HoudiniESQ Pricing Plan & Cost Guide

The most cost effective way to manage your legal practice from anywhere. HoudiniEsq is one integrated suite of tools that streamlines workflow, increases productivity, helps you to provide better service, and helps build your practice. All with scalable Web-accessibility at its core.

HoudiniESQ

MyCase

Neos

Cloud 

On-premise Install

I manage a high volume bankruptcy practice in California and HoudiniESQ is living up to Mr. Rivera's statement he once made to me, "If you can think of it, we can get HoudiniESQ to do it for you."  So far, I continue to be impressed.  I highly recommend this product for law office management.  Actually, it could be used for virtually any industry.  I used to walk into court with a dolly.  Now I carry only my laptop and can access my entire office from any browser (Explorer, Safari, Mozilla, etc).  Best thing, I can access my office from anywhere in the world with any computer that has an internet connection.  Or, I can access my office through my mobile phone with the HoudiniESQ mobile app.  Way cool.  Don't take my word for it... you can download it free from Houdiniesq.com.  Whether you're a solo practitioner (like I used to be) or a firm with 17 offices and expanding (like we are now), HoudiniESQ can handle the load.  

Doan Law Firm - Bankruptcy Attorneys

The Software is the best value on the market and is very intuitive and full featured.  There is a steep learning curve, however after some time using the software you will find out how amazing this software can be: Whether Organizing your case Documents; Document automation, or Automated Tasks, this software is very robust.  Additionally, the software does some things that other software do not do at all, such as the automatic billing for email function that is built into the Outlook add-in.  I am very happy with this investment.  One suggestion, though, they need to add a quick bill tab to every screen to capture billable time.     

Great Software...Great Learning Curve

Purchased in 2016.  Tried to set it up.  It never synced properly with GSuite and Quickbooks

The product is simply amazing. I often forget that I'm using a web browser. The product has rich easy to use features and the support is top notch.

The product acts and feels like a desktop application. HoudiniESQ seamlessly integrates with Microsoft Office an Quickbooks. It supports calendaring, email management, document management, contact management, document assembly, email and document merges and template creation. Trust accounting, billing and invoicing. I can't list all the features. It does what 30K legal practice managements systems at a fraction of the cost.

A fantastic product ***** 5 Stars

I have used HoudiniESQ for over seven years. The product absolutely works, contrary to what another reviewer said. The challenge is that HoudiniESQ is designed with the very large office in mind, for example, 5,000+ seats. It assumes that the user will have high-end tech support in-house. I guess I am able to use HoudiniESQ successfully largely because decades ago I coded my own law practice management software, and have at least minimal understanding of what must be "under the hood." For that reason, I would only recommend HoudiniESQ to a very large organization that can truly take advantage of the extensive, advanced features or a solo with a coding background.

HoudiniESQ has an extensive feature set, but the documentation is poor

Great value for time tracking program

Hi,

Thank you for your review. You make an excellent point about the Stopwatch feature. We will correct the current behavior to function as it once did. Release 2.0.0.117 will have this feature corrected. This version will also include a Intake button on the desktop which opens a wizard to quickly add a Contact and Matter. Less clicking.

Generally speaking, the software offers everything you want in a practice management software.  It does trust accounting, billing, general practice management, calendaring, e-mailing, and task management.  However, every single one of these features is clunky and slow.  The database constantly breaks and you lose information by clearing your cache and refreshing your page.  The database will, occasionally delete or lose entries on its own but when you call tech support they blame you for it.     Randomly, during updates, the developers decide that you should have been doing something (billing, trust accounting, etc.) their way and change the software to force you to do it that way in the future.  Often, this breaks all of the entries that you put into the system in the past.  For example, if a client had a carry over credit balance from a small overpayment; houdiniesq now doesn't use that in calculating the client's current balance.  Many of the search features simply don't work correctly, particularly when trying to search for an invoice.   You used to be able to print invoices when you generated them.  Now, you have to go search for the invoices, after it is generated and on a search platform that doesn't operate properly, and then print them adding an entirely wasteful extra step to billing.  Really, this software is a complete headache.  The developers don't own up to these problems or offer solutions.  They often don't answer the support phone line and seem to work limited hours.  The price is on the lower end, although better companies are now competitive price-wise.   The only reason I still have this software is because I don't have the time to move all of my data over to new software.

Mediocre Software that the Developers Like to Break and Blame on the User

hey Dustin, thank you for the honest review.

We have been hard at work. A new update is coming that I think you will love. We have over 100 fixes and improvements throughout the App including but not limited to billing, boolean and elastic search support (google like queries against all tables and documents), and so much more.

The update will be available Wed March 8th (tomorrow). You don't have to do anything. The system will autoupdate for you.

If you experience any problems please don't hesitate to contact us Toll Free. We would love to hear form you. Especially since we have implemented many of your very own request Dustin.

If you ever experience a serious issue please contact us and ask to speak with Mark or Frank. They will insure your issue gets resolved asap with this new revision 2.0 Build 12.

Thanks again Dustin.

Overall, I am very satisfied with HoudiniESQ. I have used the one-account free version to manage the cases for my budding law firm for several months now. The program is relatively straight-forward.  Many of the program's parameters can be readily customized, which I appreciate.  Also, it can upgraded to accommodate my growing legal practice. Customer service is generally pretty on-point when it comes resolving occasional issues. Plus, the price can't be beat! For a sole-proprietor like me, the fact that the program is offered free of charge for a one-seat account, was a big selling point when I was opening up my law firm.

However, as with any case management program, there are a few drawbacks to HoudiniESQ that I would like to see corrected. For instance, some minor cleanup may be necessary when it comes to invoices. Presently, I have to limit the length of each task that I enter into HoudiniESQ for any given client because, if the task description is on the longer side, it will be cut off on my invoice, with a "..." appearing at the end. I wish that the program could simply carry over the rest of the task description to the line below. 

Also, there is another invoicing issue. More specifically, if a decide to not charge a client for a task, but still want to have the task appear on the invoice as a "no charge," I have to remember not to open up the task again after I put "0" for the charge about b/c, if I do, HoudiniESQ will automatically refill the charge amount per the going rate for the task, effectively overriding my override. Left unnoticed, this issue can cause MAJOR issues b/c the error tends to spill over to future invoices. Another issue that needs to be addressed has to do with calendaring. I regularly use Google Calendar for organization. But, almost immediately after syncing my HoudiniESQ with my Google Calendar, I had to turn off syncing. The problem was that syncing made all of my case tasks appear on my Google Calendar, regardless of whether the task was an upcoming hearing reminder or a notation that I received and read a letter from an opposing attorney. In effect, my Google Calendar became heavily cluttered, showing tasks that have no reason to be on my calendar. In short, I would like more control over the calendar syncing option and invoicing. I trust that these issues can be fixed in future updates. But, all-in-all, I am very happy with this program and I think that it shows great promise. Thank you, and keep up the good work!

HoudiniESQ: A promising case management program

I used HoudiniEsq for about five months when I first opened my firm, and my experiences with it were a little mixed. The program itself is extremely powerful and has many features which can be used to automate a lot of billing and correspondence tasks... but only if you can figure out how to use them.

Take billing, for example. Some of my clients are the typical "charge an up-front retainer, then bill by the hour" clients, and the billing settings were easily adapted to that use and would produce nice invocies relatively easily. However, a large portion of my clients are billed a flat-fee for my services, but I would still like to provide them with an itemized bill showing the hours I worked on their case. After days of experimenting, trying to make sense of the Houdini support documents, and just generally pulling my hair out I gave up. I couldn't make it work.

Houdini does definitely excel in providing you with every option and feature under the sun. In my months working with it, I never came across a major feature which a competitor offered but Houdini didn't. But again, those features require you to learn how to use them. 

The user interface is, to put it kindly, dated and not very intuitive. The user experience, then, is more about learning Houdini's quirks of placement decisions and icon choice and adapting your use to it. Even after five months of use I still hadn't taught myself Houdini's interface well enough to really describe myself as "comfortable" with it.

But then there's the feature that drew me in to begin with: The cost. For solo firms, Houdini is free of charge. Some people will warn you that you get what you pay for, but with Houdini that's not really true. You do, in fact, get a very full featured very powerful practice management suite for no cost at all to you. But you also get to adapt your working habits to its interface and workflow style, because it will not adapt to you.

I consider myself quite computer savvy, I set up my own phone system for my office, but I still had a heck of a time figuring out how to make Houdini do some of what I knew it could do. So if you're a solo who's attracted by the price, but who doesn't have a lot of time to learn the quirks of the program, then you may be better off picking again.

In the end, my final verdict on it is this: Houdini was, once, on-par with the other practice management options; but Houdini has failed to keep up with the times, and it shows in many ways.

A good program that just hasn't kept up with the time

Affordable, customize-able, multifaceted client management software 

(Full disclosure: I am an INDEPENDENT legal practice management consultant who chooses which products I want to work with... and a HoudiniEsq consultant - among others.)

HoudiniEsq is one of a few legal practice management products that actually gets it: it will do a lot of end-user concepts (custom forms, triggers, document management/generation) better than any other legal practice management product. It also does a lot of the administration concepts (true relational database; updates that work and don't force you to roll back because they don't install properly, flexibility to run in almost any environment) very well too.

HoudiniEsq makes it easy to capture and bill time; it allows firms the ability to create and store data on custom forms that provide the firm with the necessary data in order to function efficiently; it is intuitive and continues to add new features that mean something to the user base, and not just something a marketing guy thought would be great to list on a brochure - heck I don't even know if they have a "marketing guy"!

Mobility is probably it's strongest point: it can be accessed by a phone/tablet/laptop, and an iPhone app is in the works (currently it's biggest end-user request.)

The list of what it doesn't do is a small list: besides the above-mentioned iPhone app, electronic billing is probably at the top. It continues to grow its list of end-user features, often because the developer listens to the requests that come directly from its users. 

And the price: FREE for solos? You cannot beat that deal. Add more users and pay more, but you are still paying for a product that works, and every time they make a product release the response from the user base is "Yes!" and not "So what? Does this stuff actually work?" Want to write a check and not deal with updates, backups and server updates - go with the SaaS version and pay monthly. If you still prefer the idea of your data residing on your servers in your office, then go with the On-premise version. Not all practice management programs offer both options. 

While not perfect (no software is), it ranks at the top of my list when clients look for legal practice management software.

Does what it does better than the others...

The Pros:
The price. The power and flexibility. The ability to integrate.

Continuous improvement. These guys are constantly working to make a better product.

The support staff. I was a bit cranky with the way the whole flash problem went down, but I get the impression that was a significant stressor for Houdini, as well. They seem to have worked hard to overcome that, and since then have continued to provide "on the spot," "out of their way," profoundly dedicated service.

The cons:
The learning curve is significant. Houdini is anything but plug and play. It takes significant time to get comfortable with the various modules, which are not always, and especially not at first, intuitive.

Integration ability generally limited to microsoft products. Would love to see the ability to integrate with something like libre office and Mozilla's Thunderbird (not sure if the coding time is worth it for Huodini, but I would love it.)

Buggy - weird things happen from time to time, like already added events or contacts "disappearing" from a matter. They tend to reappear after one (or a few) restarts, or after a patch, but they keep me in constant fear of losing some important data.

The way ledgers work could be much smoother. I hate having to generate a bill to give a discount, and then having to produce a statement to reflect the discount, and then give the client two sheets of paper with an explanatory letter because without an explanation it won't make much sense to the client. It can be even more painful when generating the statement brings up every matter I have handled for a client that is still open, even though I only want to provide 1 bill for one matter at the time.

Overall, I stick with Houdini because it provides what I need, appears powerful enough to provide what I will require as I grow, and, most importantly, because it is constantly improving. Houdini appears genuinely interested in what its users want and is continually working to provide just that. Once a person gets over the learning curve, Houdini is hard to beat.

It's been worth sticking with.

It works but it could be more user friendly. 

Confusing interface but cost effective 

Features/Functionality 3 stars. Hmm. How would you know? We have no record of you in any of our databases, no record of a demo, download, participation in any free training or registering the product. It is technically impossible to use the product anonymously.  

We have been in the marketplace for over a decade.  This is what we do and we do it very well. We service large legal teams from DOJs, insurance, federal and state agencies to boutique law firms and solo practitioners. Although on average our clients employ over 300 legal professionals we are more than confident that HoudiniEsq provides legal professionals with the tools they need to manage their teams. Truth be told a spreadsheet and good file management is adequate for most lawyers. 

A lawnmower and a car both have engines but that is were the similarities end. Your review seems to only have one agenda. To hurt our brand, not to provide a helpful review.


  

I switched to HoudiniESQ from PCLaw after getting tired of constantly having to pay for Lexis Nexis's "Annual Maintenance Plan" to get any technical support.  The cost was really adding up and the product was not that user friendly.  I spent hours researching the best systems that would also function with my Mac and settled on HoudiniESQ for its ease of use and fully integrated workspace.  I love that it has all the features I need, with the exception of business accounting, in one program.  I have had some difficulty relating to emails with attachments (the receiver cannot always see the actual attachment, even though it is clearly attached on my end, and sometimes I cannot open attachments from senders).  Other than fixing that problem, the only thing that would truly make the system better is to have fully functioning accounting as part of the program so that I can track all of my non-client business expenses within the same program instead of needing to use quickbooks.

A Fairly Intuitive System

The best part about using Houdini is that there is no charge for a single user, solo practice setup.  The program logic is straight forward, but the learning curve is a little steep.  But since MOST attorneys have passed the Bar exam, this shouldn't be a problem!  There is comprehensive documentation and many how-to videos, but a 1-2-3 setup guide including better descriptions of the various options would be extremely helpful.  I prefer reading documentation rather than watching a video, just a personal preference.  The Quickbooks connector is great and the Evernote integration is also a big plus.  After reviewing all our other options, Houdini ESQ seemed like the best and least expensive place to start and grow.

Very comprehensive legal practice management software! 

Houdini is a feature rich product that cannot be beat for the solo practitioner.  It has all the bells and whistles you could want, with extensive customization possibilities.  Moreover, the price is perfect: free.  Although the learning curve might be steeper than you wish if you are not going to use all of its features, it will be well worth it for whatever features you wish.  I am still learning new things after two months of use.

Even if you are a Mac user, the software is easy to use and highly functional because it uses your web browser to run.  It has a few issues, but they seem so far to be quite minor.  Updates seem to come out quite regularly as well.  

Perfect for solos

The concept of Houdini ESQ, and the fact that it is free for solo practitioners, really sets it apart from the rest of the field. With that said, the interface is pretty easy to navigate, however, the functions don't always respond. In particular, I found CalendarRules integration to almost never work. Also the cloud based program does not do enough to make me feel secure. Also it is difficult to convert to if you do not use one of the practice management programs it is compatible with.

Overall it is a good product that has the capacity to overtake the market if it can stay affordable, increase security, and improve the ease of transitioning.

Great Concept, But Needs Work

When I opened my law firm, I was looking for a time matter management system, as cheap as possible - after all opening your firm is pretty scary and you are watching every penny, especially the one you don't have.  When I stumbled upon Houdini, I was hopeful, because I have a former IT background and it showed potential.  It ended up being everything I really need, and the fact that it's free to solo practitioners is incredibly appreciated.  When I will grow enough to hire staff, I will be delighted to continue using it and have staff members help me with any entries I need.

Perfect solution for a solo practitioner

Before going with Houdini I tried several other products and have been a long time user of Time Matters. After trying Houdini I felt that it had all the features of the far more expensive products. Houdini has all the features I wanted and it is integrated with word, outlook and google, all of which were very important to me. The only downside of the product is the creation of invoices. I would like it to be a bit easier to customize. Overall a great product.

Excellent Product

In preparation for a disaffiliation with my prior firm, I auditioned several case management systems. This one was the second best - it only lost out to MyCase, which was purely due to design issues and perceived ease of use.

If the product had been presented more attractively, I believe my team would've been more impressed with the Ease of Use.

Much better pricing options and utilization of on site storage are huge pros to this product.

Second Best Option

The extraordinary thing about this program is that it is comprehensive and user friendly, so much so that even baby boomers can figure it out without having to call a help desk in India. The next best thing is that for lawyers on a shoestring budget it is affordable and secure because it can be run off the cloud. So I give it two thumbs up for price, accessibility and price. 

Leader of the Pack

HoudiniESQ provides a solid client management program for a great price.  There are tons of features for every type of legal practice, and you can track all your work on it for individual clients.  Some features take some time to learn, but it is overall a solid program.  

A Solid Client Management Program

So I've been using this for over a year. During which I've had over 100 cases neatly organized within Houdini. The interface looks abit aged compared to some other heavyweights in the industry but for a one-man-practice you just can't beat the price for a local setup. 

Great for single user + free 

Pros: excellent product, excellent integrations. New approach to practice management. Solo local install is good value. 
Cons: hosted versions are expensive. Integrations are Windows-only. 
Overall: good attempt at holistic practice management. 

Good value for solo

Easy to use. Low learning curve. The only issue I had was that the original license I requested was never sent. I had to request a second time before receiving it. 

Houdini review

Attorney 

The next best thing is that for lawyers on a shoestring budget it is affordable and secure because it can be run off the cloud. So I give it two thumbs up for price, accessibility and price.

Owner/Attorney

Plus, the price can't be beat. For a sole-proprietor like me, the fact that the program is offered free of charge for a one-seat account, was a big selling point when I was opening up my law firm.

100% turnkey and FREE for Solo practitioners 
 
SaaS just $64 a month (your data resides in our data center) 
 
On-Premise $240 a year (your data resides within your firm's walls) 
 
Free support and all upgrades included.

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