CARET Legal vs Law Ruler

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Our analysts compared CARET Legal vs Law Ruler based on data from our 400+ point analysis of Legal Software, user reviews and our own crowdsourced data from our free software selection platform.

Product Basics

CARET Legal (formerly Zola Suite) is a cloud-based practice management solution with integrated matter management, CRM, time tracking and billing capabilities. Businesses can centralize all firm and client data, track time and expenses, and manage operating and trust accounts. It helps prepare digital invoices, run financial reports and connect legal matters with associated contacts, documents, communications and tasks to get complete visibility over active cases. The built-in legal calendar tracks important events and touchpoints in real time.

It complies with SOC 2 auditing standards and secures sensitive information via military-grade encryption and user permissions. Companies can expedite client onboarding with trigger-based workflows and intelligent forms. It integrates with third-party applications for continued scalability.
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Law Ruler provides legal practitioners with integrated CRM, case management and billing solutions. Leverage dashboard analytics and immersive visualizations to get data-driven insights on productivity. Add a personal touch to automated workflows for daily procedures such as emails, appointments, invoices and e-Signature requests. Maintain complete visibility over the firm’s communication channels, including social media, digital marketing campaigns, calls and websites. Access a built-in settlement wizard to streamline contingency settlements. Sort contacts and leads with custom tags and reach them instantly via dedicated communication channels.

Create online intake forms with the customizable form builder. Retrieve medical records in case of mass tort and personal injury cases. Use best practice templates to create legal documents and contracts. Automate calls and follow-ups with an AI-powered Click and Call Dialer. Integrate with Microsoft Office 365 for easy access to the entire enterprise technology suite.
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$150/User, Monthly
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Tailored to your specific needs
$40/User, Monthly
Get a free price quote
Tailored to your specific needs
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Windows
Mac
Linux
Android
Chromebook
Windows
Mac
Linux
Android
Chromebook
Cloud
On-Premise
Mobile
Cloud
On-Premise
Mobile

Product Assistance

Documentation
In Person
Live Online
Videos
Webinars
Documentation
In Person
Live Online
Videos
Webinars
Email
Phone
Chat
FAQ
Forum
Knowledge Base
24/7 Live Support
Email
Phone
Chat
FAQ
Forum
Knowledge Base
24/7 Live Support

Product Insights

  • Easier Data Management: A centrally accessible data repository provides a single source of truth for all employees and team members. 
  • Prompt Customer Support: Offers multiple support options to clients with quick response times. 
  • Flexible Accounting: Provides in-house accounting tools and integration with QuickBooks. 
  • Onboarding Support: Minimize time to market with dedicated onboarding and data migration support. 
  • Better Insights and Decisions: Comprehensively diagnose the firm’s financial health, productivity, profitability and efficiency metrics with powerful built-in reports. 
  • Global Reach: The mobile app provides unrestricted access to all features, including time tracking, matter management, emails, payment portal, billing and OCR capabilities. 
  • Seamless Integration: CARET Legal seamlessly integrates with your existing systems, streamlining workflows and eliminating data silos.
  • Enhanced Efficiency: Automated processes and intuitive dashboards empower your team to work smarter, saving time and resources.
  • Improved Collaboration: Secure document sharing, real-time communication, and collaborative workspaces foster seamless teamwork.
  • Advanced Analytics: Data-driven insights provide actionable intelligence, empowering you to make informed decisions and optimize operations.
  • Exceptional Security: Industry-leading security measures protect sensitive data, ensuring compliance and safeguarding your clients' information.
  • Tailored to Your Needs: Customizable settings and flexible configurations adapt CARET Legal to the unique requirements of your practice.
  • Enhanced Client Experience: Client portals and self-service options provide transparency and empower clients to actively participate in their cases.
  • Timely Reporting: Automated reporting capabilities deliver real-time visibility into key metrics, enabling proactive decision-making.
  • Expert Support: Our dedicated team of legal experts provides ongoing support, ensuring a smooth implementation and maximizing your ROI.
  • Future-Proof Innovation: CARET Legal is continuously updated with the latest technologies and best practices, ensuring your firm remains at the forefront of legal innovation.
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  • Enhanced Efficiency: Streamline legal processes, automate tasks, and reduce time spent on administrative duties, freeing up attorneys to focus on high-value work.
  • Improved Case Management: Centralize case information, track progress, set deadlines, and manage documents efficiently, ensuring seamless case handling and reducing the risk of errors.
  • Increased Collaboration: Facilitate seamless communication and collaboration among attorneys, paralegals, and clients, fostering a cohesive team environment and enhancing productivity.
  • Enhanced Client Service: Provide clients with real-time case updates, secure document sharing, and personalized communication, building stronger relationships and increasing client satisfaction.
  • Reduced Costs: Optimize resource allocation, minimize administrative expenses, and improve billing accuracy, resulting in significant cost savings for law firms.
  • Improved Compliance: Ensure adherence to ethical and regulatory guidelines, manage conflicts of interest, and maintain accurate records, mitigating risks and protecting the firm's reputation.
  • Data-Driven Insights: Analyze case data, track key performance indicators, and identify areas for improvement, enabling data-informed decision-making and strategic planning.
  • Enhanced Security: Safeguard sensitive client information with robust security measures, including data encryption, access controls, and disaster recovery plans, ensuring data integrity and compliance.
  • Scalability and Flexibility: Adapt to changing caseloads and firm growth with a scalable platform that can accommodate the evolving needs of law firms of all sizes.
  • Exceptional Support: Benefit from dedicated technical support, training, and ongoing updates, ensuring a smooth implementation and maximizing the value of the software investment.
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  • Matter Management: Use the matter dashboard to track active cases in real time. Create custom fields with check-boxes, dates, pick lists and currency and record all matter-specific activities, including time entries. Limit access to sensitive information on a per-matter basis and categorize matters based on practice area, responsible attorney, custom fields and open date. 
  • Intelligent Email: Automatically file emails to associated case files and add time entries for sent emails. The proprietary smart suggest feature locates associated contacts. Convert emails to tasks, matters and billable hours. 
  • Integrations: Supported integrations include G Suite, Exchange, Microsoft 365, RPost, Outlook, Google Calendar, NetDocuments, OneDrive, LawPay and QuickBooks. 
  • Calendar: Send ICS invites, create time entries, set private events, mark recurring events and follow up on team obligations. Set up daily, weekly or monthly schedules for report delivery. 
    • Rules-Based Calendaring: Integrate with LawToolBox to automatically track procedural, administrative and regulatory deadlines. 
    • Date Calculator: Factor in days out, federal holidays and weekends while calculating dates for templates and deadlines. 
  • Legal Contacts: Create cards and lists for various legal contacts, including clients, prospects, witnesses, opposition counsels and referral sources. Generate custom fields and categorize them based on contact role, created by and contact type. 
  • Legal Documentation: Store multiple legal documents depending on the subscription plan. Access instant preview of documents, in-document search, complete version history and file locking and tagging capabilities. Create matter-specific document folders and securely share files via the Caseway portal. 
    • Word Ribbon Plugin: Create, open and save documents directly from Microsoft Word. 
  • CRM: Filter leads by source, practice area and potential revenue and convert them to matters. Identify successful referral sources with intelligent metrics. Embed intake forms into the firm’s website. Automatically create lead entries and generate retainer agreements and standard documents.  
  • Task Management: Tag, sort, filter and create sub-tasks based on requirements. Implement standardized procedures using task templates. Delegate tasks to team members, turn on notifications and assign deadlines. 
  • Client Portal: Allow clients to exchange case-related documents via a 256-bit encrypted channel. The payment portal can process both debit and credit card transactions. Request and approve eSignatures instantly. 
  • Mobile App: Available for both Android and iOS users. Insurers can design custom logos, send and receive documents, share invoices and receive payments. Secures access via fingerprint authentication and Apple TouchID. 
  • Time and Billing: Choose from over 11 ways to create time entries. Build custom invoices with support for UTBMS codes and LEDES format. Run financial reports, develop accounts payable and trust checks, process payments and more. Manages vendor bills and supports split, consolidated and separate billing frequencies. 
    • Time Entry: Create automated time entries and assign “no charge” and “no charge don’t show” labels. Designate round-up increments and log time entries in decimals or HH:MM format. 
    • Rate Cards: Create rate cards with custom user rates. Allow clients to inherit rate cards and set matter-specific discount rates. 
    • Expenses: Automatically track all expenses. Charge soft costs and import copy activities from photocopier devices via the uniFLOW importer. 
  • Business Accounting: Earmark part of payments for expenses and to timekeepers. Set up firm-wide budgets to predict revenue on a monthly, quarterly or yearly basis. Run year-end reconciliations and add time entries for individual transactions. 
    • Reports: Run built-in client, compensation, productivity, accounting, trust and vendor reports. 
  • Trust Accounting: Manage trust accounts separately. Accept payments via checks and debit and credit cards. Administrators can withdraw money from trust accounts to avoid overdrawing from operating accounts. 
    • Retainer/Trust Fund: Create retainers for trust and operating accounts and get notifications when the balance falls below the minimum. View and print ledgers and trust account summaries with sub-ledgers. Run three-way reconciliation reports. 
  • Smart Settlement: Intelligently manage settlement workflows, including percentages and memo generation for all involved parties. Create a settlement statement for every settlement memo. Capture expenses incurred by the firm, clients and third parties in a detailed value list.  
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  • Dashboard Analytics: Leverage sonar dashboards and custom analytics to measure key performance indicators for marketing intake, referrals, staff productivity, litigation and case management. Identify historical trends and patterns, track dockets and evaluate return on investment. 
  • CRM: Tag contacts with custom labels. Assign multiple labels to a single contact and mass populate entries based on tags. Create notes, tasks and reminders to always stay on top of deadlines, tasks, meetings and important events. Automatically create new leads from referrals and inquiries. Leverage lead source tracking to gain actionable insights into top-performing marketing sources.  
  • Mobile Application: Enjoy unrestricted mobile access through an app optimized for on-the-go use. 
  • Legal Calendar: Connect to Outlook for two-way synchronization of calendar entries. Link client correspondence in Outlook to associated legal cases to maintain a centralized source of truth. 
  • Case Management: Manage the entire case lifecycle from referral to billing with one dedicated module. Eliminate data duplication and errors and omissions (E&O) with automated entries. Access turnkey integration of the firm’s calls, contacts, cases, websites and legal matters. 
  • Workflow Automation: Create custom templates and apply them to different workflows. Implement automation in regular processes like online intake forms, social media marketing, calls, text messaging and email marketing. Add a personal touch to follow-up emails and text messages regarding matters, invoices, electronic signatures, appointment reminders and more. 
    • Workflow Tracking: Get complete visibility into upcoming tasks, appointments, signature requests, emails and intake forms. 
  • Security: Provides around-the-clock intrusion detection and prevention facilities. HIPAA-compliant cloud hosting available. Secure firm data with 256-bit AES encryption. 
  • Billing: Supports contingency billing, flat-fee billing, timer-based hourly billing, fee splits, pro-bono billing, client medical bills, expenses and settlement tracking. Track time, expenses and invoices in real time and generate UTBMS and LEDES billing codes. 
  • Integrations: Connect to Office 365 for access to robust security and dictation and transcription tools. Other supported integrations include LawPay, Outlook Calendar, Zapier, QuickBooks, ApexChat, Google, Thomson Reuters and more. 
  • Click to Call Dialer: Automate follow-up calls and schedule callbacks with the built-in AI-powered dialer. Automatically follow-up on web and live chat leads and record all communication with date and time stamps. 
  • Online Intake Forms: Leverage a user-friendly form builder to create online intake forms with data fields tailored for every practice area and purpose. Automatically populate forms with existing data and add custom logos and images. Embed forms in the website and application. Send reminders to potential clients with incomplete progress. 
  • Legal Documentation: Automate document creation and delivery with custom templates and workflows. Process documents faster with electronic signatures. Send automated reminders to clients about incomplete contracts, waivers and NDAs. Eliminate redundant data and E&Os. 
  • Settlement Wizard: Evaluate settlement options in real time and approve transactions and payments with a single click. Calculate attorney fees for multiple firms and digitally review and approve settlements. Send invoices and opening and closing statements via text messages, emails or postal service.  
  • Record Retrieval: Directly order medical records for mass tort and injury cases. Get notifications on successful retrievals. 
  • Firm Reports: Use the built-in report builder to prepare custom reports via a no-code interface. Run reports on marketing campaigns, case milestones, productivity, case metrics and conversion rates. 
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Product Ranking

#46

among all
Legal Software

#78

among all
Legal Software

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Analyst Rating Summary

86
81
100
97
90
95
99
100
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Billing and Payments
Task Management
Time and Expense Management
Dashboard and Reporting
Matter/Case Management
Dashboard and Reporting
Task Management
Billing and Payments
Client and Contact Management
Matter/Case Management

Analyst Ratings for Functional Requirements Customize This Data Customize This Data

CARET Legal
Law Ruler
+ Add Product + Add Product
Billing And Payments Calendaring And Legal Docketing Client And Contact Management Dashboard And Reporting Document Management Matter/Case Management Mobile Capabilities Task Management Time And Expense Management 100 90 99 65 92 67 100 100 97 95 100 46 92 67 100 79 0 25 50 75 100
100%
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94%
0%
6%
100%
0%
0%
100%
0%
0%
92%
0%
8%
92%
0%
8%
100%
0%
0%
100%
0%
0%
64%
0%
36%
50%
0%
50%
89%
0%
11%
89%
0%
11%
67%
0%
33%
67%
0%
33%
100%
0%
0%
100%
0%
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100%
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80%
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20%

Analyst Ratings for Technical Requirements Customize This Data Customize This Data

86%
0%
14%
71%
0%
29%
75%
0%
25%
75%
0%
25%

User Sentiment Summary

Excellent User Sentiment 345 reviews
Excellent User Sentiment 41 reviews
94%
of users recommend this product

CARET Legal has a 'excellent' User Satisfaction Rating of 94% when considering 345 user reviews from 3 recognized software review sites.

96%
of users recommend this product

Law Ruler has a 'excellent' User Satisfaction Rating of 96% when considering 41 user reviews from 2 recognized software review sites.

4.8 (114)
4.0 (1)
4.64 (119)
n/a
4.6 (112)
4.8 (40)

Awards

SelectHub research analysts have evaluated CARET Legal and concluded it earns best-in-class honors for Billing and Payments and Task Management. CARET Legal stands above the rest by achieving an ‘Excellent’ rating as a User Favorite.

User Favorite Award
Billing and Payments Award
Task Management Award

SelectHub research analysts have evaluated Law Ruler and concluded it earns best-in-class honors for Dashboard and Reporting and Task Management. Law Ruler stands above the rest by achieving an ‘Excellent’ rating as a User Favorite.

User Favorite Award
Dashboard and Reporting Award
Task Management Award

Synopsis of User Ratings and Reviews

Robust Legal Case Management: CARET Legal offers a comprehensive suite of tools for managing cases, including document management, calendaring, and time tracking, streamlining legal operations.
Excellent Collaboration Features: Its intuitive interface fosters collaboration among team members, allowing seamless sharing of documents, notes, and tasks, enhancing teamwork.
Customized Reporting: CARET Legal's customizable reporting capabilities provide tailored insights into case progress, resource allocation, and billing, enabling data-driven decision-making.
Automated Workflows: The software automates repetitive tasks such as document generation and approval processes, freeing up lawyers to focus on higher-value work.
Improved Efficiency and Productivity: By centralizing legal operations and automating tasks, CARET Legal helps firms improve efficiency, reduce turnaround times, and enhance productivity.
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Intuitive Interface: Law Ruler's user-friendly design makes it easy to navigate and find the features you need, even for users with limited technical expertise.
Comprehensive Features: The software offers a wide range of features tailored to the specific needs of legal professionals, including case management, document automation, and billing.
Time-Saving Automation: Law Ruler automates repetitive tasks such as document creation and scheduling, freeing up lawyers to focus on more strategic work.
Enhanced Collaboration: The platform facilitates seamless collaboration between team members, allowing them to share documents, track progress, and communicate efficiently.
Excellent Customer Support: Law Ruler provides responsive and knowledgeable customer support, ensuring that users have the assistance they need to maximize the software's benefits.
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Limited Customization: Many users find that CARET Legal's customization options are limited, making it difficult to tailor the software to their specific needs.
Steep Learning Curve: The software's complex interface and lack of user-friendly features can make it challenging for users to navigate and use effectively.
Expensive: CARET Legal's pricing model is often seen as expensive, especially for small to medium-sized law firms with limited budgets.
Integration Issues: Users have reported difficulties integrating CARET Legal with other software applications, leading to workflow disruptions and data management challenges.
Limited Support: Some users have experienced slow response times and inadequate support from CARET Legal's customer service team, leading to frustration and delays in resolving issues.
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Limited Customization: Law Ruler offers limited customization options, making it difficult to tailor the software to specific firm needs.
Steep Learning Curve: Users have reported a steep learning curve when using Law Ruler, requiring significant time and effort to become proficient.
Lack of Integration: Law Ruler lacks seamless integration with other legal software and applications, limiting its functionality and efficiency.
Limited Reporting Capabilities: Users have expressed concerns about Law Ruler's limited reporting capabilities, making it challenging to generate comprehensive and customized reports.
Inconsistent Support: Some users have experienced inconsistent support from Law Ruler's customer service team, leading to delays and unresolved issues.
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CARET Legal has garnered significant user praise over the past year, with reviewers consistently highlighting its strengths in legal research and document automation. One user remarked that CARET Legal's "research tools are top-notch, making it easy to find relevant case law and statutes." Another reviewer lauded its "intuitive document automation features, which have saved me countless hours drafting contracts and pleadings." Compared to similar products, CARET Legal stands out for its user-friendly interface, comprehensive research capabilities, and robust automation tools. Users have noted that its "clean and organized interface makes it a breeze to navigate," while its "deep integration with legal databases provides access to a wealth of information." The software's ability to automate repetitive tasks has also been a major differentiator, with one reviewer stating that "CARET Legal has streamlined my workflow, freeing up more time for high-value tasks." In summary, CARET Legal is highly recommended for legal professionals seeking a comprehensive and user-friendly legal software solution. Its strengths in research, document automation, and user experience make it an ideal choice for lawyers, paralegals, and legal teams looking to enhance their productivity and efficiency.

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Law Ruler has received mixed reviews in the past year. Users praise its intuitive interface, comprehensive features, and affordable pricing. They find it particularly useful for managing cases, tracking time, and generating documents. However, some users have reported occasional bugs and glitches, and they wish the software offered more customization options. Compared to similar products, Law Ruler stands out for its ease of use and affordability. Its intuitive interface makes it accessible to users of all experience levels, and its low price point makes it a great option for small law firms and solo practitioners. However, Law Ruler may lack some of the advanced features found in more expensive software, such as document automation and e-signature capabilities. Overall, Law Ruler is a solid choice for small law firms and solo practitioners who are looking for an affordable and easy-to-use legal software solution. Its strengths lie in its intuitive interface, comprehensive features, and affordable pricing. However, users who require more advanced features or customization options may want to consider other products.

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