New Orion/4L Webinar Series
Orion, in association with 4L Law Firm Services LLC, is pleased to announce the formal inauguration of the Orion/4L Webinar Series. These monthly webinars will cover a variety of law firm business topics and are intended to share insights, stimulate ideas and generate discussion of the real-world challenges faced daily by law firm managers.
The webinars will be held at 2:00 PM EST on the last Thursday of each month (with a couple exceptions for holidays). The webinars will be conducted via Go-To-Webinar and registration information will be posted on both the Orion and 4L websites.
Here is a listing of the first six webinars:
How Financial Reporting is like Baseball – March 28th Registration Now Open!
Trust Accounting Best Practices – April 25th
The Monthly Accounting Close Process – May 30th
Monthly Production Reporting – June 27th
Monthly Financial Reporting – July 25th
Key Performance Indicators – August 29th
This first webinar of this series will be held Thursday, March 28th at 2PM EST. Click here to register for “How Financial Reporting is like Baseball”. This webinar will be hosted by Mike Marget.
Mike Marget is the Senior Managing Director of 4L Law Firm Services LLC, an affiliate of Orion Law Management Systems, Inc. 4L performs outsourced bookkeeping and billing services and provides a managed IT solution for small and midsize law firms. These services utilize Orion’s financial management and practice management software, which 4L offers on a SaaS basis via the Cloud. 4L’s clients also include law firms who have installed Orion software and later decided to delegated some billing and other back office accounting tasks to 4L. Mike is a former large law firm administrator – COO and CFO – and can be reached at mmarget@4L-Law.com. He also edits a blog at www.LawFirmCFO.com.
Orion Announced Release of iOrion®
Orion Law Management Systems, Inc., a leader in financial and practice management software for professional services firms, announced the release of iOrion®, its new iOS-ready mobile app, at LegalTech New York. iOrion® is one of the most complete iOS-compatible apps available for financial and practice management. Lawyers using Orion now have the flexibility to access and enter client contact/matter data, valuable billable time, and expenses on their iPhone®, iPad®and iPad mini® (iOS 6.x and higher) while away from their desks.
For today’s legal professionals, a full-featured mobile access tool is more than “nice-to-have” – it’s a necessity. And most legal professionals are justifiably concerned with the constant management of their valuable billable time. iOrion® is a complete financial management mobile application that allows legal professionals to access data from Orion using any recent-model iOS device. Lawyers can manage their cases better, keep track of billable time and expenses, and stay on top of the firm’s bottom line.
iOrion® was designed with simplicity in mind. With virtually no training needed and very little setup, users can immediately begin using iOrion® on their iPad, iPad mini or iPhone. Firms download iOrion® from the Apple Store and contact Orion to schedule installation of a lightweight, secure service that runs on the Orion server at the firm.
To read the complete iOrion® Press Release, click here!
http://orionlaw.com/lib/fn/iOrion_Press_Release
LegalTech NY 2013 Recap
Orion made the exciting announcement of iOrion® at LegalTech NY. The feedback received was astounding, everyone wanted to hear about this new product launch! Here are some of the highlights from LegalTech NY 2013.
Kevin Harris of Orion was interviewed by The LexBlog during the last day of Legal Tech NY. He discussed the rise of mobile applications made specifically for lawyers and how iOrion®is the most complete solution for those lawyers on-the-go. Kevin also spoke about what is on the horizon for Orion in the coming months, including the release of Orion 4.5 and the Expense Reimbursement Manager! To watch the interview, click here!
http://www.lxbn.com/2013/01/30/popularity-of-mobile-devices-in-firms-prompts-new-line-of-mobile-apps-orions-kevin-harris/
iOrion® is also featured in the January edition of Legal IT Insider. You can read the article on page 12, under the “There’s an app for it” section. To read the article, click here!
http://www.legaltechnology.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/01/insider260.pdf
Robert Ambrogi’s Law Sites Blog recently published a review of iOrion®. Robert speaks of how easy he found the app to use and understand. He was also impressed by the depth of data accessible through the app. Check out the full review on his blog, click here!
http://www.lawsitesblog.com/2013/02/iorion-brings-mobile-practice-management-to-midsized-firms.html
Still want more info on what editors and bloggers are saying about iOrion®? Check out our complete iOrion® article listing posted on our website.
New Client Welcome
Orion is pleased to announce that we have expanded our client coverage with the addition of Grais & Ellsworth LLP.
Grais & Ellsworth LLP is a litigation boutique located in New York City. The firm was founded in early 2007 and focuses on structured finance litigation, including litigation relating to mortgage-backed securities and CDOs of asset-backed securities, trust preferred securities, and other collateral. The firm is prosecuting many of the largest and most important cases in structured finance litigation. For more information on Grais & Ellsworth LLP, please visit their website at www.graisellsworth.com.
Robert H. Shah, Director of Finance at Grais & Ellsworth LLP:
“We were looking for a time and billing software which placed a strong emphasis on financial reporting along with a user-friendly interface. Orion has an impressive user-friendly design and is fully integrated with other software such as e-mail, word processing and spreadsheets. We chose to switch to Orion because it offers flexible financial reporting along with other valuable features not found in our previous time & billing software.”
Orion Hires 2 New Team Members
Orion continues to grow! We just added two new experienced professionals to our team. Please join us in welcoming in Heather Rutt and Alan Sargent – short bios for each below.
Heather N. Rutt, Marketing Coordinator
Prior to joining Orion, Heather has held Marketing positions where she gained valuable experience in public relations, branding, advertising, graphic design, etc. She also worked previously in retail management, from which she brings a positive “client focused” attitude. Feel free to welcome her via Orion’s Twitter and LinkedIn!
Alan “Al” J. Sargent, Consultant – Sales
Al brings extensive experience to Orion from a long career working with a number of well known software providers in the industry, including Thomson Reuters Elite. He was responsible for the West Coast client management and care of 150 mid-sized law firms. Al is looking forward to helping Orion customers reach their goals.
Support Corner
Financial Management
How to Reflect Payment by Retainer or Trust on an Invoice
The Retainer Applied as Payment (RAP) and Trust Applied as Payment (TAP) accounting functions are unique in that retainer/trust money is usually meant to pay an invoice that has not yet been generated. When you create the RAP/TAP transaction, there is no accounts receivable to apply it against. However, if you do not create the RAP/TAP transaction prior to generating the invoice, the invoice will print with a total amount due that is greater than what the Client-Matter actually owes.
To read more about reflecting payment and generating an invoice, check out the full article here.
http://orionlaw.com/lib/fn/Support_Center_FAQ_February_2013.pdf
Practice Management
How to Customize Queries and Defined Views
Orion is a robust Contact Relational Manager. It provides many features to assist you in viewing and gathering the right information anytime you need it. We receive many support questions that revolve around a similar theme, “How do you extract data?” Depending on the specifics of the request, there can be different answers to this question. The most popular is using the custom Query bar.
In this example we will take you through a basic query that allows you to locate all clients in a specific state. Keep in mind the Query bar can handle much more complicated actions that allow for more intensive data mining.
Click here to read the complete article on how to customize queries and defined views.
http://orionlaw.com/lib/fn/Support_Center_FAQ_PM_February_2013
Tech Tip
Securing Your Firm’s Email
A Microsoft Exchange Mail Server is one of the greatest investments a firm will make. Not only does it require expertise to install and maintain it’s also the biggest liability since it functions as a crucial part of everyday communications. If failure occurs, loss of email can be catastrophic on productivity. Exchange servers are targets for billions of spam messages a year.
This can tie-up a high performance server and these messages may also contain harmful links and viruses that will further cripple communications.
Block Spam and Viruses before they hit your Exchange Server
One of the best ways you can combat spam and viruses is to block them before they hit your Exchange server. Not only can this provide enterprise level protection on a small budget, butit also reduces the processing power of the Exchange server dedicated to blocking those attacks. That means more power for you and your organization to utilize, along with faster delivery and email load times. But most importantly, it protects the Exchange server from a potential attack at another level. Since the malicious emails never make it to your server, there is no chance that they can cause damage. Other Features of hosted Email Security Services
• Message Spooling – Companies will spool your messages if the Exchange server ever goes offline. This makes sure you
never lose an important email.
• Outbound Filtering – You are not immune to sending out spam emails if you get hit by a virus. Help protect yourself
and others.
• MessageArchiving –Do you need to comply with government regulations? Or how about an additional backup
protection?
• Message Encryption – You can never be too secure.
• 99% Spam and Virus Protection – Superior protection.
• Automatic Auto Fail – Route emails to different Exchange servers for 100% uptime.
http://orionlaw.com/lib/fn/Tech_Tip_February_2013
Reader Feedback
Orion wants to hear from YOU!
We’ve been thinking about how we could make our monthly newsletters even better, and how we can use it to help you become more efficient and more profitable. Do you want to see more articles, industry news, technical tips, or case studies? We are open to suggestions of what content our readers find most beneficial. Share your ideas with us and we’ll make sure to include them in a future edition!
We also invite you to “Be Your Own Case Study”! Let our readers know how Orion has benefited your firm. Contact us if you would like to share with others how Orion, or a feature of Orion, has impacted you.