Meet the Smiths – Part 5: Calculating Child Support for Mr. Smith – Family Law Software

Unfortunately, this hasn’t been a particularly happy series of blogs for your typical client, Mr. Smith, and now he’s calling you to compute his child support obligation for a child he neglected to mention, who predates his marriage to the second Mrs. Smith. 

Here at Easy Soft, our team works hard to keep the smile on your face by designing and supporting software created especially for attorneys, like our EzSupport-NY.  When you use our software, you’ll be ready to perform child support calculations for every Mr. (and Mrs.) Smith.

Whether Mr. Smith is going through a family court proceeding or a New York divorce case, it’s important that you correctly calculate his child support obligation.  When you use our child support for NY software, you’ll input data on screens that will remind you that, in addition to the strict computation, Mr. Smith may be eligible to request a variance.

Details of math formulas are precisely why you need to automate your child support calculations.  When you jot down child support calculations on a piece of paper, you risk forgetting variables that could impact how much child support your client is paying for years to come.

But, when you use our EzSupport-NY and similar child support products for NJ, PA, and AZ, our software prompts you to fill in boxes for each one of the variables that could impact the computation.  Representing the child support payor, do you remember to deduct maintenance, prior child support orders, union dues, and tax-deductible business expenses?  These are just several examples of statutory provisions that we have translated into our software to increase your accuracy and quality.

Our EzSupport-NY is packed with features, including frequently used documents like the Summons, Complaint, and Statement of Net Worth.  Worksheets are included for both child support and maintenance, to help you efficiently and accurately tackle these mandatory calculations.

Why not download a free trial of our Easy Soft products today, including one of our child support products?  You can just as easily purchase the software with the comfort of our 30-day money back guarantee.

Get all your Mr. Smiths through their problem of the day using Easy Soft.

Meet the Smiths – Part 4: Lawyer Billing Software for Your Bottom Line

You’ve been hired by Tom Smith for buying and selling his first house, buying his second house, divorcing the first Mrs. Smith and now divorcing the second Mrs. Smith.  He’s asking whether you’ll offer him a discount and you’re wondering if you’ve been billing him enough.

Easy Soft legal billing software to the rescue for your bottom line!

When you use Easy Soft’s law office billing software, you won’t miss one minute of billing.  When you’re in the office, you can open a new time slip, provide a description, and click on the clock to start earning.  When you leave for court or a meeting, you can create an entry with no time, and then edit the entry to input your time when you get back to your computer.  At the same time, you’ll remember to input out-of-pocket expenses associated with each time entry.

Our attorney billing software is so well designed that it allows you to select the type of billing, whether hourly, fixed fee, or recurring.  At the end of each day, take a moment to review your time entries and compare them to your calendar.  Even when you are working on a fixed fee basis, you can input your time into our law office billing software so that you can evaluate whether you are pricing for profitability.

When you also purchase our trust accounting software, your time law office billing software will become fully integrated to show you the balance of your client’s advance retainer deposit, as well.  This pair of software products helps you to strategically monitor how to allocate your time for profitability.  When Mr. Smith calls to relay his latest fight with Mrs. Smith Number Two, as soon as you start the clock running in your law office billing software, you know to mention to Mr. Smith that an additional deposit will be necessary because there’s only $200 left in trust from his original deposit.

And, if you do decide to offer Mr. Smith that discount for his second divorce, our attorney billing software has a feature that will let you select the type of discount as one-time or on-going and whether it is a percentage or a fixed dollar amount.  These deductions appear as written entries on the monthly client invoice, so you can build good will with Mr. Smith – just in case he should need to hire you, again.

Get paid for all of your professional services using Easy Soft’s Easy TimeBill.

Meet the Smiths – Part 3: Legal Escrow Accounting Software

Continuing our series on practice life with the Smiths, you're no doubt already aware it could involve several escrow transactions. The Smiths might buy a house, sell a house, and get a divorce. Each one of these transactions will involve trust accounting .
Are you prepared to represent the Smiths by using Easy Soft's legal escrow accounting software to meet ethical requirements and get paid?
First, let's review what's involved in escrow transactions when the Smiths buy and sell homes. If you're a busy real estate attorney, you need attorney trust accounting software that allows you to input each, separate escrow account, escrow agent, and depository. Trust accounting ethics requirements include balancing each escrow deposit, maintaining a ledger of all transactions, and storing bank transactions records. Our trust accounting software includes all of these features and more.
Also, when a client makes an advance retainer deposit, you need attorney trust accounting software that corresponds to your IOLTA regulations. While you can combine advance retainer deposits into a single account, you must balance each client separately to ensure that each deposit is properly funded until it is earned and paid to you. Easy Soft trust accounting software will help you meet your ethics requirements through its three-way reconciliation report.
Because we work closely with our more than 15,000 clients, we know that trust accounting isn't always easy. This means that you might put it off, but that only compounds the problem. Sooner than you think, you could be months behind, and that could spell ethics problems.
Among our products and services, Easy Soft offers a special trust reconciliation service. When you subscribe to the Easy Soft trust reconciliation service, you get the benefit of our trained accountants to help you use the Easy Trust software product and balance your trust account. The attorney trust accounting software is provided free. If you are struggling with trust accounting, our team at Easy Soft is here to help, whether through support for use of our attorney trust accounting software or through our trust reconciliation service.
On our website, you'll find a free trial download of Easy Trust, our legal escrow accounting software. Licenses start at $249, and come with an unconditional 30-day money back guarantee. The purchase price includes one year of free technical support. If you otherwise want to sign up for our trust account reconciliation service, we will provide you with Easy Trust software for free.
Get trust compliant for all of your clients, using Easy Soft.

Meet the Smiths – Part 1:The Efficient Divorce Settlement – Family Law Software

It's a bit like TV sitcom, isn't it? Your job as a family law and real estate attorney. The occasional bit of drama on the high seas, but, generally, a fairly predictable story line.
Through this series of five blogs, we'll look at your typical cases and how Easy Soft can increase your productivity and profitability.
More than fifty percent of marriages end in divorce, and the overwhelming percentage of divorce cases end with divorce settlement . With those figures in mind, you need the divorce financial software that will streamline your case from the moment your client walks in the door.
The typical case of Smith vs. Smith involves assets and liabilities of a starter home, two cars, a 401k account, some credit card bills, and student loans. There isn't much to fight about, so how can you turn the initial consultation into a prompt divorce settlement for your client, Mr. Smith?
Divorce settlement is all about creating a distribution of assets and liabilities that makes sense to both parties. With our divorce financial software , you can assign the distribution of assets and liabilities to each party and easily create distribution worksheets that show individual items, totals per party, and percentages per party. She wants the house and he wants the 401k. Each wants their own car. Each is going to keep their own pre-marital student loans. And, to get the divorce settlement finished, each will take fifty percent of the credit card bills.
Next, take this divorce settlement information with you everywhere you go. Our divorce financial software has an associated smart phone app that keeps you prepared at all out-of-office meetings and judicial conferences.
Our divorce financial software is designed to be easy to install and easy to use. We offer one year of free technical support with each purchase, and that technical support is for both the software program and for the smartphone app. What's more, Easy Soft products, like our divorce financial software , is so user friendly that your paralegal and secretary will also be using it in no time.
In the modern economy, you have to look for ways to cut costs associated with divorce settlements in cases like the Smiths. One way is to get your client involved, using the Easy Soft client questionnaire. Another way is to use our divorce financial software to expedite your divorce settlement through automatic population of pre-loaded forms, including equitable distribution charts. And, a third way is to use our smart phone app to put you in a position to negotiate and close deals, even when you're in the courthouse elevator.
Get automated for routine divorce cases. Get profitable. Get Easy Soft Divorce Financials.

Law Firm Mergers and Acquisitions 101? Be Sure You’re Using Easy Soft’s Law firm Billing Software

There is an important point to be made on the topic of law office mergers and acquisitions, relating to a firm’s legal billing software and trust accounting.

It’s not just your clients, the courts, and grievance or fee arbitration boards who might look through your billing and trust accounting records.  Some day, it might also be another law firm, in which case, your business practices may translate into material gain, but could equally result in financial loss. 

Is an opportunity for the growth of your law firm a time when you want your lack of attorney billing software to jump right out because you supply handwritten time slips plopped into shoe boxes? 

The time to think about the power and organization of your law office billing software is today.  Most merger and acquisition inquiries begin with a review of several years of bank records, invoices, and accounts receivables. 

The value of your law office is built on a day-to-day basis when you use Easy Soft’s Time Bill, legal billing software designed exclusively for attorneys and backed by more than 20-years of experience and thousands of users.  When you use our billing software for attorneys, you elevate your billing into effective business records, systematically input to create complete invoices, routinely printed for all clients.  You gain a method for regularly chasing after delinquent accounts and reducing receivables.

When you pair Easy TimeBill with Easy Trust, our attorney trust accounting software, you begin routine balancing of all trust accounts and requesting clients top-up their retainer balances before they fall behind.  And, you gain the ability to assert with confidence that your trust accounting business practices are ethically compliant.

When you use Easy Soft’s law office billing software and trust accounting software, you also gain a comprehensive system to storing, recalling, and analyzing all of your law office activity.  Both programs offer the ability to prepare invoices, reports, and bank reconciliations as .pdfs, which you can store to your data management server or SAAS vendor.  Plus, both programs allow you to make reprints, if you should be unable to locate your copy or your file. 

You might not know today where the road of your law office will go.  But when we’re making it this easy to keep your options open, why would you take another step without us?

Setting Your Advance Retainer Deposit with Your Attorney Trust Accounting Software

“I'll pay you anything!”
If only that were true, you think. As you look across your desk at your client, you wonder how much is left on deposit in your IOLTA account, compared to how much work the client is talking about having you do.
Don't get caught in this scenario without Easy Soft's attorney trust accounting software .
You need to know, at all times, how much money your client has on deposit in the IOLTA account. When you use our trust accounting software, every time you start a time record for a client, using our legal billing software , you will see how much money remains on deposit, right on the screen, in front of you.
One of the ways this trust accounting information helps you is to frame the conversation with your client about precisely how much the client wants to spend and what services can be expected for that fee.
What if you could immediately respond to the above client statement with a couple of clicks of your mouse by saying, “Well, you already provided a $5,000 deposit on February 1, but there is only $500 remaining. To take the case to trial will require an additional $5,000 deposit.”
When you use Easy Soft's attorney trust accounting software , you gain the opportunity to become a project manager for the fees and costs associated with a case. Our trust accounting software also offers you the opportunity to produce a management report with the click of a mouse, showing which clients have advance retainer deposits in your IOLTA account. These reports can also be used on a monthly basis to send a letter to clients with upcoming work that will exceed their current deposit balance.
Easy Soft's legal escrow software reports will also offer you the opportunity to evaluate whether your advance retainer deposits are too low. Are more than fifty percent of your clients currently underfunded compared to the amount of work you have piled on your desk? Trust accounting can help you to start asking clients for more money in their initial advance retainer deposit.
Installing Easy Soft's trust accounting and billing software products will be like having an on-site cheering section for you to finally get the payments you deserve.

Setting Your Hourly Rate with Your Law firm Billing Software

Tired of hoping for client checks to come in to pay the bills?
Unless you have Easy Soft's law office billing software , you don't have a strategy for profitability. Our legal billing software has banking and billing features needed by every law office to increase the bottom line.
First, with our attorney billing software , you can organize all of your client invoices through a single computer program. Simply enter all time and expense entries on a daily basis and print-out the invoices at the end of each month. When you use our automated legal billing software , you will easily remember to bill every client with new work or an overdue invoice and do so on a monthly basis. It's easy to generate the invoices, so say good-bye to dreading that task and start printing for profitability.
Second, our legal billing software contains banking features so that you can reconcile your bank account, being sure to charge clients for their expenses and record payments made. Instead of working between two or three programs, a calculator, and a scratch pad, use our Easy Soft law office billing software , and integrate all financial information impacting your cash flow in one program that is easy to use.
And, use the management reports from our law office billing software to keep an eye on which clients have money on deposit and which clients have overdue balances. You might even make it a Monday morning activity to print out the newest figures to help you plan a profitable billing week. There will always be deadlines, but you also need a way to achieve a minimum number of billable hours per day for which you will promptly receive payment from your trust account. The Easy Soft legal billing software is the way to organize your work product for profitability.
What's really great about our Easy TimeBill legal billing software is that licenses start at $249 – probably less than one hour of your billable time. All of our legal software products come with an unconditional 30-day money back guarantee and one year of unlimited technical support. We can help you increase your profitability through one easy installation of our law firm billing software .
Software that costs less than one billable hour that will help you increase your profits is software that you shouldn't be without.

Open a Law Firm Merchant Account and Receive a $249 Software Rebate!

Easy Soft offers merchant accounts, exclusively for law firms.

What’s a ‘merchant account?’

We’re glad you’re asking.  Our merchant services offer payment solutions for your clients, from credit cards to debit cards.

A law firm merchant account is the processing component of credit card charges and debit transactions.  When clients want to pay by credit card, credit cards processing goes through a merchant account to issue the charge and transfer payment to you.  It’s the same process for debit card remittances.

The Federal Reserve Bank of Boston estimates there are more than 609.8 million credit cards held by US consumers, with an average of 3.5 credit cards per person.  The modern economy is driven by consumer spending via credit card for current charges and as personal loans.  Credit cards have become the way for lawyers to get paid on time and in full.

Opening a law firm merchant account through Easy Soft will dramatically increase law firm cash flow, reduce overdue accounts, and minimize collection efforts.  Because our merchant account is designed specifically for law offices, we’re your best credit card merchant account option.

Now, for a limited time, Easy Soft is offering a $249 rebate towards your next software purchase when you sign up for our law firm merchant account.  We recommend that you pair your merchant account with Easy TimeBill, our law office billing software, and Easy Trust, our attorney trust accounting software.

When you partner our merchant services account with our legal billing software and our trust accounting software, you empower your law firm to issue bills with advance retainer deposits submitted by credit card. 

What you have to offer clients are the time and expertise involved in your professional services.  Once you render those services, you can’t repossess them, as you would a car in a delinquent loan payment situation.  The time to get paid is the month in which you render the services.  How you get paid is through advance retainer deposits, regular invoices, and online payment acceptance, using an Easy Soft merchant account and software products.

Is there a Fortune 500 list for lawyers?

Client Payments Result from Strategic Legal Billing Software

Imagine you client opening the invoice you’re about to send.  What do you picture the reaction will be?
If the answer is ‘displeased’ or ‘unhappy’ or ‘upset’ and you can only picture them looking at the bottom line, then perhaps it’s time to change your approach to billing.

Getting paid by your client in a timely manner begins with strategic use of Easy Soft’s legal billing software.
Using Easy TimeBill, each entry of time and expenses is a screen with fill-in fields.  Most items, such as the date, the name of the client, the person billing, and the billing rate are routine pieces of information.  Automating your billing through attorney billing software enables you to consistently and accurately record this essential information.

What wins the payment from clients is the information that goes into the field ‘description.’  Our law firm billing software encourages you to write a description of any length, and you should take advantage of the opportunity to write the kind of description of the work you do that will wow your client.

There are various tips to strategize your description input to the attorney billing software.  For example, use active verbs.  Look at the difference between a description that says ‘court conference’ and a description that says ‘actively engaged in extended court conference over valuation of wife’s pension.’  When you use our legal billing software, you have the space you need to write dynamic, engaging descriptions of the professional services you provide to your client.

When you use Easy TimeBill, you also gain the versatility to use our attorney billing software to generate invoices as Word documents, .pdfs, to print and mail the invoices, or to e-mail the invoices.  Transmitting invoices from our law office billing software through the platform used by your client is another tip on how to increase your client’s timely response to the invoice.

Easy Soft also offers law firm merchant accounts with payment online, such as credit card processing, to help you boost timely and full receivables.  And, when you open a business merchant account with Easy Soft, you gain more than 20-years of law firm compliance management to help you ethically leverage technology.

The formula for increased payments from clients is really quite easy: dynamic descriptions in Easy TimeBill + Easy Soft merchant account.  What are you waiting for?  Your next overdue account?  Contact Easy Soft today to get started.

Supervising Timekeepers with Easy Soft’s Law Firm Billing Software

To be successful in your responsibilities of managing billing for a law office, you need data compiled in specific ways.  If your current legal billing software has you using scratch pads, calculators, and spreadsheets, it’s time for you to convert your office to use Easy Soft’s Easy TimeBill law office billing software.

With our attorney billing software, law office management has never been so easy.  Do you want to know how many hours one of the associates billed this week?  Last month?  Year-to-date?  With our legal billing software, you simply go to the ‘reports’ section, click on ‘billing,’ and make your selections for all timekeepers, selected timekeepers, the dates you want displayed, and the format for the report.

As a manager, you can also use our law office billing software to work with timekeepers.  The management reports you can generate through Easy TimeBill present an opportunity, not only for efficiently and effectively management, but also as a written agenda to discuss with various timekeepers.  Do you set billing targets for them?  Do certain cases, like assigned counsel cases, have fee limitations?  Is the associate up for partner consideration truly billing 16 hours a day?  Using the reports available through the Easy TimeBill attorney billing software, you have everything you need at the click of a mouse to review and analyze who is billing what.

Even if you are a solo practitioner, billing reports through our legal billing software increase your profitability.  When was the last time you sat down, added up your billable hours, looked at the breakdown of hours between cases, and made a plan for hitting billing targets?  Unless you are using our law firm billing software, the answer may be that you have never done so.

Easy Soft’s attorney billing software starts at just $249 for a single license and includes one year of free technical support.  We offer a free trial download.  And we offer a 30-day money back guarantee.  Within just 30-days of actively using our attorney billing software, you’ll have the information you need to generate management reports to increase your bottom line.

It’s a routine business function to analyze profitability.  Why not bring basic business benchmarks to your law firm when we can make it so easy for you to do?

Spend Time with Your Real Estate Client, Not Your Real Estate Document Software

Busy, busy, busy.  It’s spring and real estate attorneys are busy.

The question for any real estate attorney is how much time to spend with pieces of paper and how much time to spend with the client.  When the matter is fixed fee, like a house closing, having time to both prepare real estate forms and prepare your client can feel like a losing battle against the clock.

You need Easy Soft’s real estate document software.  Our real estate closing software includes every form you need for closing, including deeds, affidavits of title, and even real estate document management checklists.

Our real estate document software is designed for you to enter the essential information only once, while the program automatically populates all corresponding fields of the pre-loaded real estate forms.  Instead of having to fill in each form manually, typing names, addresses, and other buyer and seller information, just type that data once into a central screen and let Easy Soft do the rest.

Another way our real estate document software saves you document preparation time is the automated calculations for all of the taxes associated with the purchase or sale, along with other closing costs.  And, if you reschedule the closing, Easy Soft’s real estate document software will automatically make all necessary adjustments to the figures.

If you’re interested in saving even more time with computer interface so that you can spend more time in client face-to-face, why not pair our real estate document software with our Easy HUD software?  Adding our HUD software to your computer means that you can produce RESPA-compliant HUD settlement statements with an ease that will put a spring in your step.

The one additional suggestion for automation efficiency is to add a third product, our attorney trust accounting software?  Easy Soft’s trust accounting software allows you to quickly and correctly manage all client funds related to real estate closings, including balancing funds in escrow, writing checks to realtors through water authorities, and offers reports ready to share with your client at the click of a mouse.  We even offer software-compatible checks on our website as part of our product offerings.

These three products together at less than a total of $750 will make handling real estate closings so easy that you’ll have time to drink a cup of coffee with your clients.

Calling All New York and New Jersey Inter-state Attorneys! – Family Law Software

You have divorce clients in New Jersey and New York.

We have the three software products that will make your life easier.

When you work on a NJ divorce, you need our Case Information Statement and Family Law Software.  Our program includes a 20-page Case Information Sheet for your client to complete, which you can import into the program.  The same data populates all forms, so that you are print-and-go ready.  All forms can be customized, and can be e-mailed to clients as .pdf or Word documents.

Our Child Support for NY includes forms you will need for New York divorce cases, like the Statement of Net Worth.  Use it for a New York state uncontested divorce or a highly disputed child support for NY clients.  New York utilizes child support and alimony formulas that are different from New Jersey.  Using two, specialized programs will help you to keep the math straight.

For both NJ and NY divorces, add ‘Divorce Financials’ to your trio of programs, and you’ll gain powerful tools to achieve your client’s divorce settlement goals for support and equitable distribution.  Our software allows you to generate divorce settlement worksheets to analyze potential outcomes before they happen, so that you can frame your arguments and negotiations to your client’s advantage.

When you put these tools together, you can work for clients in NJ and NY and feel confident that you are meeting the different requirements of each state.  Some elements will be the same, such as federal income tax rules around the taxability of alimony, conditions for termination of alimony, and rules on recapture.  But each state then has its own tax tables, its own child support formula, and, now New York even has an alimony formula.

With divorce financial software as your lynchpin, you can prepare tax-optimized settlements, relative to support and relative to assets and liabilities.  You can even compute pension valuations and alimony buy-outs.  And, if you’re looking at yet another self-employment case where the income tax returns don’t seem to line up to that Bentley Azure T in the garage, you can even use our divorce settlement software to prepare a lifestyle analysis.

Easy Soft is a software provider with more than 15,000 clients and 20-years of experience.  Our products are focused exclusively on what lawyers need to get the job done. 

How could you cross the border without us?

Client-Interactive NJ Case Information Statement and Family Law Software

You ask us the same questions your clients ask you:  how can I save money?

If you’re practicing in New Jersey, our answer to you is the same answer you can give your clients:  you and your client can save time and money by using Easy Soft’s Case Information Statement and family law software.

Clients can’t do legal work – that’s why they’re hiring you, as a licensed professional, to advise and represent them.  But, what clients can do is tell you their story in a way that reduces the amount of time you spend collecting basic case information.

When you use Easy Soft’s Case Information Statement and family law software, you can e-mail your client the Case Information Statement as a .pdf or in Word document.  All of our software products are designed with the electronic communications used by modern law offices.  Clients are as busy as you are, and with our software you can quickly leverage technology to put the Case Information Statement into client hands to get them started on their data-gathering tasks.

With our Case Information Statement and family law software, completing the lengthy Case Information Statement with your client’s help is easy.  And, as soon as you get that information e-mailed back from your client, it can be electronically imported to a centralized data entry screen that populates all of the divorce forms.  Your clients will see immediate results and will appreciate the savings over spending two or three billable hours in conference with you.

Lest you fear that our Case Information Statement and family law software means your billing will go down, remember everything else for which you are responsible in the case.  You still have to calculate child support, figure out alimony, catalogue assets and liabilities and quantify a reasonable distribution.  All that, and we haven’t even listed custody.

Another reason to engage your client in the fact-gathering required for the Case Information Statement is to increase the level of detail you obtain.  It is one thing to ask clients questions in your office, but quite another to give them homework with blanks and spaces to be completed.  When a client is actively engaged in work that gets utilized by our Case Information Statement and family law software, you gain efficiency, a client who is happier with your billing, and a more thorough output in your Case Information Statement.

Single license for NJ-CIS software?  $299.  Technical support for one year?  Free.  The look on your face when your client gets you the information you need to complete the Case Information Statement?  Priceless.