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LexisNexis held their annual Practice Management consultant conference last week In Orlando. As is typically the case at these events, new product releases and new feature sets were revealed to all in attendance, along with some interesting statistics about technology usage in law firms of 1 to 100 attorneys. While non-disclosure requirements preclude any detailed discussion of future plans at Lexis, I can comment in general terms about upcoming plans.
It should come as no surprise to anyone that future development efforts from Lexis will focus on making Time Matters more “mobile” and on improving integration with Outlook. For some time Lexis has been encouraging users to adopt the “TM Connect” method for managing email and abandon the Time Matters built-in email client app. In the next release of Time Matters (Version 12, very tentatively slated for a 4th quarter 2012 release) users may see a dramatically different approach to integration with Outlook. We were shown a very early rendition of exposing Time Matters “contextual info” (contact, case, etc.) right from within Outlook, without even opening Time Matters itself. Identify the sender or recipient of an email in Outlook, and you can easily view and drill down to, directly from Outlook, most of the data stored in Time Matters for that sender/recipient. This goes well beyond the present “Outlook Contact Synch” capability available today, and should make Outlook an even closer partner with Time Matters.
Lexis is completing a complete re-write of the TM-Exchange Synch application, the result of Microsoft’s release of Exchange 2010. Expected to be available with the release of Time Matters 11.1 (sometime toward the end of calendar 2011), Time Matters synchronization with Outlook will fully support Exchange 2010, 2007 and 2003. The Synch app will function essentially as it does now (with some bug fixes, of course), and users should be able to convert their existing synchronization setup with minimal effort.
Finally, the long and eagerly awaited addition of “calendaring” to the TM Mobility app is scheduled to ship this November. Lexis announced that almost 50% of TM 11 users have created free Mobility accounts and use the Mobility app on a regular basis. Some unanticipated usage patterns have emerged for Mobility, including access from PC notebooks and tablets, in addition to smartphones. Some users apparently have found Mobility to offer better and faster access to sought-after case and contact data than the more traditional methods of doing so (TM Remote, Exchange Synch, LogMeIn, etc.). Additional features for the TM Mobility app, likely to appear in the 2nd quarter of 2012, will include access to document and to do records, tentatively.
The overall impression from the conference is that Lexis has indeed “righted the ship” for Time Matters with the release of TM 11. Future development efforts for this flagship product appear to be very focused on Lexis’ understanding of their core Time Matters user base. They “get it” now, and are attempting to consistently offer something of value to their subscribers in the 1 to 100 attorney marketplace.
What is important for you to see in future releases of Time Matters? Are you interested in learning more about using Mobility for Time Matters? Give us a call at 800-357-0555 if you would like to explore any of these topics in more detail.
Jack Schaller has been active in the field of law office technology since 1989, and has worked with a variety of commercial accounting, legal billing, practice management, and document management software products during his twenty plus years in the software consulting field. During his tenure as a software consultant he has garnered many sales and service awards for his work with legal software products. Jack is a frequent presenter at legal conferences and seminars, and is a regular contributor to TechnoLawyer and other technology publications.
This is my third year with Time Matters and I’m still waiting for it to catch up with some of the capabilities I had in the Daytimer 2000 program (for which I paid much less). I agree that the synch through Outlook is lame but I could even put up with that if it worked right. Somehow it keeps spawning duplicate contacts. The mobile ap hasn’t worked at all even after I spent about five hours with tech support. I can’t afford that.
The features in Time Matters that work well don’t address my needs to (1) track phone calls, (2) time document preparation, (3) time emails, (4) access my calendar, and, (5) integrate all of this with billing. All five of these basic needs can be done, but not easily. I don’t want to have to figure out what a software engineer was thinking to use the program.
Some of what you highlight here may be configuration/setup issues that you may have missed; timers appear all over the place on all transaction records, and can be set to turn on automatically or can be manually started. The app also has various options for billing integration (Timeslips, PC Law, Billing Matters, Juris), whihc means you can easily convert TM transaction records to billing “slips” in any of these billing apps. Regarding the Outlook synch, clearly the direction of the industry is to synch with Exchange, not Outlook. The Time Matters synch with Exchange is excellent, and gives you full mobility for your calendar and contacts without having to run the TM Mobility app at all (although Mobility does offer some addtional capabilities).
Sounds to me like you need to find yourself a local competent consultant who can review your needs in more detail than whoever sold you the software did, and then set about making it right for you. Or you can continue to wallow around in the dark, gnashing your teeth……
We have used TimeMatters for almost 11 years now. It is a true love/hate relationship – primarily because of stability issues, Lexis policies, and concern with the future of TM.
I’ve been evaluating HoudiniESQ, Clio, Advologix, ActionStep and MyCase as alternatives. Clio and MyCase don’t have the capacity of TM. ActionStep is still in what I would call development phase. Houdini and Advologix (especially teamed with NetDocuments) appear to be the real thing, and viable replacements for TM.
However, the investment of time and money making the switch is daunting. The ongoing cost of Advologix in particlar is substantially more than TM, even with the required maintenance of a server based system for TM.
I would appreciate it if someone can provide me with comfort that TM will continue to “really” get better and catch up with the stability and reliability of Advologix or HoudiniESQ, so I don’t feel compelled to make a change – which I don’t really want to do – but feel like I almost have no choice.
Can you help me feel good about TM again?