Working with Matters in Practice Management and Legal Accounting

Modified on Thu, 5 Jun at 1:17 PM

Information in this article may still be under development.

In this article:

Creating and Editing Matters
Integration Sync Status
Viewing Matter Billing in Either Practice Management or Legal Accounting
About Matters with Multiple Clients
About Using the File Reference Field

You can create and work your matters from Practice Management and use Legal Accounting to manage the billing for them. The following article covers some things you must understand as you work in both Practice Management and Legal Accounting to manage this workflow.

Creating and Editing Matters

All matters you want to manage in both Practice Management and Legal Accounting must be created in Practice Management first. Additionally, a client is required on a matter to synchronize with Legal Accounting. Once a matter is created, it will automatically be synced with Legal Accounting. The client record must be synchronized for the matter to be synchronized.

NOTE: See Contact and Matter Field Mapping Between Practice Management and Legal Accounting for information on how fields are mapped between the two systems.

To create a matter for use in both Practice Management and Legal Accounting:

In Practice Management, click the global Create button and choose Matter. The Create Matter window appears.
Select a Matter Type and enter the details of the matter.
Optionally, to use a specific matter number, enter it in the File Reference field. Otherwise, Legal Accounting will auto-number the matter if you leave this field empty. (For more information, see About Using the File Reference Field below.)
Complete these required fields:
- Matter Name
- Assigned to
  TIP: The name in the Assigned to field will populate the Resp Lawyer field in Legal Accounting when creating a matter.
- Parties (including a Client)
- Any matter type-specific required fields (as indicated by the asterisk character)
Provide any other information and click Create Matter to save your changes and create the matter. The matter is saved to both Practice Management and Legal Accounting.

Once created, you you can edit the fields that are shared between Practice Management or Legal Accounting in either system and the other system will be updated accordingly.

NOTE: When viewing the matter/file in Legal Accounting, the Description field is required and cannot be hidden.

Integration Sync Status

Once you create a matter, both Practice Management and Legal Accounting includes an indicator that shows whether the matter is synced between both areas of the product.

In Practice Management, this indicator looks like this:

In Legal Accounting, the indicator looks like this:

In both areas of the product, you can hover over this link to view the status:

Green (synchronized/linked)
Gray (unsynchronized/unlinked)
Light blue (pending/synchronizing)
Red (synchronization errors)

TIPS:
• You can click the link (as long as it's green) to jump to the matter (file) in the other product.

• If a matter isn't synced and you expect it to be, try making changes to the matter and then save them. This should force a new sync.

Viewing Matter Billing in Either Practice Management or Legal Accounting

In Practice Management

In Practice Management, go to the matter's Billing > Overview page to view the matter balances from Legal Accounting. This page includes hours, fees, disbursements, balances, payments, and trust accounts.

To view this data, you must have the right permissions assigned in both Practice Management and Legal Accounting. If the Client Ledger is restricted from a user in Legal Accounting, the balances will not be available for that user to view.

In Legal Accounting

In Legal Accounting, go to the File Manager > General tab to view the Balances and Trust sections.

NOTE: To set up matters for LEDES billing, you must enable E-Billing on the matter's Matter billing options page in Practice Management so that the correct task and activity codes can be used when recording time. You must also enable Electronic Billing on the file in Legal Accounting so that the invoice is created in the correct file format.

About Matters with Multiple Clients

If a Practice Management matter includes multiple clients, Legal Accounting will display the first client listed on the Practice Management matter as the primary contact. This means the following:

100% of the bill will be allocated to the primary contact; however, you can manually reallocate the percentages in Legal Accounting.
The primary contact from the group will appear at the top of the File Manager tab in Legal Accounting.
Individual contacts in a group contact can be viewed in the Split/Advanced Billing section of File Manager in Legal Accounting.

About Using the File Reference Field

The File Reference field in Practice Management maps to the Matter # field in Legal Accounting. When using the integration, you cannot use this field for any other purpose other than as a representation of the matter number.

When creating a matter, you can opt to leave the File Reference field blank and Legal Accounting will assign the next logical number to it.

Please note the additional following details:

If a File Reference number is provided when creating a matter and it does not exist in Legal Accounting, it will be synced. If the number does exist in Legal Accounting but it's not assigned to a file in Legal Accounting, it will be used / synced. If it exists and has already been assigned, the sync will result in an error.
If a File Reference number is updated in Practice Management and the number is available for use by Legal Accounting, it will be synced. If it is not available, the sync will result in an error.
If a File Reference number is removed from Practice Management and you save your changes, it will result in a sync error.