Actionstep vs LegalClaw

Actionstep is legal practice management software that organizes work from client intake through case resolution. Its Practice Management offering includes matter and case management, intake and forms, document management and assembly, a client portal, workflow automation, billing, and trust accounting. Legal Accounting can be purchased separately or added to practice management; it covers general ledger, banking and reconciliation, accounts payable and receivable, payments, trust accounting, and financial reporting, and is available only in North America. Add-on modules include Builder for document templates and matter-data population, Capture for intake forms and document collection, Trace for activity capture and AI-drafted time narratives, and Acumen for dashboards, metrics, and AI-powered questions and explanations. Actionstep connects with Microsoft Office 365 and provides access to integrations. Its mobile app is available for iOS and Android. Security includes AWS, multi-factor authentication, and single sign-on; the company completed a SOC 2 Type 2 examination. Pricing is on request, and no free plan or free tier is stated.

LegalClaw is free, open-source legal practice management for ERPClaw. It covers matter management, time and billing, IOLTA trust accounting, documents, court calendars, conflict checking, and bar or continuing-education compliance. The project describes 100 actions across seven domains. Matter tools handle client intake, lifecycle tracking, parties, summaries, and portfolios. Billing records time in six-minute increments, expenses, invoices, payments, and receivables aging. Trust accounting supports IOLTA and escrow accounts, deposits, disbursements, transfers, reconciliation, and interest distribution, with balance-sufficiency checks on every disbursement. Document functions include versioning, court filing, archival, and full-text search. Calendars track court dates, statutes of limitations, reminders, and critical deadlines. Conflict and compliance tools cover name searches, waivers, reports, bar admissions, and CLE tracking. It requires ERPClaw core, installs with `install-module legalclaw`, and uses ERPClaw integration for sales invoices. The project is GPL v3.