means that even if your responsible, firm share, and origination values change over time, you'll be able to select an old distribution in your compensation report and see how it was allocated at the time it was distributed.

A gif showing a distribution being changed from Draft to Distributed

This is part of some extensive improvements we have planned for distributions. Click here for a comprehensive article on using the distribution manager!


What’s next?


We have some exciting features being developed. 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.

Performance improvements

If your firm has thousands of matters or tens of thousands of time entries, you may have noticed that some pages in LeanLaw can take more than a few seconds to load. Our engineers have been working hard this month on a performance initiative that will reduce the time it takes to retrieve Report data, as well as perform basic navigations like switching between the Matters page and the Time Entries page. Expect to see these performance upgrades in March.

Syncing distributions to QuickBooks

Our Distribution page has always been a useful tool for cutting checks, but we want to take it a step further with a "Sync to QuickBooks" button on the distribution page. When pressed, this button will automatically create either a check or a bill (determined by a setting in your Firm Settings) in QuickBooks for each user in your firm to the amount of their distribution. This payroll tool will be ready for beta testing in March.

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 available upon request; 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 user interface. Here are the patch notes for our development.

February 28, 2022

  • After feedback, we've decided to remove the To Distribute status for now in favor of simplifying the distribution workflow.

  • Fixed a typo that appeared on the subscription page if the firm had an expired subscription.

February 22, 2022

  • Fixed an issue where, if you created a time entry for a matter with Internal billing and then changed the time entry to a matter with Hourly billing, the time entry would have a rate of $0 per hour.

  • Fixed an issue where users couldn't see the Ready to Bill tab unless they had permission to view the Reports page.

February 21, 2022

  • Fixed issue that prevented users from updating User Setting information (initials, include on matters etc).

February 18, 2022

  • Changed the Require Originator on Matter setting to only require originator when creating a new matter--not when editing an existing matter.

  • Fixed an issue where the Save Changes button on the Settings page sometimes wouldn't save changes.

  • Fixed an issue that sometimes prevented users from being deleted.

February 15, 2022

  • Added the ability in invoice drafts to move a time entry to a different matter and send it back to Ready to Bill.

  • Fixed an issue where firms with active subscriptions would sometimes see the trial banner.

  • Fixed a rounding error that caused users with trials to sometimes be locked out of their accounts a day before their trial ended.

February 4, 2022

  • Revised the remaining Settings pages into vue (javascript).

  • Added visibility to time entries that were fully written-down and then sent back to Ready to Bill. They can now be found by clicking the Include Non-Billable checkbox.

  • Fixed an issue where the Period Report wouldn't print with the proper date range if quarters were selected as the Time Unit.

  • Changed the Expense page to recognize a credit made to the expense account through a QuickBooks journal entry as a negative expense, enabling users to write-off expenses.

February 1, 2022

  • Added Husch LEDES codes

  • Fixed an issue where the Contingency Expense Report would include non-contingent matters' expenses if you clicked on a client with both contingent and non-contingent matters.

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

Did this answer your question?