SOS earns Law Society praise for Practice Management System

Solicitors Own Software (SOS) has won praise for its dynamic legal practice management solutions in a prestigious Law Society publication.

The Bath-based legal systems provider is featured in the 2006 edition of The Law Society’s Software Solutions guide which is designed to help law firms make informed decisions about legal IT suppliers.

Software developed by SOS - which is one of just 15 suppliers to be featured in the legal IT bible - is currently used by more than 400 law firms throughout the UK, including several ‘Top 100’ firms.

SOS took part in a rigorous vetting procedure in order to appear in the guide, which included an evaluation of its products by a Law Society panel of experts. About 40 SOS clients, selected at random, also gave positive feedback about the firm’s innovative products and services.

The Law Society guide says: “SOS continues to impress the panel with its highly functional, well-designed software. Their understanding of legal business allows them to punch above their weight and provide some of the latest insights in managing the performance of larger practices.”

The company’s new innovation - SOS Connect – is a .NET practice management system that can be accessed by a firm’s lawyers, partners and support staff wherever they have an internet connection.

Commenting on the development of SOS Connect and its integration with Microsoft Outlook, the guide points out that the new product recognises the changing working practices of fee earners and other staff from medium-size and larger law firms, saying the product “…. provides a very flexible and cost effective technology platform.”

The guide adds: “They (SOS) have continued with their integration with Visualfiles to provide more sophisticated case management capability.

“SOS’s accounting system remains one of the strongest in the market, with excellent in-built reporting features including budget variance analysis.”

Writing in the guide, award winning industry commentator, Charles Christian says that a lot of firms will appreciate the communications benefits inherent within the Connect system. He says: “For example, multi-branch firms no longer need expensive leased lines linking their offices in order to roll out the software across the entire firm. Instead, all they need is an internet connection - and of course this can also be used by individual fee earners to link into the system from home or abroad via a laptop.”

Connect users can also take advantage of SOS Business Intelligence, which uses powerful online analytical processing (OLAP) to helps law firms improve decision-making by providing instant access to real-time performance indicators, allowing fee earners to focus on maximising their time on fee paid work.

“For firms that want a future, such systems are a must and I’m pleased to see OLAP is available to users of both the Connect system and the older – but still perfectly good – SOS Practice Manager software,” writes Mr Christian.

Michael Platt, SOS managing director, said: “It’s most gratifying to read such positive comments about our software by independent industry experts. We are particularly pleased with the feedback about our new Connect system which draws on our innovation and expertise gained from our 17 years’ experience in the sector. We believe it will deliver real commercial benefits to law firms.”