AbacusLaw
Review of AbacusLaw Software: system overview, features, price and cost information. Get free demos and compare to similar programs.
Overview
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Customer Reviews
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Pejman M.
Verified UserLegal Services · Self-Employed
Don’t do it!
Abacus was rude, unprofessional and essentially waste of time and money.
Salesmen sale you the idea and software and make promises that never gets delivered
- It does not work properly, ever
- Why spend money on these guys who cannot even help you properly and read off the script
Assly S.
Verified UserLaw Practice · 2-10 employees
This Saved My Business
Verified reviewer
- As a small law firm you would think that software and a private cloud are luxuries reserved only for "big" firms but you are wrong
- To be efficient, organized, avoid malpractice, and spend more time billing and less time on admin, a small firm needs legal software like AbacusLaw
- When I wanted to add staff, the Abacus Private Cloud let all of my team utilize the AbacusLaw software with ease, from home and from other states where I am also licensed
- And when COVID-19 hit, it was the AbacusLaw software and the Abacus Private Cloud that let us continue work uninterrupted, serving clients and not having to lay off a single person
- I wish there was a way to keep two separate books of business in AbacusLaw's accounting software since many small law firms are not "traditional" firms but several separate solo practitioners working together but with different accounting
- The only "bad" part about having such a versatile and essential piece of software is on the occasion where it isn't working life seems to end
- It has become indispensable
- If that is a "con" that would be the biggest one
Switched From
Credenza reached end of life and was bought by AbacusLaw's parent company. I had to switch and I was worried but the switch was worth it and all my data migrated over.
Why they chose it
"I have worked with all four of those before when working with other attorneys. None were as versatile as AbacusLaw. Some had serious bugs in trust accounting. Others had horrible customer service and some had interfaces that were not user friendly. Then there was the price on some of the better ones. Finally none of them had the other software, security, and support I needed to grow my business."
Lori T.
Verified UserLaw Practice · 2-10 employees
Excellent!
Great experience with Abacus, keeps our calendar flowing efficiently and easily!
- Abacus is extremely user friendly and easy to navigate
- Customer service is friendly and efficient
My overall experience has been positive, so I dont have anything negative to say about Abacus
Marie M.
Verified UserLaw Practice · 2-10 employees
All the Bells and Whistles
I have been an AbacusLaw users since I opened my own firm in 2006. I have used the software and switched to APC. I went briefly with a competitor for four months because of the cost difference and learned quickly: you get what you pay for. I promptly switched back to Abacus and determined that the APC was worth it.
The ease of use, the triple reconciliation feature, and the linking items to client matters
- I wish the calendar syncing feature with Google calendar/Outlook was easier and not manually required
- I also wish the price point was lower for small firms
- It's just me and a paralegal
Switched From
I switched from Abacuslaw Gold to Clio to have the remote work feature. I switched to APC from Clio after four months because I missed the easier Triple Reconciliation, the calendaring and billing feature, and the document storage features that were either not available in Clio or not as developed and easy to use as they were in Abacus.
Why they chose it
"See above."
Victoria S.
Verified UserLaw Practice · 2-10 employees
Good Program that was customizable
It was decent program but I feel there was other programs that had better benefits. I’m not sure if it’s improved but the customer service was an issue for us.
I loved that we can customize templates and that we could set up the files as we liked
- I didn’t like that we had a difficult time getting into our system if their system was down
- It was also difficult to get in touch with support
Grayson C.
Verified UserLaw Practice · 11-50 employees
Mixed Bag
It's a mixed bag. It could be great software if the people who developed it had real experience using it in a practical environment. And if they spent more time testing stuff to make sure it worked. And if their tech support people were more helpful and less evasive.
- Part of what attracted us to this software was that it advertised that it allowed us to integrate WordPerfect forms that we already had into the document preparation feature
- We also like the group calendar that allows us to color-code each attorney making it easy to determine who is where
- They also did a fairly decent job of integrating old data from a previous practice management software to allow more thorough conflict checking
- The interface for most things is reasonably intuitive
- It has features that can make it a good all-around practice management program if you use all of them
- Technical support is sad
- So many of the people we get have no idea what the problems are or why the program is doing something it should not be
- Correcting an error often becomes a lengthy boondoggle that takes ridiculous amounts of time
- Features that they promise are part of the software are often not fully or properly functional, or the support staff seems to have no idea how they actually work
- When trying to work with WordPerfect integration, for example, they did not seem to have any tech support personnel who actually knew how to use the program or how it was supposed to integrate and could not answer questions about it, so we were on our own
- It does integrate, for the most part, but some things we try to ask about they just don't know an answer for
- They promised us integration with LawPay and then backed out instead pushing a program they had developed to take payments
- After seeing how they have been with other features, I don't want them to experiment on me and my clients with some "new" software they have halfway developed
- We sometimes found that we knew more about the program than some of the tech support folks we were on calls with, and quite frequently we never receive explanations for why something was not working right, even though we WANT to know so we can avoid the issue in the future
- I suspect sometimes it's a bug on their end that they do not want to confess to
- It also does not double-check deletions and changes-leading to lost data
Switched From
Moving to a new firm that already had Abacus and wanted to integrate
Why they chose it
"Basically, the group calendar and WordPerfect integration - ProLaw was moving away from WordPerfect support and we already had a substantial number of documents and preferred this software."
Joseph T.
Verified UserLaw Practice · 2-10 employees
Stay away from anything having to do with Abacuslaw or Abacus Private Cloud
AbacusLaw and Abacus Private Cloud, which is AbacusLaw on a shared cloud, break down all the time. It was as though the company let monkeys into their server room at night because, while an issue may be fixed one day, it or another, or multiple other issues would pop up the next morning. I can't tell you how many times abacus simply went down right when I needed it most - in the middle of a murder trial for instance! The entire system would crash for days. Yes, the support staff was great but their management and the product itself may as well be the result of demons hellbent on destroying anything productive that you mean to do in your business.
- I needed a solution so I could link emails to certain case files
- Also, the fact that all attorneys could access any other person's notes on a case was attractive
- The software looks and feels like it is straight out of 2002, if not right after Microsoft went WYSIWYG
- It's about as clunky as software was in the early 00's as well although it probably isn't as efficient as software was back then
Why they chose it
"AbacusLaw is closely related to Abacus Private Cloud. I could have just used AbacusLaw on the individual nodes at work but the sales rep oversold me on Abacus Private Cloud instead which is a lot more costly. When I called him out on it, he tried to get me to sign up to buy even more products! When I refused to pay my monthly fee because the system kept breaking down, then they held not only all of my exchange data hostage, but also my Microsoft exchange account! Again, stay away from anything having to do with Abacus if you value your business."
Mary D.
Verified UserLaw Practice · 2-10 employees
Thought it would be better
I really thought Abacus was a better product than it has turned out to be. It can't do basic things that an accounting system can do. It's a so-so product.
- I liked that it could integrate with our business systems as they are
- The add-ins do not work consistently and have more cons than pros
- The reporting is not very good and making deposits that are not client checks makes no sense
- The system is good for basic legal clients, but anything more complex and there's issues
- You can't just double click on a number in a report to get more information on it like many other software programs
- If you print a check, you can't change anything about it with an edit; you have to delete the entire thing to make small changes
- There is also no way to track time reductions truly
- Entering time takes forever because you have to go into each matter separately and enter your time instead of a large platform to enter time for each matter on one sheet
- Editing bills takes so much longer than it should because of how it has to be done
Switched From
The software was never setup right from the beginning and it had been too long running it at about 25% of what it was worth.
Why they chose it
"I thought it was the best product for it's money at the time."
Samuel F.
Verified UserLaw Practice · 2-10 employees
Abacus Can Help
Verified reviewer
- We have used Abacus since 2010, so 10 years
- Abacus helped us to automate law billing
- The program also features an excellent data base for notes as well as emails per client
- It is fast in terms of locating electronic documents
- Its technical support is also helpful
- The biggest feature to improve would be Abacus message slips
- I have been trying for over a year to fix the app's propensity to suddenly disappear and then, days later, inform me of the number of messages I have received
- BIlling software can be improved dramatically to make it more user friendly
Switched From
2010
Why they chose it
"The other programs were cloud based and the effort to retool to one of those seemed to be way too expensive. In addition, I particularly like the data based system Abacus offers, which categorizes documents, emails to and from clients per matter. Neither Clio or Practice Panther offered this feature."
David S.
Verified UserDo not buy AbacusLaw Case Management Software
Abacus is a disappointment and I strongly recommend against using it. The support blames its customer and Microsoft Abacus' failures. Our program crashes constantly and the supposed case management and document management features are too complicated to use. The phone calendar and contact updates no longer work, which was a major purchase consideration when we purchased Abacus. Now the company will not support its outdated system and is using its failure to extort upgrades from its long-term customers. We started using Abacus over five years ago and experienced many headaches thought that term. Now the system constantly crashes. As an example, for the past week or so we have not been able to add new client contacts or calendar events. Imagine trying to run a law office and you cannot open a file or put an event on the calendar. Abacus support was rude and cavalier about our problems and tried to put the blame on Microsoft Windows 10 and blamed our office for deleting something on our computer -- an utter impossibility. I cannot strongly impress upon anyone considering teaming up with Abacus my disappointment and hope you will steer clear of AbacusLaw.
- The company seems to have abandoned us
- We purchased AbacusLaw five years ago and now the program keeps crashing and the rude support personnel blame us for using an outdated version which Abacus says it is trying to faze out an no longer support
- We bought the program because it offered case management and document management capabilities, and automatically updated contacts and calendar on the phone
- Over the years, we constantly needed to contact support because the calendar and contact update functionality constantly broke down
- Now the software crashes all of the time
- I could not enter new clients nor could I make calendar entries for the past five (5) days
- I called support and they complained that Abacus no longer wants to support this version and claimed my staff must have "deleted something" -- which is an impossibility
- and the support blames Microsoft updates
- We are beyond frustrated with Abacus
- The program is so poorly designed there is no way to utilize many of the features it claims to have
- Frankly we gave up on linking documents, producing case management reports, etc
- because the software is too complicated to understand
- Abacus now wants to up-sell us on its new software products and the pricing could not be more noncompetitive
- I sincerely discourage anyone from using Abacus Law and this is the advice from a long term user who gave Abacus an honest and fair chance
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