Robert Ambrogi Blog
XIRA, a platform for solo attorneys to get clients and manage their law practices, is introducing a variety of upgrades to its platform as well as changes to its pricing that includes elimination of booking fees for new clients and new subscription fees for its practice management platform.
I first wrote about XIRA in November 2020, not long after it launched with the dual goals of making it easier for clients to find the right lawyer and providing lawyers with free practice management software to help reduce their cost of providing legal services.
A month later, XIRA launched GAVEL, a cloud-based platform that provides an integrated set of software tools for managing a solo or small law practice.
Now, XIRA is releasing updates to its platform that coincide with a major push it is making, starting in California, the expand the number of solos on its platform who are available to take cases through its marketplace. It is adding more than 25,000 California solos, who will have the ability to update their profiles and take part in the marketplace at no cost.
In the second quarter of the year, XIRA will begin focusing on expanding the attorney numbers in other states, starting with New York, Texas and Florida.
“In California, we have literally hand-selected about 25,000 solo practitioners out of a pool of 270,000 attorneys in California to add them to the platform, to make the marketplace more viable and allow our users that come to the platform to look for attorneys to have the opportunity to have the full bandwidth of attorneys that are reputable,” Reza Ghaffari, founder and CEO, told me.
The company is also eliminating the $30 fee it previously charged for a new client booking, so there will be no charges to attorneys going forward when new clients find and meet with them on the platform.
“Our philosophy around charging is we want to make things as inexpensive or as free as possible,” Ghaffari said.
In another change, XIRA is enhancing its billing platform so that even attorneys who do not use XIRA for case management and invoicing can now bill their customers through XIRA. Attorneys can now upload their invoice to XIRA and it will handle the rest, securely delivery the invoice to the client, following up with reminders, and providing an option for clients to pay online.
When the client’s payment is received, the attorney can easily withdraw it through an ACH transfer to the attorney’s own account.
This feature is available to attorneys at no cost.
Two other changes of note:
- Attorneys can now position themselves to the top of XIRA’s search results for free by being peer approved. A simple process enables them to generate the emails to request recommendations from their colleagues. Once they are peer approved, a blue check mark appears on their profile. (Ghaffari said he is not using this feature to collect emails and that no marketing will be sent to attorneys who review a peer.)
- XIRA has also added reminders through text messaging to keep attorneys and clients informed of meeting schedules and changes.
With these changes, XIRA is introducing new subscription fees for its Gavel practice management platform. The chart below shows the new fee structure. Attorneys who sign up as new users get a 60-day free trial.
As you can see, the free tier includes a number of features such as invoicing, video conferencing, document storage, securing messaging, and online payments.
The next tier, for $9 a month, adds an online calendar, a meeting scheduler (which can be used for any client, not just those that came through XIRA, Zoom meetings, payment collection for consultations, and a larger capacity document vault.
The full suite, for $39 a month, adds activity logging, case management and integrated, automated invoicing.
As it is rolling out these changes, XIRA is also launching a major marketing campaign to consumers to bring more of them to the site, Ghaffari said.
“We want to make sure that our attorneys are happy and they are getting clients and they’re getting, in addition to the tools that are beneficial, we want them to get that traction of clients as well.”