DPS Software Ltd

So, you’ve got a document you need signed by two separate parties. These parties could be opposite sides of the country or even the world! What do you do? Do you send it in the post to one party, wait for them to sign it and return it to you to send on to the other, where you then have to wait for them to sign and return it again, hoping that it doesn’t get lost somewhere along the way? Frankly, that sounds like a ridiculous, antiquated way of doing business. Do you send the document by email to one party, to print, sign, scan and send it back, then repeat the process with the second party? Better, but still, imagine all that wasted paper printing documents that will end up in the bin. What if the party doesn’t have a printer or scanner? Again, not an ideal situation. Read more at Legal management software

DPS Software has been providing our legal case management system to UK law firms for over 30 years. Today we serve over 700 law firms and more than 18,000 individual users with software covering every area of practice. The case management systems cover conveyancing, crime, personal injury, family, and wills and probate. These are backed up by a fully integrated accounting package and digital dictation systems. Today, DPS Software is the largest legal cloud in the UK and is the only legal practice software provider to offer an integrated managed IT solution under the same roof. Read more at legal case management system to UK

Note that we said legal accounting software for law firms . There is a multitude of accounting software that you can buy, some of which is off the shelf and some of which is specific to the legal profession. If you are going to invest in software, it is not a good idea to use a generic off the shelf solution because the legal profession has its own special requirements and software that is specifically for lawyers takes all that into account.  To begin with, you need to record your time. However, you can be working on a case and then you receive a telephone call from a client which takes ten minutes. With legal accounting software for law firms many have timers that can be stopped and started in the programmes you use every day such as word processing, emails, your calendar and so on, and most legal software provides a traditional time sheet that also has timers. When you click finished, the time is saved to the client and matter. You also need to differenti...

When researching software for law firms in the UK remember to consider data security. Cybercrime has reached dangerous levels as displayed by the attack on NHS computer systems. Alright, the NHS is still using Windows 7 but even so you would not expect a security breach on that scale.  Your software supplier should be able to show that they are accredited to ISO 27001. This is the international standard for best security practice. They should also be Cyber Essentials accredited. This is a government backed certification scheme that sets out minimum levels of cyber security and is intended to prevent security breaches. A supplier should also undertake regular penetration tests and should be able to supply a report on the latest one.  Furthermore, the software should include an audit trail so that you can see if any users are accessing areas that they should not be, but better still the software should prevent them from doing so in the first place.  ...

More and more law firms are beginning to use cloud based software for part or all of their business. According to the American Bar Association, 52% of all law firms used some form of cloud software in 2017, and the figure is growing. However, there are still a lot of firms in the UK who do not use cloud based software and one of the reasons given is that they hold a lot of sensitive information and therefore they can be a target for hackers. Many lawyers believe by holding the information on their own servers they are at less risk. It is true that there have been some high-profile security breaches of cloud platforms, but these have been largely due to human error rather than some sort of fault with the cloud. Read more at law practice management software

Over the last couple of years, an increasing amount of legal case management software has become cloud based. This type of software allows for greater flexibility and faster speeds than server based software, yet still many lawyers cling on to the server in the belief that it is more secure than having all their client information “out there” on a server over which they have no control. Yet, is this really the case? If so, why are so many lawyers opting for cloud based software rather than using their own server? The truth of the matter is that it is mostly psychological. With your own server, it is in your own office and nobody can attack it. But the fact is that, of course, it can be the target of a cyber-attack. In fact, the security of cloud based legal case management software is very likely to be greater than if it is based in your own office where it can be hacked or even physically attacked.  Suppliers of this software simply must take every precau...

Did you know that close to 50% of lawyers looking for a law firm case management system software have never used it before?  Now that we are well ensconced in the 21st century one might wonder why this is the case. After all, lawyers are pretty intelligent people so you might expect they would have grasped the technology that is available today, rather than staying with last century thinking and still operating their businesses with paper and ink. Let’s face it: paper is slow, and old-fashioned. Every single document has to be dictated and then transcribed by a secretary. Then it has to be photocopied so that it can be filed while the original is sent to the recipient. Incoming letters also have to be photocopied so that there is a duplicate in case the original is misfiled. How many lawyers can put up their hand and say that they have never lost a document? This can be just a minor annoyance, and rather embarrassing if you need to write to a client for...