Robert Ambrogi Blog
Before-and-after views show the navigation panel moved to the left.
CosmoLex, a cloud-based practice management platform, today rolled out its version 5.0, featuring a new user interface and several new features, including custom fields, document templates and data mining. It also revealed that it is shifting its focus slightly, away from solo lawyers and towards larger firms of 5-20 lawyers.
“Going forward, our entire focus will be shifting towards mid-sized firms now,” CEO Rick Kabra told me. “So future development will be heavily focused on mid-sized firms of 5-20 lawyers.”
Full view of the dashboard.
The new UI was designed to create more “real estate” on the screen so that more information can be displayed. It accomplishes this by moving the main navigation menu to the left and making it collapsible. When not in use, it is a narrow black band. Hover over any item and it expands to show the full menu.
This redesign creates from 20-30 percent more vertical depth on pages within CosmoLex. Because CosmoLex is an all-in-one platform that includes accounting, the company saw the need to make more information visible on key pages such as the dashboard and matter pages.
Custom Fields
Custom fields created by the firm.
Also new with today’s update is the ability for firms to create custom fields within matter templates. Users can add whatever fields they want. But the ability to add fields is limited to those with administrative-level access to the platform.
“We believe everyone in a firm should be able to use custom fields, but that not everyone should be able to design them,” Kabra said. “So we put them in the administrative settings.”
Document Templates
Document templates can be created using any fields.
These new custom fields can be used in conjunction with another new feature, document templating. Firms can create standard form documents and add any standard or custom fields from CosmoLex to automatically insert that information into the document.
Subscribers can download a fields database from CosmoLex as an Excel file that contains all the standard and custom fields that can be inserted into a document template.
CosmoLex plans later next year to develop a library of document templates. However, that will not be ready for 6-8 months, Kabra said.
Data Mining
Search filters can be applied to mine specific billing and accounting data.
A final feature introduced today is data mining to facilitate data analysis. This is an enhanced search feature that lets a user search billing and accounting data within CosmoLex using a range of filters. This enables the user to see very specific sets of data. The results of the search can be exported in spreadsheet, PDF or CSV formats.
For example, a user could apply filters to see only cases being billed on an hourly basis and then only those where the retainer is running low. A number of filters are available and any can be applied to narrow or tailor the data.
Kabra believes these new data-mining tools will be particularly useful to larger firms, in that it will allow them to do deeper and more nuanced productivity and profitability analysis. The company has plans to significantly expand these capabilities over the next year, he said.
There will not be any change in pricing, Kabra said. CosmoLex charges $49 per user per month when paid annually, or $59 when paid monthly. The price includes LawPay credit card processing.
“Law practice management has become almost like a religion for us here,” Kabra said. “Anything we can to do improve the practice of law, it has become the mission of so many of us here.”