Educated Attorney Software Review: Rocket Matter

January 7, 2013

Rocket Matter is a web based (cloud) firm management solution. They focus on calendar, client, cases, time entry, tasks and document organization as well as billing options. Since it is a cloud based product you have the ability to access your firm data from anywhere, on any device, at any time. For the Rocket Matter service they charge $59.99/month for the first user, and $49.99/month for users 2 – 6. They give special pricing reduction for larger commitments such as paying quarterly, annually, and bi-annually. In terms of a comparison, Rocket Matter is the most expensive against MyCase, Total Attorneys & Clio. It gets to be a bit cheaper than Clio if you pay bi-annually so keep that in mind.

Once you sign up, an email is sent to you from a Rocket Matter team member and a personal training session is scheduled. I have heard stories of the scheduling being a bit flaky so if your interested in some training, I would give them a call and make SURE you have an appointment. Also make sure someone will be there to train you at your specific organized time. When you are able to get training it is excellent. Because it’s a personalized training session with a live person, it’s easy to focus on the functionality and features. It also makes it easy to skip features that you probably won’t be using.

Rocket Matter is operated through a web browser and offers a number of security features. All communications between your browser and Rocket Matter run over 128-bit encryption. They also utilize data isolation which means that your firm data is never stored within the same table as another firm. In addition to that, your data is backed up continuously throughout the day and then replicated across server farms for maximum data redundancy.

Rocket Matter has a very attractive user interface and is the most intuitive of all the cloud based practice management software that we have reviewed. At the top of the screen there is a search bar. As you enter in a contact or matter, results appear on the fly as you type which makes searching very fast and one of their main selling points. Your calendar events appear below the search bar, and your tasks appear beneath the calendar. Along the right column you have the option to view your firm calendar, tasks, add or open matters, view or add contacts, and add documents. In the upper right hand corner it prominently displays how much you’ve billed that day, week, or month making it easy to set goals.

It’s clear that they’ve put a lot of thought into the billing portion of the software. In general, it’s incredibly easy to capture billable entries directly from your calendar or task list. If you click on a calendar entry, it opens that entry up to provide the details of the event. From here you can edit the entry, add attendees, and mark the matter as billable. Pending tasks can also be directly billed. A green dollar sign appears to the right of each task entry. When you click on the dollar sign you can then enter in the time spent on an individual project and then easily send it to billing. Rocket Matter makes it easy to bill from each portion of the software may it be tasks, matters or calendars. Any green-highlighted box you encounter in Rocket Matter can be sent directly to your billing.

Rocket Matter allows for 2 way syncing with your Google Calendar. Unfortunately you cannot sync your contacts from Google to Rocket Matter, but they do provide simple instructions for exporting those contacts through Gmail or Outlook and then importing them manually. Pending invoicing appears in green in the bottom right corner of the screen. From there you can access your billing dashboard and easily prepare automated invoices.

Rocket Matter offers excellent document storage with unlimited storage space. Adding documents to a matter is incredibly easy. You just drag and drop as many documents as you’d like into a matter at a time. There is a small limitation to the document storage system as you are not able to upload pictures, videos and audio files. This is a biggie for me because often a case calls for these types of files to be saved as part of a matter. You can just as easily save these files to your desktop or a folder on your PC, but if you do that, you can’t access them from other locations or your mobile device. The best option would be to setup a matter within dropbox and use the applications together. Dropbox has a mobile app, this way you can see all your firm info from anywhere at anytime. Rocket Matter offers document integration with both Evernote and Dropbox. At first it may be hard to integrate these features, my advice is to call support. Once you are in a matter, you can add an Evernote notebook to that matter. Then type in the name of the notebook you want to associate with that account.

Rocket Matter offers automated document assembly. In addition to the pre-made fields in Rocket Matter, you can create custom fields for the document assembly feature so that you don’t have to manually change as many fields.

Finally, Rocket Matter supports a plethora of mobile devices. It works with iPhone/iPad, Palm Pre, Windows Mobile, Android, and modern Blackberries. The only issue I have is that to support all these devices means that they have a mobile version of their web app which is NEVER as good as an app that you download. They need a real app.

Final Thoughts…

Rocket Matter is another great option for attorneys who want to track their time and firm data from anywhere at any time. It’s attractive, intuitive, and easy to use. In terms of capturing billable time entries it is the most flexible of all other applications reviewed but it is also the most expensive. I also do not like the idea that you rely on a web app and not a true app for mobile devices. This is great for desktops but falls short on the mobile device front. Rocket Matter offers convenient integration popular applications like Google Apps, Evernote, and Dropbox. They don’t provide direct integration with Quickbooks, but they do provide easy instructions for sharing data with Quickbooks which is a plus. For more information, give them a call, (888) 432-1529.