Speaker 1: Welcome to How It Works, a video series from LawSites in which you get to see hands-on demonstrations of legal tech products directly from the developer. I'm Bob Ambrogi, and today's featured product is MyCase, legal practice management software that helps law firms run efficiently from anywhere. Joining me to tell us about MyCase and demonstrate some of its features today is Kathleen Swallow, Senior Director of Product Management. Kathleen, welcome to How It Works. Thanks, Bob.

Speaker 2: So tell us a little bit about MyCase. Yeah, so MyCase was founded in 2010, and it really exists to serve the mission of helping law firms with technology they love. And we love law firms at MyCase. We truly believe that technology can help them acquire more business, operate more efficiently, and ultimately improve their firm. And so we help our customers to manage the client lifecycle, whether it's in taking prospective clients, managing casework, or paying their invoices. And it's really important to us that our software is easy to learn and easy to use. And so we spend a lot of time with law firms just really understanding their needs so that we can build technology that ultimately allows them to drive the results they are seeking for their clients. I'm excited to be here today to talk more.

Speaker 1: Well, I know you can't show us everything that MyCase does, but I know you're going to show us a few highlights today. So why don't you show us how it works? Let's get started.

Speaker 2: Awesome. Thanks, Bob. So this is our prospective client management tool. This allows firms to help manage their prospective clients and really understand where they're at in the process. The firm can customize their different status fields up here, and then they're actually able to go in and manage their clients. Today, I'm going to be highlighting e-signature. So one of the things that has really helped law firms as they've worked from home is this ability to collect signatures from their prospective clients or clients. And so we'll go in. I'll actually show you how to get a document signed. So you'll be able to add an e-signature from template. So the firm can actually come in here. We've heard from a lot of firms that their documents are pretty templatized. And so they can create a template that then can be signed for e-signature where the template actually pulls over information that they've collected on the prospective client. We'll come in. We will add retainer agreement. We can name the document if we want to change it. And then we can pick which people need to sign this document. So it could be multiple clients if there's more than one. You could also set a counter signature if you need someone from the firm to sign it. And then you can choose whether they type or draw their signature. When I hit preview, you'll be able to see it actually starts to pull over information regarding that client or prospective client. And so we can come in here and sign this to a specific client if there's more than one. And that will start to pull over information. We can also put in our own values. So if there's information that changes from client to client or engagement to engagement, they can type that information in themselves. And you'll see here it starts to pull over information and who needs to sign it. All of this is set up in advance. So there's very limited information that they have to rekey and just helps to create a quick and easy document that can be signed. I'll go ahead and save this and we'll continue on. You can customize an email, ask them or provide any information that you want them to see when they get that signature request

Speaker 1: to their email and send it away. And so you're able to track those prospects all the way from the time they become a lead to when they become a client and automate some of those processes

Speaker 2: around that, right? Exactly. Yep. And we'll actually show how that information carries over to if that client converts, it carries over to a case. So you see here we track the status of the e-signature. So it allows you to know that it's pending. And then that prospective client would get an email to go and view and sign the document. Once they sign in, if there's any counter signatures or additional signatures required from other parties, it will go to them. And then all of the signers will receive a copy and then a copy, a final copy will be saved in my case. So now that Frank Davis has signed his agreement, we can go ahead and convert his potential client status to a case. And so again, this just allows you to capture any details that haven't been entered in, customize any information, key in any new information, define how you wish to bill him, associate any staff with a case that need to be attached. And then we'll go ahead and save and finish that. And you'll see the information starts to carry over. So as you're building out this record, the nice thing is, is I don't have to rekey in any of that information. I can simply convert it and start to track how my firm is converting prospective clients to new clients. Not having to rekey data is critical. Yes. We hear that that is a pain. So then once Frank Davis is an actual client, one of the nice things that we've added is this ability to text message. So we heard from law firms that they were having to use their personal cell phones or third party solutions to communicate with their clients. And so they were sending text messages on their personal phones, getting text back at all hours of the night, and they really wanted a way to streamline their communications. So we build out this text messaging functionality to really allow them to continue to communicate with clients in the way that they wanted to be communicated with, but avoid having to give their cell phone numbers. So we actually provide a firm number. They can save that firm number to their device, the client can, and be able to communicate with the firm. Any messages that the client sends, you'll see here, they'll pop back up. Anyone in the firm can view them. So the nice thing is, rather than this going to my personal phone, it goes to my case. And now everyone in the firm can see what is happening with that client rather than that information just living on one person's phone. And then if I wanted to communicate back with a client, I could simply type my message

Speaker 1: and that client would receive it. What happens to all that text messaging? Is that stored somewhere?

Speaker 2: Yeah, so you'll see the string here. As you text, it just kind of continues to build it out. And then you'll also see we tie it to the case. So if I were to navigate to that case, I'll see a record of the communication there as well. So it just gives context when you're working the case to understand what's been communicated about, if there's anything left on standing or anything that's been shared, that will show there as well.

Speaker 1: And are you able to automate any of that texting? I mean, if I want to send out an appointment reminder, say, or an invoice reminder or something like that,

Speaker 2: can I do that? Yeah, we have a couple different automated ways to send reminders. One of them is reminders for paying invoices. And then there's also some automated functionality around event reminders. So if they have an event coming up, they can choose to send a text confirmation of that. Great. One other communication tool we implemented was the ability to chat. So this is a great tool for the firm to be able to communicate with one another about specific cases or even just general firm-wide communications. You're able to create channels. They can either be generic firm channels that allow you to just set a channel topic, or you can actually tie them to a case. And so you'll see here, this is considered on the record, and a history of this will be associated to the specific case you're chatting about. So anytime the firm communicates, I can communicate with other firm members. That's going to show here as well. And then I could also direct message different members of my firm. So if they are wanting to communicate about a specific topic, maybe they're busy or in a meeting, I can send them a chat and they can respond to it when they're available.

Speaker 1: And if I'm chatting about a case, that's also saved to the case?

Speaker 2: Yep. If you've associated with a case, it will go on the record. And then when I view that case,

Speaker 1: it will show there as well. Okay. So that's kind of comparable to a Slack or something like that. Yeah, similar, very similar concept.

Speaker 2: Awesome. And so the last thing I want to pop into is just a lot of enhancements we've made around billing. And so we'll go into a case here. So one of the things we've added is the ability to add payment plans. We've heard that getting clients to pay can be really challenging, and that there's many different ways that they wish to pay the firm. So we've added a couple of different new payment methods. One of them is a payment plan. And so this allows you to take the balance due on a specific invoice and split it over a set number of payments. You can define these however you want. Maybe it's a specified amount until the balance is paid. Or if you want to have a specified interval, weekly, monthly, quarterly, you can also assign that. You can either allow the client to go in and pay these balances down themselves, or alternatively, you can actually associate their credit card so that it just automatically charges the card on file. We've also added subscription billing, which is a little bit of a different flavor on payment plans, where you can say, I want to charge my client $500 for a specified timeline. So maybe it's 12 months. And what that does is it actually just charges them $500 a month until you decide to end that

Speaker 1: payment. So that's great for attorneys who have a retainer agreement or a standing retainer agreement with a client. Exactly. Or even a subscription client. Yeah.

Speaker 2: Yeah, we're seeing that be a more frequent way of billing versus kind of working off of hourly. Awesome. And then one last thing I want to share today is just this ability to pay now. So we've heard that a lot of firms don't want to have any friction between getting paid. And so sometimes our clients are ready to pay now. They don't want to look for their invoice. They don't want to go find it in their inbox. They're ready to make payment, and they just need a way to do it. And so one of the things that we can do is, you'll see here, this is a My Case website. We can pretend this is for Gray Law Group. If the client was to navigate to their site, they could simply click the Pay Now button. And what that's going to do is open up a branded link. We call this our universal payment link. It actually allows the client to enter in their information, the amount they wish to pay, their email address, and then the reason for payment. So if it's tied to a specific invoice or a retainer, they can indicate that there. They can enter in their credit card details and then hit the Make Payment button. And what that does is it actually sends this information to the firm. And we'll have this reconciliation tab that actually allows them to come in and say, oh, look, I got paid $111. Let me reconcile that to a specific invoice or retainer request. And so they can do that in the background rather than having the client have to do that front leg work. And so this just helps our customers get paid much more quickly, reduces the friction that they see, and really helps them to ensure that they're getting paid in a timely manner. Is there any control over whether that

Speaker 1: payment goes into the trust account or the operating account?

Speaker 2: Great question, Bob. It actually automatically goes into the trust because obviously we don't want them to be commingling funds. And so we put some safeguards in there and it automatically deposits into the trust and then the firm can decide kind of how to allocate that appropriately.

Speaker 1: Yeah. And how do you handle credit card charges associated with payments into a trust account?

Speaker 2: So we always keep those separate. Any fees that we charge for processing credit card payments come out of the operating. Great. Yeah, that's really handy. That's great.

Speaker 1: Yeah. All right. Well, that's really, really informative. Thanks for showing us a little bit about how my case works. That's it for today's episode. Thanks to Kathleen Swallow for joining us. You can find out more about my case, of course, at MyCase.com. And you can find the full series of our how it works videos at LawSitesBlog.com or on YouTube by searching for Law Sites How It Works. This is Bob Ambrogi. Thanks for joining us.