PracticePanther vs Law Ruler

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Our analysts compared PracticePanther vs Law Ruler based on data from our 400+ point analysis of Legal Software, user reviews and our own crowdsourced data from our free software selection platform.

Product Basics

PracticePanther is a cloud-based platform that helps manage cases, documents, client communications, time tracking and billing for law firms. It acts as a centralized hub for handling client information, cases and documents. Its reporting tools let you track your firm’s financial health and performance.

The platform allows you to create detailed case files, including evergreen retainers, deadlines, billable hours and specific tasks associated with each case. It offers document management tools, enabling attorneys to edit, track changes, eSign and share files with concerned clients and internal departments.

Additionally, you can track time spent on each case, generate detailed invoices and automate trust account management. Practices of all sizes can automate invoicing, time-tracking and payments while remaining compliant with IOLTA, ABA and state bar guidelines.

The software also allows firms to store client contact information, communication history and matter details in one place. It provides tools for client intake and onboarding, including custom intake forms, checklists and client portals. Its intuitive mobile app helps you stay connected with your firm and communicate with staff and clients remotely.

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Law Ruler provides legal practitioners with integrated CRM, case management and billing solutions. Leverage dashboard analytics and immersive visualizations to get data-driven insights on productivity. Add a personal touch to automated workflows for daily procedures such as emails, appointments, invoices and e-Signature requests. Maintain complete visibility over the firm’s communication channels, including social media, digital marketing campaigns, calls and websites. Access a built-in settlement wizard to streamline contingency settlements. Sort contacts and leads with custom tags and reach them instantly via dedicated communication channels.

Create online intake forms with the customizable form builder. Retrieve medical records in case of mass tort and personal injury cases. Use best practice templates to create legal documents and contracts. Automate calls and follow-ups with an AI-powered Click and Call Dialer. Integrate with Microsoft Office 365 for easy access to the entire enterprise technology suite.
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$49/User, Monthly
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Tailored to your specific needs
$40/User, Monthly
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Tailored to your specific needs
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Chromebook
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Android
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On-Premise
Mobile
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On-Premise
Mobile

Product Assistance

Documentation
In Person
Live Online
Videos
Webinars
Documentation
In Person
Live Online
Videos
Webinars
Email
Phone
Chat
FAQ
Forum
Knowledge Base
24/7 Live Support
Email
Phone
Chat
FAQ
Forum
Knowledge Base
24/7 Live Support

Product Insights

  • Never Miss Billable Hours: PracticePanther excels in time and expense management, with our data showing that it offers 96% of all key requirements out of the box. You can manage retainers and set custom hourly rates, item prices and contingency rates. It supports multiple time clocks and helps you log billable and non-billable hours accurately. You can also add uniform task-based management (UTBM) codes while creating time and expense entries to set benchmarks.
  • Improve Client Experiences: Another strong suite is the platform’s client and contact management module, which has received an 89 rating from our analysts. You can design unique client intake funnels to capture all required information. Clients get individual portals to submit documents, track cases and pay invoices. You can use the built-in two-way messaging system or send emails and text messages from the software interface. The platform maintains a communication log and enhances client outreach with email campaigns and lead-tracking tools.
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  • Enhanced Efficiency: Streamline legal processes, automate tasks, and reduce time spent on administrative duties, freeing up attorneys to focus on high-value work.
  • Improved Case Management: Centralize case information, track progress, set deadlines, and manage documents efficiently, ensuring seamless case handling and reducing the risk of errors.
  • Increased Collaboration: Facilitate seamless communication and collaboration among attorneys, paralegals, and clients, fostering a cohesive team environment and enhancing productivity.
  • Enhanced Client Service: Provide clients with real-time case updates, secure document sharing, and personalized communication, building stronger relationships and increasing client satisfaction.
  • Reduced Costs: Optimize resource allocation, minimize administrative expenses, and improve billing accuracy, resulting in significant cost savings for law firms.
  • Improved Compliance: Ensure adherence to ethical and regulatory guidelines, manage conflicts of interest, and maintain accurate records, mitigating risks and protecting the firm's reputation.
  • Data-Driven Insights: Analyze case data, track key performance indicators, and identify areas for improvement, enabling data-informed decision-making and strategic planning.
  • Enhanced Security: Safeguard sensitive client information with robust security measures, including data encryption, access controls, and disaster recovery plans, ensuring data integrity and compliance.
  • Scalability and Flexibility: Adapt to changing caseloads and firm growth with a scalable platform that can accommodate the evolving needs of law firms of all sizes.
  • Exceptional Support: Benefit from dedicated technical support, training, and ongoing updates, ensuring a smooth implementation and maximizing the value of the software investment.
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  • Case Management: Store detailed user information with ease, along with tags and follow-up updates, making it easy and organized.
    • Remote Access: Get quick overviews of all case-related information, including contacts, tasks, calendar entries, documentation and more. Automatically sync firm databases for unobstructed remote access from any device with an internet connection.
    • Contacts and Matter Management: Keep legal matters organized and up-to-date by adding relevant contacts, notes and bills. Limit access to sensitive matter information with controlled permissions. Securely collaborate with team members and share and recall data.
    • Conflict Search: Link contacts to matters for checking on conflicts of interest and parties represented by the lawyer.
  • Document Management: Manage all your documents in one place and set up automation to reduce repetitive tasks.
    • Centralized Repository: Store and manage all legal documents and files securely in a single location. Enhance efficiency by electronically sending documents for signatures, auto-populating client information, and creating custom templates to streamline document creation workflows.
    • Organized Access: Avoid wasting time searching for documents. Organize files by client and matter for easy retrieval. Use custom tags to categorize and filter your firm's legal documents.
    • E-Signatures: Expedite the document approval process by offering electronic signatures via email, text message or the client portal. Create and send multiple documents for eSignature in batches simultaneously.
    • Cloud Integration: Connect with leading cloud storage platforms like Dropbox, Google Drive, OneDrive and Box.com. This eliminates the need to switch between platforms and helps you sync all document changes automatically.
    • Customizable Templates: Boost document creation speed by uploading and using pre-defined templates. Automatically populate templates with your firm's information and client data. Track document progress through a dashboard with status indicators (incomplete, completed, in progress, overdue) and assign conditional tasks as needed.
  • Legal Billing: Never miss a billable hour with automated time and expense tracking tools.
    • Customizable Invoicing: Create professional invoices tailored to your firm's branding. Include client information, activity logs, notes and more. Assign specific billable rates based on user, activity, matter or contact for accurate fee calculations.
    • Integrated Payment Processing: Accept payments through various methods, including custom payment links, the client portal, phone or in-person transactions using Panther Payments, the native payment processor.
    • Billing Reports: Gain insights into your firm’s performance by generating detailed reports. Analyze billing trends and collections data, identify top-billed practice areas, and filter reports by custom tags, bank accounts, payment methods, contacts or matters.
  • Trust Accounting: Manage trust and operating accounts while automating compliance with IOLTA, ABA and all 50 state bar regulations. Stay informed about retainer balances by setting up automatic alerts. Receive notifications when trust account balances fall below pre-defined thresholds and perform daily three-way reconciliations for oversight of your trust account activity.
  • Legal CRM: Organize client data, gain a holistic view of cases, automate client onboarding and sync new client data from automated intake forms.
    • Custom Tags: Categorize contacts by client type (existing, potential etc.), professional contact or any other relevant category using custom tags. Use these tags to filter data and gain insights into your client base.
    • Client Portals: Provide clients with a secure online portal. They can access uploaded documents, communicate with your firm, review invoice balances and make online payments. The platform automatically populates client information from their intake forms to create accurate profiles.
    • Workflow Automation: Streamline client follow-up with automated workflows that trigger tasks and events based on pre-defined conditions. Automate appointment scheduling and send automatic reminders to clients, ensuring timely communication.
  • Calendaring: Create time entries, confirm client meetings, manage tasks and stay on top of court rule deadlines using a centralized calendar system.
    • Visualized Deadlines: Use color-coded tags to visually identify deadlines and events associated with specific contacts, matters and tasks.
    • Automated Time Capture: Convert appointments and events into time entries with a single click, ensuring all billable hours are captured and accurately allocated to the appropriate client.
    • Court Rule Integration: Connect with LawToolBox to sync pre-set and custom court rule deadlines with your PracticePanther calendar and workflows, keeping you ahead of important legal dates.
  • Integrations: Connect to a host of essential applications to improve the firm’s productivity and automation standards. Some popular applications it supports integrations with include Gmail, Microsoft Outlook, Microsoft Exchange, Box, Dropbox, Outlook, Google Calendar, Apptoto and many more.
  • Security: Protect firm data against vulnerabilities with 256-bit military-grade encryption. Limit platform access to authorized IP addresses and enable two-step authentication. Maintain client confidentiality and HIPAA compliance with Box.com’s secure storage capabilities.
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  • Dashboard Analytics: Leverage sonar dashboards and custom analytics to measure key performance indicators for marketing intake, referrals, staff productivity, litigation and case management. Identify historical trends and patterns, track dockets and evaluate return on investment. 
  • CRM: Tag contacts with custom labels. Assign multiple labels to a single contact and mass populate entries based on tags. Create notes, tasks and reminders to always stay on top of deadlines, tasks, meetings and important events. Automatically create new leads from referrals and inquiries. Leverage lead source tracking to gain actionable insights into top-performing marketing sources.  
  • Mobile Application: Enjoy unrestricted mobile access through an app optimized for on-the-go use. 
  • Legal Calendar: Connect to Outlook for two-way synchronization of calendar entries. Link client correspondence in Outlook to associated legal cases to maintain a centralized source of truth. 
  • Case Management: Manage the entire case lifecycle from referral to billing with one dedicated module. Eliminate data duplication and errors and omissions (E&O) with automated entries. Access turnkey integration of the firm’s calls, contacts, cases, websites and legal matters. 
  • Workflow Automation: Create custom templates and apply them to different workflows. Implement automation in regular processes like online intake forms, social media marketing, calls, text messaging and email marketing. Add a personal touch to follow-up emails and text messages regarding matters, invoices, electronic signatures, appointment reminders and more. 
    • Workflow Tracking: Get complete visibility into upcoming tasks, appointments, signature requests, emails and intake forms. 
  • Security: Provides around-the-clock intrusion detection and prevention facilities. HIPAA-compliant cloud hosting available. Secure firm data with 256-bit AES encryption. 
  • Billing: Supports contingency billing, flat-fee billing, timer-based hourly billing, fee splits, pro-bono billing, client medical bills, expenses and settlement tracking. Track time, expenses and invoices in real time and generate UTBMS and LEDES billing codes. 
  • Integrations: Connect to Office 365 for access to robust security and dictation and transcription tools. Other supported integrations include LawPay, Outlook Calendar, Zapier, QuickBooks, ApexChat, Google, Thomson Reuters and more. 
  • Click to Call Dialer: Automate follow-up calls and schedule callbacks with the built-in AI-powered dialer. Automatically follow-up on web and live chat leads and record all communication with date and time stamps. 
  • Online Intake Forms: Leverage a user-friendly form builder to create online intake forms with data fields tailored for every practice area and purpose. Automatically populate forms with existing data and add custom logos and images. Embed forms in the website and application. Send reminders to potential clients with incomplete progress. 
  • Legal Documentation: Automate document creation and delivery with custom templates and workflows. Process documents faster with electronic signatures. Send automated reminders to clients about incomplete contracts, waivers and NDAs. Eliminate redundant data and E&Os. 
  • Settlement Wizard: Evaluate settlement options in real time and approve transactions and payments with a single click. Calculate attorney fees for multiple firms and digitally review and approve settlements. Send invoices and opening and closing statements via text messages, emails or postal service.  
  • Record Retrieval: Directly order medical records for mass tort and injury cases. Get notifications on successful retrievals. 
  • Firm Reports: Use the built-in report builder to prepare custom reports via a no-code interface. Run reports on marketing campaigns, case milestones, productivity, case metrics and conversion rates. 
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Product Ranking

#14

among all
Legal Software

#78

among all
Legal Software

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Analyst Rating Summary

75
81
84
97
90
95
55
100
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Time and Expense Management
Client and Contact Management
Integrations and Extensibility
Platform, Security, and Compliances
Dashboard and Reporting
Task Management
Billing and Payments
Client and Contact Management
Matter/Case Management

Analyst Ratings for Functional Requirements Customize This Data Customize This Data

PracticePanther
Law Ruler
+ Add Product + Add Product
Billing And Payments Calendaring And Legal Docketing Client And Contact Management Dashboard And Reporting Document Management Matter/Case Management Mobile Capabilities Task Management Time And Expense Management 84 90 55 18 75 76 82 97 97 95 100 46 92 67 100 79 0 25 50 75 100
82%
6%
12%
94%
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6%
100%
0%
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100%
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83%
0%
17%
92%
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8%
60%
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40%
100%
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21%
0%
79%
50%
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50%
78%
0%
22%
89%
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11%
78%
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22%
67%
0%
33%
83%
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17%
100%
0%
0%
100%
0%
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80%
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20%

Analyst Ratings for Technical Requirements Customize This Data Customize This Data

100%
0%
0%
71%
0%
29%
100%
0%
0%
75%
0%
25%

User Sentiment Summary

Excellent User Sentiment 613 reviews
Excellent User Sentiment 41 reviews
92%
of users recommend this product

PracticePanther has a 'excellent' User Satisfaction Rating of 92% when considering 613 user reviews from 3 recognized software review sites.

96%
of users recommend this product

Law Ruler has a 'excellent' User Satisfaction Rating of 96% when considering 41 user reviews from 2 recognized software review sites.

4.2 (100)
4.0 (1)
4.7 (508)
4.8 (40)
4.6 (5)
n/a

Awards

PracticePanther stands above the rest by achieving an ‘Excellent’ rating as a User Favorite.

User Favorite Award

SelectHub research analysts have evaluated Law Ruler and concluded it earns best-in-class honors for Dashboard and Reporting and Task Management. Law Ruler stands above the rest by achieving an ‘Excellent’ rating as a User Favorite.

User Favorite Award
Dashboard and Reporting Award
Task Management Award

Synopsis of User Ratings and Reviews

Ease of Use: Many users find PracticePanther easy to use, with an intuitive interface that makes it accessible for beginners without extensive coding experience.
Comprehensive Features: The software addresses critical legal practice management needs, offering tools for billing, invoicing, time tracking, case management, document handling and client portals.
Efficient Automation: PracticePanther offers automation for client onboarding, billing and document handling, streamlining workflows and saving time on repetitive tasks.
Easy Accessibility: The cloud-based platform, along with its mobile app, helps users access tasks and stay in touch with their operations from anywhere.
Streamlined Client Experiences: The platform offers client onboarding automation, unique portals and internal messaging tools that help simplify and streamline client-attorney interactions.
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Intuitive Interface: Law Ruler's user-friendly design makes it easy to navigate and find the features you need, even for users with limited technical expertise.
Comprehensive Features: The software offers a wide range of features tailored to the specific needs of legal professionals, including case management, document automation, and billing.
Time-Saving Automation: Law Ruler automates repetitive tasks such as document creation and scheduling, freeing up lawyers to focus on more strategic work.
Enhanced Collaboration: The platform facilitates seamless collaboration between team members, allowing them to share documents, track progress, and communicate efficiently.
Excellent Customer Support: Law Ruler provides responsive and knowledgeable customer support, ensuring that users have the assistance they need to maximize the software's benefits.
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Performance Issues: Some users report the software being slow and unresponsive, particularly during peak usage times.
Bugs and Errors: A few users reported calculation errors in trust accounting and time tracking due to bugs and cookie issues.
Documentation Quality: The software’s documentation could be clearer and more user-friendly, particularly for new users.
Limited Reporting: The solution offers limited pre-built reporting templates and dashboard visualizations. However, the vendor offers assistance in designing custom ones.
Integration Challenges: Users have reported faulty integrations with third-party tools, especially with Zapier, Jubilee and Record Grabber.
Billing Limitations: The platform offers limited billing customizations and requires users to manually open each bill to see its content, making the review process slow and cumbersome.
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Limited Customization: Law Ruler offers limited customization options, making it difficult to tailor the software to specific firm needs.
Steep Learning Curve: Users have reported a steep learning curve when using Law Ruler, requiring significant time and effort to become proficient.
Lack of Integration: Law Ruler lacks seamless integration with other legal software and applications, limiting its functionality and efficiency.
Limited Reporting Capabilities: Users have expressed concerns about Law Ruler's limited reporting capabilities, making it challenging to generate comprehensive and customized reports.
Inconsistent Support: Some users have experienced inconsistent support from Law Ruler's customer service team, leading to delays and unresolved issues.
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During testing, I found PracticePanther relatively straightforward to set up. Customizing the platform with my firm’s logo and name was a breeze. Creating matters, assigning tasks and syncing calendars felt intuitive. Even integrating Panther Payments for online payments was smooth sailing. While the interface could use a design refresh, it’s functional and easy to navigate.One standout feature is the matter creation process. The ability to categorize matters with tags and custom fields is beneficial. PracticePanther’s flexibility in handling different billing structures, including flat rates, hourly rates and retainers, is a major plus. The platform's automatic alerts for depleted retainer funds are a time-saver.I'm also impressed with its document management capabilities. The integration with cloud storage and the version history feature is invaluable for maintaining document control. Creating custom templates for different document types is a convenient touch.While PracticePanther offers a solid foundation for legal practice management, it presents some notable limitations. The billing process is particularly cumbersome. The absence of a streamlined review function, forcing users to open each invoice individually, significantly hampers efficiency. This contrasts sharply with other platforms that offer more intuitive billing and reviewing navigation.Additionally, the lack of advanced features, such as integrated legal research tools, is a drawback for firms that rely heavily on online research. Although the software can track time, the absence of connections with research websites and tools means manual timekeeping, which can be error-prone and time-consuming.Despite these shortcomings, PracticePanther is well-suited for solo practitioners and small law firms with relatively straightforward caseloads. Its ease of use and core features, such as matter management and document handling, make it a viable option for firms that prioritize these functions. However, for larger firms with complex caseloads or those that require advanced features like robust reporting and analytics, PracticePanther may fall short.

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Law Ruler has received mixed reviews in the past year. Users praise its intuitive interface, comprehensive features, and affordable pricing. They find it particularly useful for managing cases, tracking time, and generating documents. However, some users have reported occasional bugs and glitches, and they wish the software offered more customization options. Compared to similar products, Law Ruler stands out for its ease of use and affordability. Its intuitive interface makes it accessible to users of all experience levels, and its low price point makes it a great option for small law firms and solo practitioners. However, Law Ruler may lack some of the advanced features found in more expensive software, such as document automation and e-signature capabilities. Overall, Law Ruler is a solid choice for small law firms and solo practitioners who are looking for an affordable and easy-to-use legal software solution. Its strengths lie in its intuitive interface, comprehensive features, and affordable pricing. However, users who require more advanced features or customization options may want to consider other products.

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