CounselLink vs Tabs3

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Our analysts compared CounselLink vs Tabs3 based on data from our 400+ point analysis of Legal Software, user reviews and our own crowdsourced data from our free software selection platform.

CounselLink Software Tool

Product Basics

LexisNexis CounselLink is a cloud-based software that helps corporate departments and law firms manage their legal operations. It offers a range of features to manage matters, invoices, vendors and reports in one place. Its powerful analytical and reporting capabilities enable teams to make data-driven decisions and optimize performance, resulting in better client outcomes.

Centralizing matter and invoice management helps reduce administrative burdens and focus on higher-value work. With the ability to track budgets and spending, businesses can better allocate resources and mitigate the risk of overages.
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Tabs3 is an integrated suite of solutions designed for law firms to streamline their entire matter lifecycle. Practices can opt and pay for only the modules they need, which include billing, practice management, general ledger, accounts payable and trust accounting. It requires minimal implementation and can be deployed either in the cloud or on-premises. It has an array of ways to review important metrics, track billable hours, send bills and get paid faster.

In addition to modifying account structures with ease, users can stay on top of their cash flows by tracking and resolving invoices, bank statements, deposits and payments. It improves firm-wide monitoring with dashboards to visualize historical data and flexible reporting on productivity, profitability, billing and other aspects. Users can access it on the go from any device and use numerous integrations to enrich it.
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Product Insights

  • Comprehensive Analytics and Reporting: Legal departments can analyze expense data and make informed decisions. Generate reports on various metrics, including spend by matter type, matter status and vendor.
  • Robust Collaboration Tools: Collaborate with vendors, outside counsel and other stakeholders in a secure and centralized platform. Ensure that everyone is on the same page and can stay up-to-date.
  • Enhanced Matter Management: Track progress, store documents and manage deadlines. Automate workflows and provide alerts to ensure nothing falls through the cracks.
  • Optimized Spend Management: Gain visibility into legal fees, enforce billing guidelines and optimize billing rates. Identify cost-saving opportunities and get real-time budget tracking capabilities.
  • Efficient Vendor Management: Manage vendors, including law firms and other legal service providers. Track vendor performance, enforce service level agreements and ensure compliance with billing guidelines.
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  • Expedited Billing: Boost cash flow with multiple payment modes, mobile payment options, and customizable statements and payment plans.  
  • Streamlined Data Management: Quickly find legal matters, records and case information with electronic data organization and easy-to-use search tools. 
  • Sync With Court Rules: Seamlessly sync the legal calendar to Federal and State-based jurisdictional rules with affiliations to ALA and ABA. 
  • All-in-One Connectivity: Stay connected regardless of the mode of deployment using a mobile app. 
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  • Work Management:
    • Collect and Organize: Use legal requests to establish a centralized work intake source that meets specific requirements. Create custom fields that capture information unique to the department's needs. Configure the homepage to focus on what's most important and organize documents in a central repository.
    • Track, Audit and Report: The work tasks feature helps manage deadlines and maintain compliance with processes. Use the budgets module to plan legal spending and save costs. Assess the work status of law firms and internal staff and prevent any circumvention of business rules using audit trails. Get 80+ standard reports to analyze work and customize reports to organize and present data.
  • Financial Management:
    • Paper Invoice Processing: Capture all expenses with invoicing service. Convert all non-LEDES format invoices, including PDFs and paper, into electronic invoices.
    • Smart Review: Examine and categorize all line-item invoice charges with proprietary AI-enabled technology to comply with billing guidelines. Save time and money with automatic error flagging and adjustments.
    • Invoice Review: Automate invoice processing, audit electronic and non-electronic invoices, and include non-CounselLink reviewers with external invoice review.
    • Advanced Accounting: Manage budget, discounts, accruals and reserves to stay on track within preset thresholds.
    • Allocations: Easily assign invoice spend to one or more accounts by setting up allocation codes and applying allocation templates to any matter.
  • Vendor Management:
    • Vendor Profiles and Scorecards: Use law firm profiles and scorecards to gain comprehensive insights into the firm's performance. Analyze legal spending, matter distribution and timekeeper-level billing with visualizations. Rate and score law firms for better vendor selection.
    • Fee Structure: Invoice for legal work by negotiating fee agreements with law firms. Be equipped to handle all types of alternative fee arrangements.
    • Diversity Survey: Assess the vendor's diverse talent pool. Collect and track diversity information to increase accountability.
    • Rate Analysis: Compare and evaluate performance by establishing, monitoring and enforcing timekeeper rates. Visualize historical time comparisons for better insights.
    • Billing Guidelines: Simplify onboarding by creating and publishing billing practice documentation and allow law firms to accept before invoicing.
  • Contract Lifecycle Management: Draft better contracts, expedite authoring, streamline negotiation and analyze executed contracts. Manage all contract-related work with one tool, featuring real-time collaboration, workflow automation and actionable analytics.
  • Analytics:
    • Interactive Dashboards: Optimize the user interface by tailoring dashboards with relevant metrics.
    • Reports: Use standard and customized reports to make strategic decisions supporting organizational goals.
    • Benchmarking Database: Evaluate fair legal rates and compare department performance.
    • Trends Report: Gain insights for better decision-making and analyze legal market dynamics over time with guiding metrics and expert contributions.
  • Legal Hold: Automate and simplify legal hold obligations by identifying, notifying and communicating with document custodians. Create an auditable record and maintain control with customized tools and templates for communication, surveys, reports and web pages.
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  • Financial Management: Manage firm financials with the end-to-end accounting portal. Interact directly with the billing module to issue checks, print financial statements, operate trust accounts and perform year-end reconciliations. 
    • General Ledger: Balance operating and trust accounts with the general ledger tool. 
    • Accounts Payable: Track all incoming and outgoing transactions for a holistic view of firm financials. Monitor aging receivables, cash requirements, vendor payments, recurring payments and voided checks. 
    • Trust Accounting: Automatically log all transactions made from trust accounts. Reconcile deposits and withdrawals and print checks from the client’s trust fund. 
    • Integrations: Supports integrations with Tabs3 Billing Software, Tabs3 Accounts Payable Software and Tabs3 General Ledger Software. 
    • 1099 Forms: Combine payment disbursements to vendors and trust account payees with the 1099 form. Always maintain compliance with IRS regulations. 
  • Matter Management: View a quick feed of matter-specific information like contacts, communication history, case notes, documentation and invoices directly into the dashboard. Verify the billing summary of matter information and issue invoices against unpaid bills. 
  • Calendar Management: Switch between firm-wide and personal calendar views to get a 360-degree picture of firm obligations. Schedule individual and/or collective appointments and color-code them based on associated staff and activities. 
    • Deadline Checks: Automatically check new calendar entries against existing events for scheduling conflicts. Set up custom federal, state, county and jurisdiction-based rules for detecting deadlines. 
    • Notifications: Notify individual or collective staff members about important events and hearings. 
    • Recurring Meetings: Automate calendar entries for recurring events that take place at both regular and irregular time intervals. 
    • Planning Templates: Prepare sequential events with calendar planning templates. Use event-based or time-based triggers for court rules and collection follow-ups. 
  • Conflict Checks: Check all potential clients for conflicts of interest. Investigate legal documents, emails, matters and attachments for partial and/or phonetic matches to the conflict checking tool. 
  • Email Management: Integrate with Microsoft Outlook to automatically track time spent on writing and reviewing client emails. Add emails directly to client files, perform conflict checks and sort by associated matter. 
  • Time and Expense Tracking: Track every minute of time spent on client activities and correspondence with multiple built-in timers. Interact directly with the billing portal to issue invoices directly from time entries. Set custom billing and increment rates for individual clients. 
  • Document Management: Organize legal documents by connecting them to associated matters and clients. Import scanned documents using the PaperPort extension. Track various changes made to a document across previous versions. 
    • Smart Documents: Autofill common data fields with information already in the firm database. Automatically issue invoices for any document-related activity. 
  • Workflow Automation: Engineer custom workflow patterns with up to 10 tasks including emails, communication, documentation, appointments and more. Assign tasks to staff members with trigger-based alerts. 
  • Controlled Access: Restrict access to sensitive documents with permission-based accounts and customizable viewership controls. Permit edits for specific data fields. 
  • Backup and Recovery: Secure firm information with regular backups. Export firm data at any time in case of power outages or network failures. 
  • eNote: Send secure messages in real time with the built-in messaging portal. Send appointment links and reminders along with text messages. 
  • Billing: Use the billing portal to directly transform time entries into billable hours. Prepare tailored bills with quick access to client contacts, payment history, write-offs, WIP, account balance and more. 
    • Billing Flexibility: Process payments faster with flexible billing methods. Issue contingency, retainer, hourly, flat fee or threshold-based bills and design custom rate charts for specific clients. 
    • Online Payments: Accept credit card transactions for expedited payments. Use the Tabs3Pay tool to email online payment links along with client invoices. Supports integration for LawPay and ProPay. 
    • Reports: Generate built-in reports for greater insights into revenue, important clients, receivables, compensation, productivity, profitable practice areas and more. 
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Product Ranking

#47

among all
Legal Software

#49

among all
Legal Software

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Analyst Rating Summary

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Analyst Ratings for Functional Requirements Customize This Data Customize This Data

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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 96 69 83 69 64 78 67 100 0 25 50 75 100
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Analyst Ratings for Technical Requirements Customize This Data Customize This Data

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User Sentiment Summary

Good User Sentiment 12 reviews
Excellent User Sentiment 355 reviews
76%
of users recommend this product

CounselLink has a 'good' User Satisfaction Rating of 76% when considering 12 user reviews from 1 recognized software review sites.

93%
of users recommend this product

Tabs3 has a 'excellent' User Satisfaction Rating of 93% when considering 355 user reviews from 4 recognized software review sites.

3.8 (12)
3.8 (27)
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4.7 (160)
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3.9 (2)

Awards

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Tabs3 stands above the rest by achieving an ‘Excellent’ rating as a User Favorite.

User Favorite Award

Synopsis of User Ratings and Reviews

Intuitive Interface: CounselLink is recognized for its user-friendly design, which simplifies navigation and overall user experience, even for those who are new to the platform.
Streamlined Billing: The platform streamlines the process of generating and managing client invoices, allowing for easy upload of billing entries and linking relevant client and matter details.
Invoice Tracking: CounselLink provides transparency into the invoice status and payment process, allowing users to track their invoices and anticipate payment timelines.
Client-Matter Linking: Users can easily link client information to specific matters, ensuring quick and convenient access to relevant data.
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Intuitive Interface: Users highlight the user-friendliness of Tabs3, making it easy to navigate and manage legal tasks.
Comprehensive Features: Tabs3 is praised for its wide array of features, covering various aspects of legal practice management, from time tracking and billing to document management.
Robust Reporting: Users appreciate the detailed reporting capabilities of Tabs3, allowing for insightful analysis of financial and operational data.
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Slow Performance: Users have reported experiencing slow loading times and delays between actions within the CounselLink platform, impacting productivity and user experience.
Time and Expense Entry Challenges: Some users find the process of entering time and expenses cumbersome and not as user-friendly as other features, potentially leading to inaccuracies or frustration for legal professionals.
Customization Limitations: Tailoring CounselLink to specific business processes or integrating it with certain existing systems may require additional coding or professional services, potentially adding to the overall cost and implementation timeline.
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Limited Customization: Users have expressed frustration over the inflexibility of certain features, particularly when it comes to document assembly. For instance, one user found it cumbersome that they couldn't easily modify the formatting of numbered clauses within a legal document.
Learning Curve: Legal professionals transitioning from older software versions have reported a steep learning curve with Tabs3. The new interface and features require time and effort to master, impacting productivity during the transition phase.
Integration Challenges: Some users have encountered difficulties integrating Tabs3 with other essential software used in their legal practice. This lack of seamless integration can disrupt workflows and lead to inefficiencies.
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Can CounselLink link arms with your legal team to boost efficiency and transparency? User reviews from the past year suggest a qualified "yes," but with some caveats. CounselLink garners praise for its user-friendly interface, with reviewers consistently highlighting its intuitive design and ease of navigation, even for those new to legal software. This accessibility is crucial for legal teams who need to quickly adapt to new technologies without extensive training. Users also appreciate CounselLink's robust billing management capabilities, particularly its ability to streamline invoice creation, submission, and tracking, which significantly reduces administrative burden and accelerates payment cycles. However, some users have reported that CounselLink can feel sluggish at times, with slow loading speeds impacting productivity. This is a recurring complaint that LexisNexis should address to ensure a seamless user experience. Additionally, while CounselLink's integration with eBillingHub is generally viewed positively, some users find the need for separate websites for certain clients cumbersome and counterintuitive. This fragmentation of access can lead to confusion and disrupt the otherwise streamlined workflow that CounselLink aims to provide. CounselLink's strengths lie in its user-friendly design, efficient billing features, and comprehensive reporting capabilities, making it a valuable asset for legal teams seeking to enhance operational efficiency and gain better visibility into their financial data. However, the occasional slow performance and the somewhat disjointed experience with client-specific websites are areas that LexisNexis should address to solidify CounselLink's position as a top-tier legal management solution. Overall, CounselLink is best suited for legal departments and law firms of all sizes looking to streamline their operations and improve financial transparency, particularly those who prioritize ease of use and efficient billing processes.

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Users rave about Tabs3's robust document management and search capabilities, highlighting its ability to centralize all case-related information, making it easy to find any document quickly. They also appreciate the comprehensive financial tools, including billing, trust accounting, and reporting features, which streamline financial operations and ensure compliance. However, some users find the interface dated and not as intuitive as newer cloud-based solutions like Clio or MyCase. They also point out that the on-premise deployment option, while offering more control, can be more demanding to maintain than cloud-based alternatives. Despite these drawbacks, users consistently praise Tabs3's deep feature set and its long-standing reputation for reliability, making it a solid choice for firms prioritizing stability and comprehensive functionality over a modern user interface. It's particularly well-suited for larger, established firms with complex needs and the IT infrastructure to support an on-premise solution.

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