Posts made by BrandonK6644

I would love the ability to view the first generation of a matter's connection in a more traditional tree/flowchart style. Right now, with complicated families, it is nearly impossible to decipher the tree is shown. If we could limit the diagram to just one level (child or parent or sibling) that would make everything so much easier to read. If we could click on the child/parent/sibling and be shown that matter's first level familial connections we'd be able to traverse a tree quickly in a meaningful way.

For law firms, it would be extremely useful if nearly everything could be client specific. Client-specific billing item templates would be an absolute game changer. We have a variety of billing item templates because our clients have different flat fees for the same task. For example, we might invoice Client A $10 for a response to non-final while we invoice Client B $20 for the same task.

It is currently not possible to set an option in the billing item template to restrict billing item generation based on the template to matters for a particular client. What would be preferred is that I could create a billing item template for a task, associate that task with a particular client, and when the task is closed in the matter a billing item will be generated based on the ONLY IF the matter is for the particular client.
Here is an example: when a "Respond to Non-Final Office Action - 3 Month Deadline" task is completed in a matter for Client A, I want a single billing item created based on a $10 billing item template that is associated only with Client A. No other billing items would be created. When the same task is completed in another matter – a matter for Client B – I want a single billing item created based on a $20 billing item template associated with Client B. Again, no other billing item would be created.

If this were an issue for one or two tasks or one or two clients, I wouldn’t bother asking. But Appcoll should be able to grow with our firm. We have many clients and many tasks. We want as seamless a process as possible. Other platforms provide client-specific billing item generation (or, in their lingo ‘pre-bill’). It is a necessity for our firm to find a solution to this problem because we spend an unacceptable amount of time creating invoices from billing items that were generated but aren’t actually correct for that matter. Instead, with client-specific billing item generation, we could reduce our time and risk for manual error dramatically.

For law firms, it would be extremely useful if nearly everything could be client specific. For example, I need a particular attorney to be restricted from accessing one client's matters, but no others. Without using one of the special contact fields (partner, attorney, contributor, for example) in a matter, this is not possible.

Even then, the permissions in the contacts module only provide an option in which the the attorney is limited to accessing those matters in which the attorney is listed as contributor/partner/attorney. Thus, in order to restrict an attorney from accessing just one client's matters, that attorney has to be added to ALL other matters. If the attorney should be restricted from accessing Client A's matters, then the attorney must be listed in the special contact fields for all matters of Client B, Client C, Client D and so on. Such a procedure is difficult to administer over time (when each new matter is opened). Additionally, that field is now not available to someone else.

It seems much easier to have an option in the contacts module to either: (1) select, from a set of clients, the clients for which the contact is allowed to access matters or (2) select, from a set of clients, the clients for which the contact is prohibited to access matters.