LEAP Office 10 - First Impressions

Legal Practice Intelligence attended a demonstration of LEAP Office 10 and here's our take on the new features.
 
The new version looks different but familiar
 
When you are in a matter in LEAP Documents, you can still see the distinctive icons for documents, emails, PDFs and images but many of the buttons that launch functions have disappeared. Gone in LEAP Accounting is the MYOB-inspired navigation menu. The buttons at the bottom of the screens in LEAP Documents and LEAP Accounting have been replaced by just a few icons at the top. Reducing clutter further, many of these icons have been given right click and drop-down menu functionality. Hovering with the mouse displays contextual information.
 
Finding and sorting matters in the start screen has become a lot more intuitive. The long list of matter types has been reorganised into main categories and sub-branches.
 
Even the font used across the product suite has changed. It is now Segoe UI which is a typeface used in Microsoft products. For existing LEAP Office users, the inconvenience of reorienting to the new way of doing something will likely be short lived. This is because one of the reasons for the redesign has been to make using LEAP more of a Windows-like experience. New users, who are already comfortable in a Windows environment, should find it easier to adapt to LEAP Office 10 than to earlier LEAP versions.
 
Wiki Help

The help facility has been completely reworked. Launching Help will take you to a Wiki-type website where users also have the ability to add tips, comments and instructions. LEAP is encouraging contributions from users and is expecting it to become an organically growing resource.
 
Portable Timesheet

 
The LEAP Timesheet has become the Portable Timesheet. You can now do time entries (and cost recovery entries) while disconnected from the LEAP database. For example, if you are away from your office but still connected to the internet, the timesheet will connect to the LEAP database via the internet and update it with your time entries.
 
New functionality will enable streamlining of the expense reimbursement process. Fee earners can enter cost recoveries, such as travel expenses, into the timesheet and now they can flag these expenses for reimbursement. New reports been created to provide the reimbursement information.
 
New and Improved
 
The safe custody document register has not only been improved but it is now likely to permanently reside in LEAP Accounting rather than LEAP Documents. The LEAP developers believe that this is a more logical home for it.
 
If you subscribe to the LEAP affiliate DEFT payments system then you will be able to access two time saving features for the processing of client receipts. In a sense, the bank will almost do the receipting for you. When clients transfer money into your office or trust bank account, a bank file becomes available that enables automated receipting into LEAP Accounting. For law firm clients who prefer to pay by cash or cheque, you can now offer them the option of paying your invoice at a post office.
 
Other notable improvements include:
 
- One click export of many reports to Excel
- Branch reporting  - enabled by associating matters to branches
- Master-invoice generation, where billing from multiple matters will appear on the one invoice
- Tighter integration between Outlook and LEAP, particularly with the automatic saving of email-replies to the relevant client matter
- A more stable LEAP Searching, having been rewritten in .NET
- Regular reporting on the number of visits and other statistics to monitor the effectiveness of your firm's LEAP Website
 
More than just compatibility
 
The previous versions of LEAP Office are not compatible with Microsoft Office 2010. LEAP could have simply upgraded their previous version to provide this compatibility and left it at that. With LEAP Office 10, they have gone far beyond that, delivering the first release of a new series that comes with a generous number of enhancements.
 

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