What is Gravity Legal?
Gravity Legal is a legal technology company that provides an alternative payment and financial management system for law firms and non-lawyers who service lawyers. The company provides the legal industry the first purpose-built, regulatory compliant, and institutionally-backed client money management payment platform for law firms and their service providers, that includes trust accounts, payments, accounting, cash handling, escrow, and credit options . Gravity Legal was started in 2016 by lawyers to independently provide specialized legal finance systems, which are intended to be a paradigm shift from law firm trust accounting systems. The system has addressed law firm security issues, improved cash flow from receivables, reduced overhead expense, and enhanced the client experience. The company was founded by lawyers to provide greater innovation in the industry where financial systems have underperformed. All of the funding received to date by Gravity Legal, including the most recent round, has come from the legal sector.
Gravity Legal’s Core Features
Gravity Legal sets itself apart by featuring an array of standard integrations for the legal industry. The software is cloud-based so clients can connect to Gravity Legal quickly and easily. From a general overview of the company’s features to specific details on what makes it unique, Gravity Legal offers a host of benefits for firms big and small. One of the standout features is payment processing. Gravity Legal works with all major credit cards and eChecks. Payment plans are as easy as one click for the client and there is no security cost to the firm. Additional fees go directly to Gravity Legal. Gravity Legal integrates seamlessly with Clio, Practice Panthers, Rocket Matter, MyCase, LawPay and more. It also includes a full suite of reporting tools, so a firm can accurately monitor the financial health of the business at all times. Reports provide clear insight on what client invoices are overdue and which accounts need additional attention. Client fund management for trust accounts is another benefit of Gravity Legal. Being able to automatically receive, hold and disburse funds from a IOLTA owned by the attorney provides peace of mind to customers that their needs are being handled with care. Other features include PCI compliance, customized dashboard, notifications and reminders, mobile capabilities and the ability to process international transactions quickly and easily. All features work together to put clients at ease while helping the firm maintain cash flow.
Advantages for Law Firms
Gravity Legal enables operations efficiency improvements in four key areas: Clients can complete the retainer and funding process online, allowing lawyers to focus on legal work. No need for meetings and conference calls or the back-and-forth of faxing/signing of agreements, nor other time-consuming and laborious activities. Lawyers can practice more cost-effectively and efficiently by focusing on high-value work and passing billing and collection activities to Gravity Legal. They no longer need to spend hours checking payment status, collecting payments from clients, or answering business office questions of clients. The business office of law firms no longer need to dedicate the time and expense to maintaining vendor relationships with banks, merchant services companies (card processors), and other third parties and vendors. They benefit from the scale and specialization that Gravity Legal provides to support law firms in meeting financial compliance requirements. Law firms benefit from the most sophisticated technology in the financial services industry, while relieving the business office of law firms from vendor maintenance, development, regulatory concerns, cybersecurity, system vulnerabilities and other issues that would otherwise distract from their primary focus and that of law firm attorneys.
Interface and User Experience
User experience is an underappreciated aspect of technology products and platforms. In many cases, it is the linchpin between success and failure for the legal operations professional or practice group as a whole. Understanding how a technology product impacts ease of use and direct experience with the platform is critical before making a decision on whether to purchase a product. In the case of Gravity Legal, the user experience and interface experience seem to be at the very heart of what the company was seeking to provide. At the same time, the product has far reaching benefits beyond just the user experience.
The Gravity Legal platform design strikes the right balance between functionality and simplicity. The multi-tab design provides a natural flow to visual legal teams without overwhelming the user. The Control panel gives users a 360-degree view, regardless of where they are on the platform. The complete view makes it easy to organize collections and client care programs. From a user perspective, the ability to view multiple accounts on one screen, create complex invoicing for clients, communicate directly with clients, arrange installment agreements, and monitor collections all in one place is refreshing and useful. The billing tab allows for easy discussions with the client on any invoice issues. The Client Marketing Tab is a place to provide proactive account management. It tracks accounts that have gone delinquent and other issues. From a designer’s perspective, Gravity Legal has a clean interface that is easy to read and understand. It is efficient without being busy.
Finally, Gravity Legal understands that highly effective customer service is a critical element for a successful user experience. The right technology provider will invest the time and effort in training you to use the product. A product will not truly be useful unless the requisite training and ongoing support are provided. This is particularly true when implementing a solution across a legal team. The company has taken the customer support aspect to heart and offers a guaranteed response time for inquiries about issues.
Comparing Gravity Legal to Legacy Financial Tools
Law firms have spent decades using the same accounting systems. Although many of these systems are solid enough at tracking their expenses, they’re not designed to handle the specialized accounting needs of law firms. Since they weren’t built for the requirements of law firms, these systems have several drawbacks:
Ø They do not easily integrate with a law firm’s practice management or case management platforms
Ø They do not easily provide billing and accounting support for payments in advance of services
Ø They do not easily manage client payments made through various sources
Ø They are not designed to track trust and retainer account balances
Gravity legal takes a highly flexible approach to financial transactions, giving clients more ways to pay their invoices, and offering them more ways to submit prepayments. By harnessing the power of smart technology, Gravity Legal ensures a seamless connection between payment processing and case management. Because Gravity Legal is a partner to billing systems like Clio, your case information is available within the Gravity Legal web application . There is no need to switch between applications to check payment status, pending invoices or paid invoices. Everything is in one place. Even better, Gravity Legal can auto-update your case files in a bi-directional way that reflects payment information in the billing system. Also, Gravity Legal keeps a consolidated record of transactions linked to a specific case so you can quickly view the entire financial picture, up to and including when payments have been applied.
For example, if you are in Clio, viewing a specific case file, and you want to confirm that a prepayment has been received, you need to login to Gravity Legal, and click around to get the answers you need. With Gravity Legal, we display the case directly inside the Gravity Legal app so you do not need to leave Clio to retrieve the information you are looking for. It’s all right there!
We are proud of how Gravity Legal works seamlessly with most practice management and time/case management tools. Our partners include Clio, Zoho, CosmoLex and TimeSolv, with more integrations coming rapidly. We are shaping the way clients and law firms think about the web of their financial dealings.
Enhancing Client Experience
Client experience enhancement: one of Gravity Legal’s important features is the frictionless transaction process it provides between clients and your firm. We will facilitate the deposit of retainers and trust-related deposits directly into the appropriate account, and have a process for disbursement that has built-in triggers. This ensures that funds will only be disbursed when the requisite conditions are met. Gravity Legal facilitates flat or hourly fees, section 125, retainer deposits, retainers and trust deposits. The process of documenting and verifying these transactions is what allows Gravity Legal to provide assurance to firms and clients that the system is secure and trustworthy. Gravity Legal’s feeder companies, Gravity Payments and Gravity Workforce, each further enhance trust in the process. Gravity Payments is PCI complaint, which is the Payment Card Information security standard. This means that all sensitive data and credit card or electronic checks are encrypted and extremely difficult to steal. Gravity Workforce screens their checks through an industry-leading service, which ensures that there are highly accurate data for all checks.
How to Get Started with Gravity Legal
In order to implement Gravity Legal, law firms should follow a step-by-step process, as follows:
Setup Phase: During the initial setup phase, Gravity Legal will work with the firm to collect the information necessary to get the system up and running. This includes basic information about the firm, who will be using the system and administrative and backup information.
Integration Phase: Gravity Legal will schedule time with your IT team to facilitate implementation and configuration of the system within the firm’s existing technology architecture. Gravity Legal provides a very powerful, yet easy-to-use Application Programming Interface (API) that allows firms to integrate Gravity Legal data into existing systems, whether those systems are cloud based or on-prem.
Training Phase: Gravity Legal will provide highly interactive training sessions where your team has the opportunity to learn all the features of the system in a hands-on manner. Training sessions are scheduled based on the firm’s needs and can even take place over a period of time as opposed to a single session.
Reviews and Case Studies
BakerHostetler recognized in 2017 Law360 Law Firm Power Rankings as one of the most innovative law firms and named a standout in the category for "Innovation in Team Achievement" with its litigation group and Gravity Legal.
Paul Hastings integrates Gravity Legal with its systems to streamline customer onboarding and trust management.
"Gravity Legal makes it easier for lawyers who work with clients on their fees to manage their accounts, and we have grown the number of clients for which we provide monthly statements . The platform also allows law firms to create interest-bearing IOLTA accounts in every state where we practice." — Jennifer Hart, Director of Finance and Admin, Paul Hastings
"The portal provided to our clients is easy to navigate and allows them to transfer securely the documents they need to send us. The benefit for the law firm is the ability to more closely manage the funds in trust for the client, especially those in transition to the attorney’s operating account." — Paul Hastings