Financially Legal

Originally published on law.com by Cassandre Coyer

Confido Legal: Embedded Finance for Legal 

In industries like retail, software developers have great tools to embed payments into their applications. These engineers create powerful, seamless payments experiences for consumers and the businesses from which they buy. But things aren’t quite so seamless for law firms. Law firms have specific financial needs: 

• Multiple bank accounts
• High dollar transactions
• A variety of payment methods; and 
• Strict rules of professional conduct that govern how money is handled 

These idiosyncrasies prevent legal technology engineers from using best-in-class embedded payments tools. That’s where we come in.  

Recently, Confido Legal teamed up with CPA Academy to host an informative webinar on optimizing accounts receivable and collections processes for law firms. This session provided practical strategies and tools to improve collection rates and streamline cash flow. With a focus on the Collections Optimizer, participants explored various billing models and table stakes items that contribute to enhanced collection rates. In this blog post, we'll delve into the highlights from the webinar and uncover the valuable insights shared.

We are excited to announce that Confido Legal has teamed up with QuickBooks, the leading small business accounting platform, by formally joining the QuickBooks Solution Provider Program. In combination with Confido Legal’s QuickBooks integration - the only legal-specific payments integration in the QuickBooks store - Confido Legal and QuickBooks are truly better together.

Today we spent some time testing the new plugins feature for ChatGPT. Specifically, we took a look at the Zapier plugin, which allows you to connect thousands of apps and their Zapier Actions to ChatGPT. Of course, we used the Confido Legal Zapier Actions as our test case. 

Confido Legal is thrilled to announce the launch of Confido Legal "Fast Transfers." Efficient payment processing is essential for modern law firms to maintain financial stability and to continue providing exceptional services to their clients. That's why we've designed Fast Transfers to streamline your payment process and get your money quicker.

For law firms looking to automate firm-specific processes, customize workflows and provide a highly tailored client experience, Litify is the platform. Built on Salesforce, Litify combines the flexibility of the cloud’s most powerful CRM with a dynamic, legal-specific toolbox to transform your firm into an efficient, collaborative growth machine. 

We believe lawyers and law firms have the power to change the world. Every day we interact with lawyers making positive change, sticking up for the underdog and expanding access to the justice system. But we recognize there can be tradeoffs between pursuing these aims and paying the bills. 

Vetting, deploying, and managing new technology takes a lot of time and can be expensive. More to the point, while much of today’s cloud computing technology uses some common technologies, the implementation can vary significantly even in the cloud. This can be a real headache for law firms who not only often deal with sensitive information but have specific rules and heightened standards regarding how confidential and privileged information must be protected. 

Confido Legal's Dan Lear will present at the upcoming BEDLAM conference on August 26th at 9 AM PDT. The BEDLAM conference is put on by four legal marketing agencies and is packed with useful tools and tricks for firms to "help separate growth-minded firms from the pack."

On Monday August 23rd Confido Legal will give a presentation on subscription legal services as a part of their broader half-day program: "Making your Legal Practice More Efficient in 2021: Outsourcing, legal subscriptions, modern project management, and the Agile Methodology"

Small law firms live or die by cash flow. A few extra percentage points on revenue can help a firm make payroll or pay rent (hopefully not, but “gulp!”), buy software, hire, experiment with a new practice area, or even innovate on a new product or service. But extra revenue rarely comes easy. What if you had a way—using existing systems—to immediately find additional revenue for your law firm?

Confido Legal's Dan Lear joined Jordan Ostroff from LegalEase Marketing on FaceBook live to discuss how law firms can improve money management and accelerate growth. You can catch the recording here.

I recently joined another attorney Dan, Dan Jaffe, from LawLytics for a great conversation that, yes, touched on Confido Legal and on Dan's business, LawLytics, but was mostly focused on a favorite topic of mine, legal technology. On the Confido Legal side we covered Confido Legal's credit card fee shifting technology and integrated ACH features, the Confido Legal Zapier integration, and the forthcoming Confido Legal Quickbooks integration. 

I’ve been working in legal technology for a while. I’ve been thinking about it for even longer than that. And I worked at Microsoft before that. And, if there’s one thing that I know about lawyers - even today - it’s that Lawyers. Love. Microsoft Office. Practice management systems come and go, accounting software ebbs and flows, some lawyers try document automation. But just about every lawyer and law firm uses Office.

Subscriptions were the name of the game when Dan Lear recently chatted with Houston Estate Planning attorney John Strohmeyer, the namesake of Strohmeyer Law, on John's podcast, Five Star Counsel.

Allison Williams, the Law Firm Mentor, helps law firms grow and reach their full potential. Her podcast, Crushing Chaos, tackles all sorts of issues lawyers face while working to grow their firms. 

Many lawyers have no problem billing by the hour until it comes to initial consultations. Then things get complicated really quickly.

Ernie “the Attorney” Svenson has been thinking about law, tech, and making law practices work better for lawyers for a long time. So, we were stoked when he invited our own Dan Lear to be a guest on his Law Firm Autopilot podcast.

The occasion was the recent release of Confido Legal’s subscription legal services white paper and the topic was . . . wait for it . . . subscription legal services.

Dan and Ernie talked about subscription fatigue (fact or fiction?), the importance of a solid value proposition for subscription legal services, how to get started with subscription legal services, how subscriptions can allow you to leverage your highest and best use as an attorney, the economics of law firm subscriptions and how that’s related to niche marketing, and how Confido Legal is different from LawPay.

Check out the episode here and a big thanks to Ernie for the invitation!

Many law firms use QuickBooks as their accounting solution. Some firms even use QuickBooks to send invoices. But QuickBooks as a complete time-keeping and billing solution?

Have you ever been caught in the middle of a case with no idea what your client is thinking? Take this opportunity to get inside the mind of a CEO who's been there.

In this virtual event, Diana Siri Breaux, partner at Summit Law Group in Seattle, interviews CEO Dan Price of Gravity Payments to uncover the answers to these and many other questions:

This September I had the pleasure of speaking to the innovative lawyers, mediators and greater dispute resolution community members at the American Bar Association's Dispute Resolution Tech Expo. 

In times like these we tend to turn to philosophers, poets, musicians, writers and artists for comfort and direction - wise minds that always have an answer for the trickiest of situations and the most uncertain of times. More specifically, Bob Dylan's "The Time They Are A-Changin'" seems more relevant now than ever.

Your old road is rapidly agin'

Please get out of the new one

If you can't lend your hand

For the times they are a-changin'

We at Confido Legal, while in full support of racial equity and civil rights, have taken a moment to reflect on what we could do to make a meaningful impact. We feel that stating our support accomplishes far less than action. Epictetus stated, "Don't explain your philosophy. Embody it." 

Dan Lear was recently interviewed by Mark Homer of legal marketing firm GNGF. Dan and Mark dove into many different topics including: 

• Company culture
• A $70,000 minimum wage
• The Confido Legal platform
• Law firm finance
• Alternative fee structures
• Expectations of the modern consumer of legal services

Starting back on March 23, RJon Robins of How To Manage a Small Law Firm held a series of free daily phone conversations with lawyers  in response to the coronavirus/COVID-19 pandemic. RJon was his typically direct but his message was hopeful: there is opportunity out there for lawyers and law firms .

In this episode of Clio Matters, Dan discusses different ways firms are navigating the new remote work environment. He lists helpful technology resources and tells us whose ideas he's leaning on amidst the chaos (Nate Silver and RJon Robins of How to Manage a Small Law Firm to name a few).