LEAP Expedite - Is It Right for Your Firm?

There are only two reasons not to subscribe to Leap Expedite and both are probably only temporary. With the pace of new developments in the software industry, chances are that by the time you are reading this, one or both of these reasons will have become superfluous. The two reasons are: early adopter pain and lack of accounting functionality.

Also important is the fact that your documents and client information will be stored outside of your firm. This raises issues of privacy and security. An increasing number of software products are moving to the internet. Because these issues are not unique to Expedite, they are not dealt with in this report. 

Early Adopter Pain 
 
Anyone who acquires LEAP Expedite now would be described as an early adopter. The headache for early adopters is that they get pulled into becoming debugging partners as a result of the problems they encounter when using the software. The magic of Expedite is in the communication processes between the user (who can be located anywhere) and the LEAP Server. The synchronisation functionality is one of the key innovations that make the software so exciting but it is also an innovation that is undoubtedly challenging from a technical point of view.
 
However, the risk to the user has been largely mitigated by the SAAS (Software as a Service) model. It is one thing to be a trailblazing early adopter of new software when you have paid $80 (one month's subscription to Expedite) and another when you have invested tens of thousands of dollars into a new IT project. The early adopter pain might be a similar experience but the stress and anxiety of worrying about your financial investment is avoided. The cost of signing up for a month or two to test LEAP Expedite for yourself is so minimal that it hardly warrants too much thinking about. As advertised, you can cancel at anytime.
 
Lacking Time Recording, Billing and Accounting 
 
LEAP Expedite, in its current form, is like a LEAP Documents that has been separated from its sibling, otherwise known as LEAP Accounting. Expedite therefore lacks key functionality such as accounting, time recording and billing. Without any inside information, Legal Practice Intelligence predicts that the separated siblings will one day be reunited again.
 
At present, LEAP Expedite, without an integrated accounting solution, means that you will need to invest in other software or other means to get these essential tasks done. This may not be as dire as it first seems. At worst it could mean extra data entry, duplicating some basic client and matter details into a time recording / billing system. You would not usually need to enter as much information into such a system if you are using it only for accounting. The majority of data entry of matter details will be into Expedite.
 
What Type of Firm Are You?

LEAP Expedite is ideal for a single practitioner with no staff who runs a practice on a laptop. With a laptop and access to the internet, you can work from anywhere - even at the beach. If the tide comes in and washes your laptop away then you can download all of your work from the LEAP server onto any other computer.
 
If your firm has two to five people working from more than one location then LEAP Expedite provides a ready-made solution to the problem of working from multiple offices and it is a solution that requires no investment in a server. At present the harder question is what software to use for time recording, billing and accounting.
 
If you are a small firm operating from one location then you probably already have a server and an internal network. You could justify switching from your current documents system to Expedite if your current software supplier lacked the automated forms and precedents that you wanted but which are available through the Expedite / Smokeball service. If your current server was old and approaching the end of its life then Expedite would be that much more attractive.
 
If your firm has a need to create its own customised precedents, using matter information that is unique to the practice, then LEAP Expedite may not be able to meet all of your requirements. You have the ability to create your own precedents but these are limited to the data fields that come with Expedite - not that they are too limited. There are approximately 1,000 matter types and 20,000 individual data fields. However specialised customisation is not at present available with Expedite.
 
Software Market in a State of Rapid Change
 
Particularly for small businesses, including small legal practices, the software market is undergoing a huge shake up unlike anything experienced in the past 10 years. Core applications are moving to the internet and multitudes of third party software developers are creating add-on programs to work with them. Paying for software under a monthly subscription is becoming the norm.
 
We are at the early stages of these developments and where it will end up is still open to debate. These are exciting times for software developers and users alike. Small Australian law firms are very fortunate to be able to take advantage of these innovations and to be able to choose from an increasing number of options. However decision making in such a period of rapid change has its own challenges.

March 2010

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