When Rocket Matter launched in 2008 as one of the first cloud-based law practice management platforms, it was targeted at solo and small firms. While those firms remain an important segment of its customer base, it has, over the intervening years, seen greater adoption by larger firms as they have moved to the cloud — a trend the pandemic even further accelerated.
Those mid- and large-sized firms often have more sophisticated billing requirements than are currently available in many cloud practice management platforms, according to Rocket Matter founder and CEO Larry Port. To meet those requirements, Rocket Matter is today introducing its Premier subscription tier, which adds a number of billing features designed for firms with higher volumes of matters, such as insurance defense firms.
Today’s release also includes enhancements to Rocket Matter’s core billing functionality.
With this new release, Rocket Matter now has three pricing tiers: $39 per user per month for Essentials, $69 for Pro, and $99 for Premier. Those who purchase Pro or Premier subscriptions for a full year receive a discount of $10 per month off those prices.
Also, subscriptions to Premier include a subscription to ImagineShare, a suite of document utilities, originally designed for accounting firms, that includes document storage, electronic signature capabilities and secure file sharing, as well as the ability to send documents for signature directly from Outlook.
(ImagineShare is owned by ProfitSolv, the company that acquired Rocket Matter last year, and that earlier this year acquired Tabs3 Software.)
Customizable Billing Rules
Last week, Port gave me a preview of the features of the new Premier subscription tier. Among them is the ability of law firms to set customizable billing rules.
Admin-level permissioning customizes use of LEDE codes.
With this feature, law firms can define custom rules on a client-by-client basis to make sure that timekeepers adhere to specific billing requirements. (The featured image at the top of this post shows the UTBMS codes being used to track time while working in Microsoft Word.)
As lawyers enter time, Rocket Matter will audit their entries to ensure that they do not violate those billing rules. If they do, it will prevent the entry from being logged and will provide an appropriate error message.
The system audits billing entries to prevent rules violations.
Port said that this functionality is game-changing for insurance defense firms, which routinely see 20 to 30 percent of their invoices rejected by clients for violations of billing rules.
Prebill Review
Another feature is paperless review of prebills. This feature allows law firms to move work-in-progress billables into a prebill status for review and auditing prior to invoicing.
Firm-wide permissioning allows administrators to restrict access to any activities that have been moved into the prebill status, so matters can be locked down during the billing process. In prebill status, timekeepers can comment on activities and tag others in the firm, so there is no need to print prebills for review.
Premier allows firms to set up automated billing cycles, so they can schedule prebills to be generated automatically on a selected frequency. Users will receive email notifications listing all auto-generated prebills.
With ImagineShare, users can send documents for signature from within Outlook.
The Premier tier also provides advanced e-signature options, including the ability to send documents for signature directly from Rocket Matter or, via ImagineShare, from directly within Outlook.
Other Enhancements
In addition to the new Premier features, Rocket Matter says it has also made improvements to the flagship product’s core billing functionality, including:
- Performance enhancements to increase Rocket Matter’s speed and responsiveness.
- Discounts can now be added on the fly at the time of invoice creation and can include family and fixed amount options (Pro tier only).
- The batch-billing engine now allows filtering by all fee and expense types.
- Users can mark an activity up or down before invoicing.
- Mark-ups and mark-downs are tracked and can be reported on.
- Users can place hard costs, soft costs or fees on hold to keep them from being pulled into an invoice.
“With the addition of the functionality included in the new Premier tier, Rocket Matter is now an ideal application for firms with highly demanding billing needs, like Insurance Defense firms,” said Larry Port, CEO of Rocket Matter. “In our COVID and post-COVID world, cloud-based legal billing software can’t be just for small law firms anymore. We want to make sure that mid and large-size law firms have good options as well.”
