Aderant Expert Reviews

Pros

Aderant Expert has turned into the go to solution for tracking time and billing for professionals. The product has improved tremendously over the years and has come a long way from where it started.

Cons

They're shifting to the cloud which does make it more secure but it also means there will be a lot of changes to adjust to.

Pros

Being able to save images in it has been one of the best parts for me along with how user friendly it is overall. Keeping images in the system really matters because we can pull them up later instead of digging through old emails to find what we need.

Cons

A few things about Expert are still frustrating. At times certain screens get locked by other users even when they are no longer actually in that screen which feels unnecessary. Another issue is that invoice numbers cannot include spaces so we end up having to alter the numbers vendors send us and that really should not be necessary. On top of that when a problem comes up, it can take several days before it gets resolved.

Pros

After switching from Elite because Thomson was ending support, we landed on it. It has definitely come with both upsides and downsides which honestly seems pretty normal with software. One thing that really helps is how it auto-fills information while you're typing in certain fields which cuts down on data entry time. It's also useful that images can be attached to invoices and payments so everything related to them stays together in one place.

Cons

That said there are quite a few glitches and sometimes items get stuck in a way that forces you to reach out to support because there's no way to resolve it on your own. The billing side of the software works well but getting issues corrected through support can be a lot of effort. Reporting in Appshell is also very slow. We run monthly aging reports and it can sometimes take hours before they finish.

Pros

I honestly can't imagine running my legal practice without Aderant Expert.. it's become that essential to how I work every day. Tools like Expert Time help me stay organized across all my cases, track my billing down to the last detail and manage everything without feeling overwhelmed. It keeps all the moving parts in one place which saves me time and gives me peace of mind knowing nothing is slipping through the cracks.

Cons

Nothing major but the tool comes with a noticeable learning curve and I needed some time and practice to become comfortable navigating its features.

Pros

It's been a really useful tool for communicating with legal secretaries, paralegals and lawyers on the AP side. The review and approval process is simple to follow and works well.

Cons

One thing that slows it down is how click-heavy the program feels. It takes a lot of clicks to get to the end result so cutting that down would help make the workflow faster.

Pros

The file organization saves me a lot of time in research. It's been so useful that we cut one staff position and still saved time.

Cons

Learning to use the system thoroughly and ensuring our database contains everything it should has been a bit of a hurdle. And I still feel like I'm not taking full advantage of its capabilities in my research and I wish the interface had more basic tools so I could confidently perform a complete materials survey.

Pros

In our office we find Aderant simple to use. Also it never slowed down or felt cluttered so daily use was easy and reliable.

Cons

We were not able to update or customize the system so it could grow with our company and because of that limitation it didn't offer any built-in reporting features for our needs which was frustrating when we needed more flexible metrics and insights.

Pros

One thing that does help is the shortcut functionality when entering time. The pop-up matter history is useful for filling things in quickly and the option to switch between users without much hassle is also a really nice feature.

Cons

The system is constantly lagging which becomes incredibly frustrating when you're under a time crunch. On top of that the error messages are confusing and don't make it clear what actually went wrong.

Pros

I find it pretty user friendly and I can easily navigate the fields without any trouble.

Cons

Sometimes I can't sync my old emails so they get recorded as time entries.

Pros

Honestly there's nothing here I can point to as a positive. Creating bills with this system feels unnecessarily confusing.

Cons

I hardly know where to start. The system is not user friendly at all. I have worked in legal billing for more than 10 years and used several different billing platforms and EA Pro is easily the most complicated one I have had to learn. I'm not sure whether the issue was the product itself or the people training us but if you're introducing a new system, the trainers should fully understand it. The training was far from easy and that was a major part of the problem. I couldn't follow it at all which made the whole learning process incredibly frustrating. It's very difficult to learn a system when the trainers can't explain it clearly. To make matters worse, we originally began training on one version that didn't even include e-billing and then everything had to be restarted from the beginning.

Pros

For our firm it handles every area of legal work you'd expect for an organization of this scale. Also I see it as a reliable foundation for developing our practice and it's easy to tailor for local requirements. We can extend functionality by building on the core data and the well-documented data dictionary has been invaluable for custom reports and BI.

Cons

Upgrades are difficult and our testing process needs work.

Pros

Having everything for a case stored in one program has been a huge plus. We can keep case documents, photos and pretty much anything else we need all in one place. Everything is well organized and separated into its own section which makes it simple to manage. ATO is also very user friendly and there are several different ways to search for the case you need.

Cons

At this point I really do not have any complaints about the program. It is very well organized.

Pros

Overall the software's features are good but I didn't like that it demanded running on its own dedicated server.

Cons

When we expanded into personal injury, those lawyers recommended it to us. But we found it was too expensive, too complex and did not work the way we needed.

Pros

Getting around it is very easy and I can handle everything digitally without needing to rely on paper-based processes.

Cons

Creating an invoice takes quite a few steps and the system tends to run slowly.

Pros

At first it took some effort to figure out but once everything clicked, it turned into a very user friendly time and billing system. It handles all the core tasks well and gives you what you need for financial reporting and analysis.

Cons

Getting started was tough especially since this was my first time working with software like this. The interface felt confusing at first and took a while to adjust to. That said once I learned where everything was, saw how well it all connected and understood the workflow, it ended up becoming a tool I relied on a lot.

Pros

It is really easy to enter billing charges, codes, notes and statements.

Cons

There is not anything major I dislike. however the customer service was occasionally slower than I would have liked.

Pros

The time-entry feature is really easy to locate and use.

Cons

What annoys me most is trying to determine whether an invoice has actually been paid or not!

Pros

It does offer a lot of functionality though honestly there is not much more to say beyond that.

Cons

Using it involves too many unnecessary steps and extra data entry in a lot of areas, when it could be simplified and still work just fine. The reports also come out in a format that is basically useless for management in Excel and there is no real workaround for that. Even basic tools like spell check and a custom dictionary are missing or awkward to deal with.

Pros

Logging time is short. The system is self-explanatory, user friendly and simple to navigate for daily time entry.

Cons

There are moments when it slows down while I'm trying to enter my daily time which can be frustrating.

Pros

With Aderant, I can see all attorney work such as hours and billing in one screen. And though it took some time to learn but now it's easy to use.

Cons

Important data is hard to find. Also it is not user-friendly as I often click through many pages to get what I need. Reports are also frustrating to run and searching for clients or timekeepers feels messy and disorganized.