In this article, I’ll review my experience with CASEPeer since switching from Microsoft Outlook contacts. You’ll hear the pros and cons about CASEPeer. This includes around 30 changes that they should make to make it better and less frustrating.
In February 2020, I began using CASEPeer as my case management solution.
First, let me give you a quick background about my firm to give you some context. I am a personal injury lawyer in Miami-Dade County who handles cases throughout the entire state of Florida. I mainly handle injury claims for car accidents, slip and falls and other general liability accidents.
My law firm consists of myself and one paralegal. In addition, someone helps with me some accounting.
Great. I dealt with the Joe Zanta. He was knowledgeable and friendly. He did not pressure me to buy CASEPeer.
Joe is the type of person that I’d hire if I needed another employee. My paralegal (Jenny) dealt with Joe at her last personal injury law firm when they had Needles (on an in office server).
She loved Needles. Jenny often compares the Needles (server version) to CASEPeer and tells me that I would have loved Needles.
Needles merged with Trialworks. Needles was also late to get into the cloud. And the fact that Ransonware hit Trialworks did not make me wild about switching to either Trialworks or Needles. In addition, some personal injury attorneys recommended that I stay away from Trialworks.
Yes, I’m happy that I made the switch. Before CASEPeer, my law firm used Microsoft (MS) Outlook as my “case management” tool. I shared my contacts with my paralegal. The notes section is where we recorded the outcome of phone calls in the case. We also kept some of the insurance adjuster information there.
However, she experienced countless issues of Outlook “Not responding” when she would try to open my contacts.
Additionally, we could not each update a contact at the same time. And sometimes notes would disappear. This would require me to log into my online Outlook backup to recover the notes that had vanished. All of that was way too time consuming.
Fortunately, CASEPeer has solved both of these issues. CASEPeer allows us to update a case at the same time.
It has many time saving features including, but not limited to, built in texting. When you get documents and photos texted from a client, it adds the photos to the “case” automatically. That said, CASEPeer still has 3 major problems with texting that I discuss further below.
CP also keeps each file organized like (I assume) many other case management programs.
If a law firm has more than one employee (in total), they should not use Outlook to save client information. Even if a personal injury lawyer does not have any employees, he or she should still get a case management system like CASEPeer (or another one).
That said, CASEPeer has tremendous room for improvement. I talk about this in detail further below. There are countless things that frustrate me with it. For this reason, I will likely switch to a better case management system in the next 12 months. I need to spend the time looking for a better solution.
Yes, it’s pretty intuitive and not overwhelming. If any personal injury attorney does not have a case management solution, it’s a no-brainer to get one. I waited way too long to get one.
CASEPeer has a good understanding of the factors that affect a personal injury case’s value. As a result, it has check boxes for events like emergency room, ambulance, and gaps in treatment. We all know that insurance companies pay more money for pain and suffering if you take an ambulance to the hospital.
In my opinion, one of the biggest cons is that you can’t enter a name and have it search for any type of contact with that name.
For example, you have to select “client” in order to search with a client with the last name “Smith”. You can’t just enter “Smith” into the general search area and have CASEPeer search with anyone with the name Smith.
Another con is that it takes a while for CASEPeer to let other users see a new Case that was created. If another user wants to view a new case immediately, they have to go to the “Intake” tab. This is inefficient and wastes my time.
Possibly. As you may know, many people are unsure of whether to get an attorney after a car accident.
With CASEPeer, you can quickly send an electronic signup form to the client using Hellosign. You do have to pay a separate fee for Hellosign. I don’t use Hellosign because Adobe sign is much cheaper.
Also, CASEPeer’s texting feature will allow you to quickly get texts from the prospective client. If you’re like me, you want to immediately see photos of the incident scene or amount of car damage. And people love to text. This includes potential clients.
I wish that CASEPeer could also let clients send us videos. It does not allow this.
Yes. Since I am a small law firm, I pay $55/user. If CASEPeer incorporated all of my recommendations, I’d be willing to pay a reasonably higher price. I’d also be more productive and happier.
My paralegal looked at Smart Advocate videos on the internet. However, she thought it was too much for our needs. She thought that is also seemed more geared towards mass torts and referring cases to other lawyers.
I considered Smokeball but I was weary of the fact that it requires a download that only works on Windows and not Macs.
I looked at Litify but it was like $50,000 or so a year minimum. This was cost prohibitive for my firm.
Several years ago, I used Clio for a short period of time. However, it was not designed for personal injury law firms and caused a duplicate contacts issue in Microsoft Outlook.
Although it’s not a personal injury case management system, I know an insurance agent who swears by Zoho One. It can be built out for personal injury (or any industry). I told him about CASEPeer and he told me that if I used Zoho One, I would love it.
Basically, my paralegal gave CASEPeer the best review. So that’s the one demo that I took.
How is CASEPeer’s Support?
I give CASEPeer’s support 5 stars. The support reps in chat and over the phone are friendly and helpful. They’re the type of employees that I would happily hire at my firm.
I have dealt with Randy Yoder, who is a gentleman and very knowledgeable with CASEPeer’s functionality. He is the type of person that I would hire at my law firm.
Randall and the other chat support rep(s) are willing to take my suggestions to the appropriate party. However, I don’t believe that CP has implemented most of my suggestions even though it has been several months since I made most of them.
That said, CASEPeer support is are always friendly and do not seem bothered when I contact them.
CASEPeer (CP) support reps are also readily available for phone calls during business hours (Monday – Friday, 6:30am – 5:30pm PST).
Support is not a problem with CASEPeer. As you will see in a moment, CASEPeer’s issue is that it has not implemented most of the numerous suggestions that I’ve made to make it more user friendly.
How can CASEPeer improve?
CasePeer has many time saving features. However, it can improve in countless areas. Here are some of my suggestions. CASEPeer should:
1a. Allow other users on CP to see notes in real time. There was a 2 or so minute delay. I think CP may have fixed this. This is frustrating, and does not help when working remotely. Also, CP should add an instant messaging feature.
1b. Add the case name to the subject line when sending emails to the client using CP. Apparently, Cloudlex does this.
1c. Create a note when a user adds an event to the calendar.
2. Incorporate with Outlook for merging the relevant case info into body/content of an email. (Apparently Smokeball does this.)
3. Incorporate with Ring Central so that I can make and receive calls within Casepeer. This way, the client/adjuster/witness information can appear on the screen when calls are made or received.
4. Work with Adobe sign for electronic signature.
5. Work with the Gravity forms plugin on WordPress.
6. Immediate update when we create a new case for other uses to get notified. It shouldn’t make me assign my paralegal to a role in the case (since she is my only employee and is by default assigned to every case.) Also, there is currently a 1 minute or so for her to get notified of the new case after I assign her to it.
Thus, my paralegal has to waste time instant messaging me (to notify me of a new intake) when we have a new caller on the phone. And the instant messaging is through another program, not CP.
What other improvements can CASEPeer make?
7. Allow more than one statute of limitations (SOL) in a case. Florida has a different SOL for UM and BIL claims. I also wish CP had a SOL for Medpay claims.
8. It would be better if the Open Cases amount reflected only cases that we’ve signed up, not new intakes. I wish that it had a separate tab for intakes.
9. Under certain items, allow us to increase the size of the field. This includes Prior vehicle accident, prior workers comp, pre existing condition. (Similar to how we can increase the box size of the description).
10. Add $20K CSL as an insurance limit. This is Uber’s uninsured motorist coverage limit in certain situations (in Florida).
I will gladly update this CASEPeer review if, and when, CP makes any of the above improvements.
What other improvements can CASEPeer make?
12. Add a box after ERISA (in health insurance) that says “Self-funded” or, in the alternative, “Insured plan”. That is often a huge factor in determining the negotiating strength with an ERISA plan.
13. Under client’s auto insurance, since CP is a plaintiff’s program, it should say “uninsured/underinsured motorist coverage” instead of “bodily injury” for the coverage limit and adjuster name. As a plaintiff’s lawyer, it is much more likely that we will be dealing with UM/UIM that our client’s own bodily injury liability coverage. Although having both would be great.
14. A lot of insurance companies used third party administrators (TPA) to handle their claims. It would be really beneficial if CP would allow us to enter both the TPA and the actual insurance company. That would allow us to keep track of insurance companies.
15. Allow a case to link another linked case’s health insurance info
16. There are some tabs or pages that I go to, and I wish they had a description box or some box where I could add additional info.
17. Implement my recommendations. This is a major issue with CASEPeer.
What else can CASEPeer do to improve?
18. When I send an email and bcc CP, or add a note, it should consider that as a “last touched” date for the file. It currently doesn’t consider these activities as “last touched”.
19. When I edit previous injuries, also have it show up as case notes.
20. Ability to keep the CasePeer text number if you leave Casepeer and go to another system.
CASEPeer has 3 major issues with texting
When I send a text to a client, CASEPeer exits the text message screen. I then have to go back to the text message screen. In other words, I can’t have a seamless text conversation with a client. This wastes my time.
Second, if – and when – I leave CASEPeer, I will lose my text number. That is terrible and should possibly be a reason to not sign up with CASEPeer at all. CASEPeer does not let us keep the text number.
Third, when I send a text, my logo shows up in the photos section of CASEPeer. This wouldn’t be terrible if CASEPeer allowed me to delete multiple photos at once. But CASEPeer is in the stone age in this department. Thus, I have to manually delete each photo one by one. And the response time to do this is slow, similar to how the internet was in 2003 or so.
CASEPeer doesn’t allow you to assign adjusters for disability liens
CASEPeer does not let you assign an adjuster for disability liens. This includes short term or long term disability liens. They need to add this feature.
I will update this CASEPeer review if, and when, they make any of these improvements.
It’s difficult to look up attorneys who you have in your contacts
I get contacted by attorneys from Florida and other states each week. They usually want to ask me questions about how Florida personal injury law applies to their clients’ accident.
Before speaking with one of these attorneys, either my paralegal or I will add a contact for the attorney in CASEPeer. I do this, if in the future, I want to ask this attorney questions about how their state law applies in a Florida injury case.
CASEPeer does a fine job at adding the attorney’s information. However, it doesn’t allow me to enter more than one phone number for the contact, which is bad.
It gets much worse:
Since I have several attorney contacts, it is very difficult to find these attorneys at some later point. Let me give you an example.
Let’s say that someone from Georgia is injured in a Florida car accident. They call me to see if I can represent them. If I have a general question about Georgia personal injury law, and I remember that I spoke with a Georgia attorney in the past few months, I may want to call them.
However, CASEPeer does not allow me to sort addresses by state. In other words, it doesn’t have a column where I can filter all the attorneys (in CP) by state. This makes for a bad user experience and wastes time.
Also, if I type a state (e.g. Georgia) in the search box, it doesn’t work. This makes finding the attorney’s contact info very difficult. Also, I have to decrease the zoom down to 67% to see the address field.
The only way for me to find the attorney is to type Ctrl-F (on Windows) and put in GA (the abbreviation for Georgia). I then have to manually search through a six pages of attorney contacts and make guess which attorney it was that I spoke with.
CASEPeer does not allow me to search through the notes in that Attorney’s contact. In 2020, or even if we were in 2005, this is unacceptable. Please fix this CASEPeer. Going into 2021, this is a bad user experience.
How is CASEPeer at implementing my suggestions?
Unfortunately, I give CASEPeer a failing grade at implementing my suggestions. And I have lost almost all hope at them making much needed changes.
They can drastically improve by making what I believe are simple suggestions. Like added a few extra fields in certain tabbed areas.
Conclusion of my CASEPeer review
In sum, I give CasePeer 3.7 out of 5 stars.
I am very happy that I am finally using a case management solution. I decided to use CASEPeer. Without a doubt, it has reduced by stress, made my law firm more efficient.
When you want to settle millions of dollars of car accident claims, you need a case management solution. Otherwise, you won’t be as efficient as other personal injury law firms. And you’ll get clobbered. With over $8 million in personal injury settlements, I need a case management tool.
That said, CASEPeer still has plenty of room for improvement. There is a tremendous amount that they can fix. When you add all the issues together, I frequently get frustrated while using CASEPeer.
In many areas, I feel like CASEPeer is stuck in 2003 or so with its technology. In other areas, CASEPeer does a fine job,.
My suggestion to CASEPeer:
Charge more per user per month if that is what it takes to make these changes immediately. I would pay reasonably more per month if they made these changes.
Unfortunately, I cannot recommend CASEPeer.
Why don’t I give CASEPeer a 5 star review?
I reserve a 5 star review for a case management solution that makes improvements before I even recognize the need for an improvement. For example, I’d give my Iphone, Facebook, and Google products a 5 star review. CASEPeer is far from that.
In addition, I don’t believe that CASEPeer has made most of my suggested changes. This is frustrating.
If there is anything that I did not mention in this CASEPeer review that you want to see, please let me know in the comments below. I will do my best to address it.
We Pay Referral Fees for Personal Injury Cases
Also, I gladly pay referral fees to attorneys in accordance with Florida Bar rules.
Additionally, if you have a client who was injured in Florida, and they reside in your state, I can ethically pay a referral fee. We also represent (and have settled many cases for) people who are injured at a hotel in Florida.
Also, cases where out of state visitors are injured in Florida car accidents are more complex. I’ve settled many of those.
If you are considering referring me a Florida personal injury case, you can complete this simple contact form.
Alternatively, you can call my firm at (305) 661-9977. We answer calls 7 days a week, every day of the year.
Editor’s note: I wrote this article in early 2020 and update it periodically. If anything in this article no longer is accurate, please let me know and I will look at it and revise it if appropriate.