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New in LeanLaw: March 2023
New in LeanLaw: March 2023

Release notes: My WIP Detail improvements, client and matter Created By, bug fixes, and more!

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

What’s new in LeanLaw this month?

Edit line items in My WIP Detail

The Ready to Bill page has been the most convenient way to view and edit work in progress (WIP) line items. Unfortunately, it also exposes the user to the heart of the billing workflow, which makes it a page not many have access to. This has presented a problem in firms that want their users to have more accountability without exposing all firm data.

Now, any user with the My Reports permission can use the My WIP Detail report to view and edit any fixed fee, expense, or time entry assigned to them. This new function of the My WIP Detail report will allow for better collaboration between timekeepers and firm operators, giving timekeepers more accountability over preparing work for invoices.

Client and matter Created By info

We've had many users ask us for more tools to look up who did what. One of the most frequent requests is the ability to look up who in the firm created a client or a matter. This month, we've surfaced this data to you, and you can find it on the Info tab of all of your clients and matters!

Note: some clients and matters created before this feature was released may show the email address of the user instead of their name, or even a blank field if the client or matter is particularly old.


Update history


As always, we’ve also been hard at work to squash bugs and improve the user experience. Here are the patch notes for our development.

March 31, 2023

  • Fixed an issue where invoice creation could fail in scenarios where dozens of invoices were being created at the same time. Invoices that would fail will now retried before being allowed to fail.

  • Fixed an issue where the expenses page would sometimes cut off on the last page when printed.

  • Fixed an issue where payments for non-LeanLaw invoices were visible on the payments page. This was causing issues for users who assigned them to distributions, because LeanLaw doesn't know how to allocate payments without a known matter and user on an invoice.

  • Fixed an issue where the Archived and Billed filters on the Contingency Report weren't always working

March 30, 2023

  • Added a "Created By" field to the Info tab of all clients and matters. This field will list the name of the user who created the client or matter, providing an easy way for firms with thousands of clients and matters to keep track of who opened what. Note: clients and matters which were created before this feature's release will show the email address of the creator, instead of their user name.

  • Under Time Entries, split the View and Edit Rates user permission into two separate permissions to expand the control firms have over their user permissions.

  • Fixed an issue where using a fixed fee template would set the fixed fee's date to the date on which the template was created.

  • Fixed an issue where the Billing and Fixed Fee Tabs in the Billable by Client and Matter report couldn't be exported.

  • Fixed an issue where users would be unable to select a start date for a fixed fee if they started the fixed fee by selecting a recurrence period.

March 27, 2023

  • Fixed an issue on the mobile app that caused some time entry edits to be registered as write-downs.

March 21, 2023

  • Fixed an issue where payment records automatically created through payment links were being recorded based on UTC time, which could cause payments to be dated for tomorrow if the payment was made at night in the US.

  • Fixed an issue in the WIP Detail report where items on the report would not immediately disappear if you deleted the item within the report. Also fixed an issue where the report would reload whenever you clicked on an item.

  • Fixed an issue where the Combine Time Entries For Same Day setting could combine time entries with poor rounding, causing them to have 8 decimal places.

  • Changed the language on Fixed Fees' "Revenue Allocation" tab. This tab is now called "Worked Allocation" to reflect the fact that your revenue allocation settings will indeed be applied to the fixed fee after whatever values you split among attorneys, and these values are lumped in with the user's time entry moneys when determining their Worked value. The description has also been updated to make this more explicit.

  • Fixed an issue where users with access to the My Compensation report could view invoices and payment allocations even if they didn't have access to firmwide Compensation reports.

  • Fixed a very rare circumstance that prevent a user from being assigned to a fixed fee.

March 10, 2023

  • Users can now edit time entries, expenses, and fixed fees from the My WIP Detail report. This is the latest in our improvements designed to give firms more accountability and visibility to their staff. Note that only expenses and fixed fees assigned to the user currently viewing the My WIP Detail report will appear.

March 9, 2023

  • Fixed an issue where attempting to send a draft to the Approved page would sometimes show an error (but correctly send the draft forward anyway)

  • Fixed an issue where other users' time entries were visible in the second level of the My Productivity report

  • Fixed an issue where rate names sometimes weren't visible on time entries.

  • Fixed an issue where firms couldn't use the LEDES filter on the QuickBooks page or download LEDES files using the triple dot dropdown menu.

  • Fixed an issue where the Payments page and Distribution page could have very narrow margins if only a few entries were visible on the page.

  • Fixed an issue where users could create fixed fees even if they didn't have the Create Fixed Fees permission, as long as they had access to the matter.

  • Fixed an issue where two "Save" buttons would appear on the Invoice Presentation settings page while your settings were being saved.

March 3, 2023

  • Added a Time Period filter to the My WIP report.

  • Added a conditional check to the expense import. Now, if your firm currently has Require User on Expense enabled, the expense import will block you and remind you to disable this setting, rather than letting you go through all of the work and having the expense import fail because there's no way to assign a user from a spreadsheet.

  • Fixed another issue where recurring fixed fees could cause errors in invoicing.

March 1, 2023

  • Added a support article link next to the Webhook configuration, which should help users learn a bit about what webhooks are and how ours can be used.

  • Added a protection to time entries that prevents a negative rate or amount from being entered.

  • Fixed an issue where a matter.BillingInfo error could cause the Drafts page to fail to load.

  • Fixed an issue where setting a distribution to Distributed status could cause users' Working percentage to switch from using their matter level settings to using their user-level settings.

  • Fixed an issue where drafts could fail to load if they contained a recurring fixed fee.

  • Fixed an issue where the Intercom chat bubble could block values in some reports. We did this by adding a length of white space at the bottom of reports affected by this issue.

  • Fixed an issue where users with dozens of firms weren't able to see/select all of their firms in the hover-over dropdown. They should now be able to scroll within this dropdown.

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

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