My Rocket Matter Demo and Impressions

UPDATE: Please note that this blog post was written in August, 2008 (years ago). Many of the critiques in this post may no longer be relevant today, as Rocket Matter has continuously improved its service and drastically expanded its features.  Notably, Rocket Matter now offers document management including integration with Dropbox and Evernote (as far as I know, Rocket Matter was an industry first with both of these integrations). Also, it is worth noting that my views on the cost-prohibitiveness of Rocket Matter have changed, and I currently use a monthly-fee cloud based practice management solution the cost of which is competitive with Rocket Matter. Obviously, my objections to the web based nature of the service are less relevant now since internet connectivity is even more ubiquitous and there has been a tidal shift toward the acceptance of cloud based practice management tools. I would encourage you to try it out for yourself. 

Recently, I had the opportunity to have Larry Port from Rocket Matter give me an online/telephone demonstration of the web-based law office management and billing solution.  Much has already been said about Rocket Matter by my fellow legal Mac bloggers, so I will not duplicate their efforts.

I was impressed by the streamlined interface and ease of use.

Unfortunatlely, however, there are a few significant downsides which make it likely Rocket Matter won't be an ideal solution for us.

No Document Management. Unfortunately, Rocket Matter does not currently offer a way to manage your documents. For me, this is a required function. I don't like to have to have too many applications running at the same time. As of now, I have one of the fastest Macs available, but that won't be the case in a couple of years. It's not really fair to fault Rocket Matter for this, as this is just something it simply doesn't do. But, for the kind of cashola required for the web-app, I need it to do more...which leads me to my next point...

Cost Prohibitive. I found that Rocket Matter is just too expensive for our needs. Even with the special rate given to early adopters, you have to pay $50/attorney and $15/support staff. For our firm this would cost us easily over $1,000 per year, every year. I explained to Larry on the telephone that, while I believe their product has a lot of value, that is a lot of money to be guaranteeing to spend every year on software. Even if you went with high end products like FileMaker Pro, Daylight, Quickbooks Pro, etc, you're not likely to spend $1,000 total, and that cost is not recurring. Surely, there will be upgrade costs for these products, but they are not going to be anywhere near $1k/year. Of course, Rocket Matter offers something those big boy products don't - simplicity.

Web-Dependent. I'm not one of those paranoid types about having your information in the cloud. I mean, my email's been up there forever, my calander is web-based (albeit with localized syncing), and using SugarSync, my files are securely stored both locally and online. I am fairly comfortable with stuff being on the web. What I don't like, however, is the fact that I'm bound to the web with Rocket Matter. So far as I can tell, there's no offline access. Although I am rarely without an internet connection, I am without often enough for this to be a problem for me. Today, in fact, our internet went out at work today. I almost didn't know what to do with myself! After the initial bouts of sweating and shaking, I called my sponsor and he told me to go to a meeting and take it one day at a time. Thank God elixer of life internet came back after about a half hour.

(Hint: Relevant Joke is at 3:25ish to 4:00ish)



Notwithstanding all of these things that will ultimately prevent our firm from taking the Rocket-plunge (for the time-being, anyway - sorry Larry), I have the utmost respect for this outfit who has been building a great product designed for lawyers. Rocket Matter doesn't seem to be for us, but they are definitely changing the game by creating a solution that is simple yet powerful - something that has been lacking in law office management software, period - PC and Mac. I wish nothing but success on the folks at Rocket Matter, because regardless of whether we ever use it, their innovations will drive the industry to compete. And competition is teh awesome!!1!