FireHaus Network

I get asked from time-to-time what software and hardware is used in a Mac-only law firm. This is a start that I plan to flesh out shortly.

For case management we use a custom in-house developed Filemaker solution which manages the contact-side and the matter-side. We are able to do nearly 100% perfect conflict checking because of the way ANY contact in the database can be linked up to a client/matter. On the accounting side we do use an “off the shelf” product called Brief Accounting.

I have investigated other solutions and the ones that are out there don’t work for us, because of our size, but might work for a smaller firm with less than 10 attorneys (we have 19). The selection is limited. Frankly, we are planning a complete ground up refresh of our Filemaker solution and expect to have something in 2010 that might cost about $20-30K which would also incorporate document management. This is using local Filemaker developers.

LawStream – this has been around for a long time but there hasn’t been a client/server model which is why it would not work for us.

Hipersoft P.I. Powertool – this is a Filemaker solution.

We don’t have a true document management solution in place–yet–but we are taking baby steps in that direction. We rely heavily on our Fujitsu scanners combined with ScanTango. The ScanTango software allows you to create scanning workflows that help automate (or more accurately semi-automate) repetitive scanning tasks. Mindwrap, the company that makes ScanTango does make a full document management system called Optix. I haven’t fully investigated this as this is really a decision that needs to be made by our records dept.