Our updated look is part of our efforts as we head towards our 1.0 Release.  Rocket Matter will no longer offer Pilot Program pricing after December 31st, 2008, so hurry up and sign up to lock in savings!

Rocket Matter, LLC
7601 N. Federal Highway
Suite 265 A
Boca Raton, FL 33487

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Introducing Reports

In addition to a major design upgrade, we rolled out a major new feature: Reports. Now, you can easily get a quick view of the financial status and performance of your firm. And if you prefer to work with data in Excel, that’s fine too, because each of our reports exports to CSV.

And try out our improved User preference editing, including a new and improved color chooser! This is a feature request that was near and dear to a number of our legal secretaries, and we are happy to oblige.

Lots of Changes

The entire application has been outfitted with an eye-pleasing user interface upgrade, making the already simple-to-use Rocket Matter even easier.

We’ve incorporated a large number of user suggestions, too numerous to mention, in the new rollout, so take a look around - you may just find something you asked for!

It seems odd that I might use an online legal practice management and time and billing solution for my GTD system.

When we designed Rocket Matter, we wanted to offer users a revolutionary way to trap their billable time through our Bill As You Work (TM) technology.

And we wanted to come up with a flexible organizational system.

We built this notion of a User Dashboard, where you can see all of your calendar events and to-do’s at a glance.  You can quickly capture next actions, then assign them to matters.

Matters in our system allow you to trap your file information, but really they can organize any information. So, you can just as easily create a matter “Rocket v. Matter” as you can a matter called “@Phone”, and assign a to-do item to either one.

You can easily re-assign a to-do item from one matter to another, allowing you to easily track your next actions.  And with Rocket Matter, all to-do’s can be converted into billable activity.

Look for more upcoming posts on Rocket Matter and GTD in the future!

Here, Ross talks about the importance of a firm getting it right from the start.  He advises using dedicated legal practice management software,  instead of “trying to twist and turn Outlook to match the abilities of case management products.”

Using case management software has nothing whatsoever to do with your
practice’s billing methodology. Whether you have an hourly, flat-fee,
contingent fee, value-billing, barter for sheep practice and/or some blend
of the previous, it’s irrelevant to the case management decision. If you
have clients and cases, you have case information that needs tracking,
period. And to do this any way other than using an actual practice
management system is doing it:

a) The hard way, unnecessarily, and
b) The most expensive way, usually in terms of the economic/opportunity cost
from all the time you’ll waste trying to make a proverbial silk purse out of
a sow’s ear (i.e. trying to twist and turn Outlook to match the abilities of
case management products).

With that said, from a “best practices” perspective, if you intend to have
your practice succeed as a business in the long run, the time to get it
right in terms of core structural/skeletal systems, practices and procedures
is at inception. This means have real billing/bookkeeping software and sound
accounting practices right out of the gate. When your practice is growing
and humming along, you’re not going to have time to put on the brakes and
try and implement a completely new financial system after the fact. It makes
no difference what kind of billing approach you’ll take - you need to track
expenses in a contingent fee practice, you need to process client
settlements and awards and generate contingent fee settlement statements,
you’ll have trust activity and of course, every business has daily
bookkeeping needs for income tracking and bill paying, not to mention basic
P&L reporting and balance sheet accounting.

…

Take the right path and start by incorporating a “best practices” mentality
into your new practice, beginning today. Otherwise, later, you’ll kick
yourself and think “I wish I had done that from the beginning.”

If you like what Ross writes, signup for the SOLOSEZ listserv, or take a look at his Bar Code column at the Milwaukee Bar Association website.

My favorite tip is “Master the power nap”, complete with a link to the Boston Globe’s Napping Cheat Sheet.  Though it looks like I’m consuming my coffee incorrectly.

Pink message pads are history! Now, you can take down and review phone messages from any computer with Internet access. Watch this video to see the feature in action.

A breeze to use, Messages can revolutionize the way your firm handles its inter-office communication. This brand-new, extra functionality is available at no additional charge to our Pilot users!  Legal SaaS just got a lot more powerful.

Begin by clicking on the telephone icon at the top of the page. This brings up the new message dialog. All of your users, contacts and clients, and matters are at your fingertips, so taking a message has never been easier.

Let’s say I take a message for an attorney, Keith. When Keith logs in, he sees that he has 1 new message. He clicks on the link next to the phone that says “1 New Message”, and views his message list. From there, he can drill into a message. He can read it. He can forward the message to another person in the firm.

Keith can even associate billable time with any follow-up work related to the message. This is an extension of our Bill As You Work(TM) technology, and will get funneled right into billing, to appear on an invoice, ready to go out to the client.

Save time, ditch the mouse, and use your Enter/Return key to submit

Now, gain back even more billable time by giving your mouse a rest. Move through your forms without leaving the keys. Fly through the Add Matter wizard - hit enter instead of clicking the OK button to submit your forms.

This feature has been high on the list of many firms - and we’re happy to deliver. Keyboard submit is enabled on all pages, so you can get your information into Rocket Matter more efficiently!

Web-based Legal Software Rocket Matter adds Messaging Feature

The legal SaaS leader adds an easy-to-use office messaging feature to its highly efficient practice management and time and billing package.

Boca Raton, FL - October 5, 2008 - Rocket Matter, a new web-based legal software product, recently launched Messages, a new feature which enables law office workers to take phone messages and notify the recipient immediately.

“The addition of Messages represents yet another way for attorneys to streamline their operations and save time and money using Rocket Matter” says Larry Port, Founding Partner of Rocket Matter. “Messages is an essential addition to our Bill As You WorkTM feature lineup which emphasizes productivity boosters for law offices.”

Messages is a 21st century improvement to pink message pads.  Now, law offices can take down and review phone messages from any computer with Internet access.  Client, contact, and matter information are simply added from the Rocket Matter database, and messages can then be quickly sent to other coworkers.

Another benefit of Messages, viewable from every screen in Rocket Matter, is that it enables attorneys to tie their phone usage directly into billing.  The easy-to-use integrated timer tracks the duration of follow-up phone calls. Plus, staff can simply enter billable time for a message.

The need for a web-based phone messaging application was requested by some of Rocket Matter’s early users.  With their cooperation, the feature was designed to be optimally efficient for a law firm.

“What’s interesting about Messages is that it doesn’t have to be limited to receiving phone messages—it can really serve as a general purpose office communication tool,”  says Ariel Jatib, Chief Interaction Designer.  “You can capture your ideas as easily as you can capture a message, and you have the ability to forward either to anyone in the office.”

Messages is included at no extra charge to Rocket Matter customers.  Due to the web-based nature of the product, existing customers do not have to undergo a time-consuming or expensive upgrade to the product. New features such as Messages are available instantly when a user logs in.

Introduced in February 2008, Rocket Matter is currently offered as a monthly subscription.  Interested parties can view a video of the product and sign-up for more information at www.rocketmatter.com.

About Rocket Matter, LLC

Rocket Matter, LLC (http://www.rocketmatter.com) provides a web-based legal practice management and time and billing solution for small to mid-sized law firms.  Rocket Matter TM is a Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) application, providing increased security, business continuity, decreased technology infrastructure and maintenance, and improved return on investment for information technology expenses.  Launched in February 2008, Rocket Matter’s corporate headquarters is in Boca Raton, FL.
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For the Legal SaaS curious, it’s a must read.  Luigi does a great job of describing what SaaS is and some of the major benefits of using online practice magament and time and billing software:

What is Saas? It’s been described as software that doesn’t reside on your hard drive or office network, like Microsoft Word or Outlook. It’s software that you access through the Internet from a third-party provider outside your office, which hosts and operates the software. You pay that provider for it (on a one-time or subscription basis) just as you’d pay a traditional software provider for the program that resides on your own system…

Most strikingly, all you need to do this is a standard web browser like Internet Explorer or Firefox: SaaS users don’t install any software on their computers. Each application is “hosted” on another computer in the “cloud,” the symbol on computer network architecture diagrams that represents the Internet.

He mentions a maxim to consider for those of you who do not use a SaaS solution for your law firm:

There are two types of computer hard drives: those that have failed, and those that will.

Thanks Luigi, we are happy to be a part to educate and spread the word about web-based solutions for law firms!

Ben is a very knowledgeable guy, and in addition to his popular blog, is the co-founder of the Macs in Law Offices Google Group, authored the ABA Journal’s Mac v PC cover story, and is a host on the MILO podcast.

You can follow his experiences, including using Rocket Matter on his new 3G iPhone, and his initial thoughts concerning his Rocket Matter switch.

Thanks for the kind words, Ben!