Pay attention to PCLaw security settings

Yesterday I was called up by a client regarding a “problem” where one of the client’s lawyers couldn’t re-open a de-activated matter. The client is a small firm and administration of the PCLaw system is the role of the Finance team.

Under the firm’s own guidelines, the opening and closing of matters is done by Finance at the request of the responsible lawyers and not by the lawyers themselves. When I checked the lawyer’s PCLaw set up I found that he had access to the “Re-Open Matter” feature but just didn’t know where to find it.

And there is the real problem. The PCLaw set up for each user should reflect the firm’s policy. If the firm’s guidelines restrict the opening and closing of matters to the Finance team, then other users should not have access to that functionality.

It turns out in this case that all the lawyers had access to just about everything including the financial statements, something the partners were not happy about.

Varying system access between users is relatively easy in PCLaw once you know how. You’ll need to log in as the ADMIN user then access security from via “Options> Administrator> Security”. From there, under the GROUPS tab, you can create separate groups for different types of users. Each GROUP will have different access the various menu options within PCLaw. Typical GROUPS might be FINANCE, LAWYERS, MANAGERS. Once the groups are created, move back to the “Users” tab and attach each user to the appropriate GROUP.

The above procedure only addresses the security aspects of user set up. There are other points to consider such as the user access to timekeepers (yes, “users” and “timekeepers” are actually 2 different things), access to the Matter Manager, Timesheets, Bank Accounts and Calendars.

Rather than give the impression that correct user set up is complicated, I am trying to highlight the fact that PCLaw is very customizable. It pays to take the time to learn correct set up or have someone help you do it.