LawPay is essential to the Smith & Vinson Law Firm

BACKGROUND

The Smith & Vinson Law Firm is a criminal defense firm founded in Austin, Texas in 2016. They are 100 percent focused on criminal defense, representing individuals in cases involving DWI, domestic violence, assault, sex crimes, weapons charges, and other criminal justice matters. “Our mission is to do everything possible to help the client out,” said Brad Vinson, one of the founding partners at Smith & Vinson. “We want you to know that we’re here to fight for you, no matter what.”

ONLINE PAYMENTS FROM DAY ONE

Smith & Vinson knew from the very beginning that they wanted to accept online payments in their firm. For Jarrod Smith, founding partner at Smith & Vinson, LawPay was his first choice. “We actually started with LawPay. It was recommended by our state bar, and by other lawyers, as the best payment processor.” Brad Vinson did some research on online payment processors, but after reviewing several options that were available, the answer was clear. “We talked to our bank and a couple other banks about the services they offered. No one really compared to what LawPay was putting on the table.”

While the firm still accepts other forms of payments, LawPay’s online payments solution quickly became their clients’ preferred way to pay. Brad Vinson said that “probably 80 percent of the transactions that clients make with us come from LawPay.” Jarrod Smith concurred, “our clients love LawPay!”

PAYMENT FLEXIBILITY 

Smith & Vinson appreciated how LawPay allowed them to get a payment request out the door as soon as one came up. “In criminal defense, clients often want to pay you outside of their payment schedule,” said Brad Vinson. “We have requests at any given moment for a payment, and we want to be able to send one right away.” 

Jarrod Smith particularly liked how LawPay’s Quick Bill feature streamlined Smith & Vinson’s practice. “Quick Bill has been essential. It has made our practice more efficient, and it saves us time and money by being able to send out payments so quickly.”

KEEPING TRACK OF PAYMENTS

Another standout LawPay feature for Smith & Vinson is its robust reporting system. “Being able to quickly go in and see on a month-to-month basis how much money is coming in through LawPay is something we really like,” said Brad Vinson. “Also, being able to see more specific criteria, like picking a date range and seeing how much income had come in during that time period. We really like it.” Jarrod Smith echoed his partner’s praise of LawPay’s reporting features. “They allow me and my legal assistant to quickly see who has paid and who hasn’t.” In all, Smith & Vinson feel they couldn’t have made a better choice by going with LawPay. As Brad Vinson put it, “between the speed of doing a transaction, the fees associated with them, the ease of use—we felt comfortable that LawPay was the way to go.”

 

/by Amy Mann

New Infographic: Recent Trends in Legal Payments

Technology has revolutionized the way that businesses get paid, including professional services industries like the legal field.

Check out our new infographic below to learn about some of the payment challenges facing law firms today, and how modern payment trends could help provide solutions for these problems.

/by Amy Mann

Stephenville law firm adds 10% to their bottom line with LawPay

BACKGROUND 

Founded in 2004 in Stephenville, Texas, Fraser, Wilson & Bryan, P.C.is a full-service firm specializing in civil litigation, family law, and transactional law. Their firm is focused on serving residents and businesses located in Stephenville and its surrounding counties. “Our firm has deep ties to Stephenville,” said Kimberly Pack Wilson, founding partner at Fraser, Wilson & Bryan, P.C. “I was raised here. Amy Bryan and I went to Tarleton State University. It’s where we call home, and we want to make our home a better place.” 

A SIMPLE SWITCH

Kim Wilson recalls the day she discovered LawPay, and how quickly her team decided to hop on board. “I found LawPay at a booth at a CLE. We had a partners’ meeting, and it was an easy decision. Yes! Let’s sign up for LawPay!” Once the decision was made, making the switch turned out to be a breeze. Kim Wilson happily recounted, “incorporating LawPay into our practice was the easiest technology addition we have ever made!” 

Prior to LawPay, Fraser, Wilson & Bryan was using a payment solution that just wasn’t meeting their specific needs as a law firm. “When it comes to accepting credit card payments, they can’t be co-mingled with the charges coming from credit card services.” Thankfully, LawPay was built specifically to address this issue for law firms. “LawPay is able to make us ethically compliant in a very easy way. If you’re going to use a credit card system, you should be using a system that understands the business of law—and that’s LawPay.”

IMPROVING THEIR PRACTICE

Kim Wilson found that LawPay has made her firm’s daily operations simpler and more efficient. Their clients are able to pay much faster than if they used traditional methods. “Paying through LawPay is convenient for our clients. They don’t have to wait until we’re open, or stop by the office. They just go online and make their payment.” 

Since making the switch, more and more of Fraser, Wilson & Bryan’s clients have been making payments through LawPay. “About 40 percent of our payments are done online or over the phone through LawPay,” Kim Wilson noted. In fact, using LawPay has helped lead to increased profits for Fraser, Wilson, & Bryan. “We’ve had a 10 percent swing in our profit margin,” said Kim Wilson. “About 6 percent is attributable to more revenue and about 4 percent attributing to doing less work.”

LawPay’s location-flexibility is also valuable to Fraser, Wilson, & Bryan. When Kim Wilson travels for mediation services, she is able to take payments for her services right then and there, which has made the other lawyers turn their heads. “It always impresses the other lawyers that I’m able to take payments no matter where I am,” Kim Wilson said.

All in all, Fraser, Wilson, & Bryan couldn’t be happier that they discovered LawPay so many years ago. As Kim Wilson describes it, “LawPay helps us deliver customer service that exceeds their expectations. That’s what I need from legal technology—to make me look like a rockstar and a modern law firm. LawPay does that.”

 

/by Amy Mann

Investing in major technology upgrade Eversheds Sutherland (International) appoints iManage to provide a new DM

/by iManage

X1 Extends Strategic Partnership with Relativity by Integrating Social Media and Web Evidence Collections
into RelativityOne and Relativity Server Platforms

Company to also demo sampling and analysis pre-collection at LegalTech in New York City

(LOS ANGELES, Calif) – January 29, 2020 – X1™, the global leader in enterprise-class, distributed data
discovery and compliance software, today announced the addition of its industry-leading X1 Social
Discovery technology into the RelativityOne and Relativity server platforms. X1 is the only vendor to
support electronically stored information (ESI) collection from custodial data sources like laptops and
desktops and social media evidence directly into Relativity and RelativityOne.

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Jarred Correia shares the history, evolution, and powerful capabilities of HotDocs Advance, a document automation solution that allows users to create customized, error-free documentation in a fraction of the time.

/by Jacqui Palhegyi

Mutual Mobile is very proud to attend Legal Week for the first time and introduce ourselves to the legal tech community. 

Jessica Lowry is an Experience Director at Mutual Mobile and seasoned design thinking strategist with over a decade of experience helping clients and teams design the best solutions. She will be available at booth 421 in Rhinelander Hall outside the educational hall will be our booth with Mutual Mobile signage, handouts and a VR setup.

Jess will be delivering 20-min lightning talks on Tuesday and Thursday in LITE theatre on the 2nd level right outside of Rhinelander Hall.  

Design Thinking and the Law: Innovation and creative problem solving is everyone’s business. 

Tuesday, 1:00 pm 

 

Law Department Transformation 101: How to get started with process automation. 

Thursday, 1:30 pm

Learn more about Mutual Mobile by visiting our website www.mutualmobile.com

/by Mutual Mobile

New York, NY, Jan. 30, 2020  — Hanzo, the company known for its pioneering technology in dynamic web archiving for compliance and ediscovery, announced that Hanzo Hold has been named one of six finalists in the LegalLaunch: Product Innovation Competition at Legaltech during Legalweek 2020.

The competition brings together the best in legal technology, new products, and services (no older than twelve months) and gives Legaltech attendees a sneak peek of the future of legal technology.

Business communications have changed dramatically. Today, communications including chats, messages, comments, reactions, attachments, and a myriad of other data types associated with collaboration tools like Slack, have created new challenges for corporate legal teams. The data that these tools generate has barely any relationship to email, much less to the familiar world of paper.

Hanzo launched Hanzo Hold to solve these collaborative data management challenges. Hanzo Hold empowers organizations to apply a legal hold to enterprise Slack data and to adhere to data retention policies while meeting the duty to preserve and discover data for litigation and regulatory use cases.

As a collaboration tool becomes commonplace within an organization, even a small number of users can generate vast volumes of data. Hanzo has invested in its capability to scale ingestion for greater speed and resilience in the face of such data magnitude. Additionally, Hanzo works closely with the team at Slack, regularly evolving the solution to fully utilize the latest updates to Slack’s Discovery API.

Today, companies using Hanzo Hold for Slack can preserve precisely the data needed with targeted preservation, search and view messages in context to efficiently cull data volumes, and easily export data for further review. Hanzo Hold gives corporate legal teams more flexibility in scoping and greater control for a targeted approach to Slack data management.

“Hanzo is incredibly pleased to be recognized as a finalist in the LegalLaunch Product Innovation Competition,” said Brad Harris, VP of Product, Hanzo. “Collaboration applications have fundamentally changed the way we need to approach ediscovery and we’re addressing a critical market need in a truly innovative way with Hanzo Hold.”

Corporate ediscovery, governance and compliance teams looking to manage their collaboration data can see a presentation of Hanzo Hold on Wednesday 5 February 2020 at 2pm at the 2nd Floor Promenade, LITE Stage, New York Hilton Midtown, get a demo of Hanzo at the LegalLaunch kiosks near the LITE stage, visit Hanzo’s Booth #3227, or schedule a meeting here.

 

About Hanzo

Hanzo provides modern ediscovery and compliance software for enterprise organizations. Our solutions empower legal and compliance teams to efficiently manage the preservation, targeted collection, and review of dynamic content from enterprise collaboration applications, social media, and complex websites. Hanzo is SOC 2® Type 2 certified, demonstrating Hanzo’s commitment to data security and serves large corporations across the globe—giving them control, visibility, and context over their data to reduce cost and mitigate risk. Learn more at hanzo.co

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Integration gives firms the ability to automatically assemble error-free documents; demos in booth #220

SAN DIEGO, CA – JANUARY 30, 2020 – AbacusNext®, a leading technology provider for legal, accounting and compliance-focused professionals, today announced the company will be previewing the AbacusLaw and HotDocs integration at Legalweek New York taking place February 4-6. The integration provides firms with the ability to automatically assemble error-free documents using the client, calendar and case information already in the AbacusLaw system. Product experts will be showcasing and demoing this integration at booth #220, along with AbacusNext’s other legal products Amicus Attorney, Amicus Online, Abacus Private Cloud, and Abacus Payment Exchange.

Users of AbacusLaw with HotDocs will have the ability to complete entire documents with one click or start with the information already in AbacusLaw and enter more information using an interactive HotDocs interview. Firms using AbacusLaw with HotDocs have reported significant time savings, increased accuracy and reduction of costly, embarrassing and potentially license-threatening malpractice claims.

“We are excited to be able to bring a sneak peek of this integration to Legalweek,” states Scott Johnson, chief executive officer at AbacusNext. “We know that the integration between AbacusLaw and HotDocs is a game-changer for the way firms manage their documents, as it seamlessly combines the strengths of two of our flagship products. We can’t wait to showcase it to the attendees of this event.”

In addition, Tomas Suros, the global marketing director for AbacusNext’s legal products, will share trends, observations and practical advice in a workshop panel presentation titled “Preventing the Worst: A Deep Dive into Cloud Security.” The panel will be held in room #WB102 on Monday, February 3, from 12:30 to 2:30 as part of the full-day Workshop B – Cloud Systems. Suros will join security experts from NetDocuments, FTI Consulting and IBM on this panel.

For more information on Legalweek visit https://event.law.com/legalweek/300158.

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MINNEAPOLIS, January 27, 2020 – Setting the global standards for e-discovery, the Electronic Discovery Reference Model (EDRM) is pleased to announce its first hosted community gathering of e-discovery community professionals at the inaugural EDRM Jumpstart Legal Tech with HaystackID social reception on Monday, February 3, 2020, from 5:00 PM until 7:30 PM at Manhattan’s Ruth’s Chris Steak House. Hosted by the EDRM and sponsored by specialized e-discovery services provider HaystackID, the registration-required event is the preeminent place to meet and greet members of the EDRM and e-discovery community.

“This year’s inaugural EDRM Jumpstart Legal Tech with HaystackID social event is the perfect place to get an update on EDRM plans, projects and people,” shares Mary Mack, CEO and chief legal technologist of the EDRM. “As we begin our 2020 journey to empower the leaders of e-discovery through programs, projects and participation, we look to this signature event as the kickoff to an exciting year in e-discovery. We are grateful for the support of the global EDRM community in this effort and to HaystackID for its partnership.”

“As a beneficiary of the standards and projects spearheaded by the EDRM, HaystackID is grateful to support the EDRM in this inaugural community event,” notes Hal Brooks, chief executive officer of HaystackID. “From technology standards to pro bono support, the EDRM is at the forefront of empowering the eDiscovery community, and we are pleased to be partners in that effort.”

With more than 250 registrants to date and fast approaching capacity, details of the EDRM Jumpstart Legal Tech with HaystackID are provided below for individuals interested in meeting with the EDRM team, getting updates on EDRM plans and projects for 2020 and enjoying drinks and dialogue with members of the global e-discovery community.

Date: Monday, February 3, 2020
Time: 5:00 PM–7:30 PM ET

5:00-5:30: EDRM Introductions, Overview and Updates
5:30-7:30: EDRM and HaystackID Jumpstart Reception

Location: Ruth’s Chris Steak House, 148 West 51st Street, New York, NY
RSVP: Required via Registration (http://bit.ly/Jumpstart-Legal-Tech-2020)

Learn More and Register

Contact us today to learn more about the EDRM and register for our EDRM Jumpstart Legal Tech with HaystackID gathering of e-discovery professionals for drinks and dialogue.

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