SmartAdvocate

SmartAdvocate is incredibly easy to use, even for software/computer challenged users. It has more features, reports and capability than the other popular personal injury case management software I looked at. Additionally, it interfaces with a lot of other third-party software such as Microsoft Office365. There isn't any information about a personal injury case that you can't enter into the database. More importantly, there are just as many merge codes so any information can be merged into a template document. The document generating system using template documents is beautifully designed. Creating template documents is extremely easy because it's so easy to use the merge code wizard and saving a newly created template document is done in seconds by naming the document and clicking on three drop-down windows. SmartAdvocate was designed by a very large personal injury firm to be used by large firms handling both mass tort and general personal injury cases but it can be used by a solo practice. I have one partner with no paralegals, secretaries or other employees. If we didn't use SmartAdvocate, we would need three employees. SmartAdvocate has 7 programmers which lets them make constant improvements instead of just once a year. I submitted many suggestions to SmartAdvocate which were implemented very quickly. The company I previously used also implemented my suggestions but with only one programmer, it took a year before I saw them. SmartAdvocate's service has been first-rate.

The worst part about using SmartAdvocate is that it doesn't cook dinner. There really is no worst part. One of the other reviews complained about the lack of a cloud option. I can't say that's not a valid point but I'm sure they'll have that soon. Purchasing a server wasn't really a big deal for me. I was able to avoid purchasing an email server by signing up with Microsoft cloud enterprise email, Office365 for only a few dollars. When I first purchased SmartAdvocate in 2014, it didn't work with Office365 and they wanted me to purchase an email server. I asked them to get SmartAdvocate to work with Office365 and they accomplished that within one week. Another review mentioned the cost. It may cost more than other software but it does a lot more and that saves me a fortune. Before using SmartAdvocate, I tried another popular personal injury case management program but gave it up because they had a small selection of merge codes which created more work for me when generating template documents and limited the types of template documents I could create. I would have had to hire an employee. SmartAdvocate has every merge code you could possibly need. Another popular personal injury case management program I tried was so difficult to save a template document that I could not continue using it.

In short, SmartAdvocate is the most sophisticated personal injury case management software you will find but it is also easy to use. There is nothing that has to be done in a personal injury case that the software can't do. Although it's easy to use, my tip for new users is to start by using some of the features and gradually increasing your use of the software. For instance, start by learning how to create a new case and enter all of the information into the fields for the database. The next step should be to learn how to create template documents (which should really take only a few minutes to learn). Then learn how to use another of the major features, such as assigning tasks or running reports.