Need to Collect a Settlement? There's an App for That
If you ask certain tech prognosticators, money transfer apps are the future. Forget Twitter, Candy Crush, or Kim Kardashian's $200 million app -- apps that let you buy a beer, split a bill or pay back a debt with just a few swipes of the finger are where the future is, supposedly. As such, Facebook, Snapchat and a host of new start ups have been scrambling to lock down the market.
If money transfer apps are the future, the legal sphere isn't going to be left behind. At least one company has put together a law-centric payment app, SettlementApp. It's not the omnibus cash transfer app that Square or Venmo are, but rather a tailored app allowing attorneys, large creditors, billers and the like to receive easy, electronic payments with less overhead.
SettlementApp, created by HealPay, is fairly straight forward. Users can create a merchant account and begin accepting credit card and Automated Clearing House payments. You then upload your customer data to SettlementApp and direct customers to the app to pay the bills. Recurring billing can be set up for settlements to be paid out over time; customers will be sent regular reminders about upcoming billing deadlines. It's all fairly simple and, HealPay claims, likely to reduce overhead and speed up transactions.
A Growing List of Legal Apps
Besides SettlementApp, the legal marketplace is teaming with apps designed to help lawyers to do more, more simply and on the go. There's of course, pocket research apps like the WestlawNext app (from FindLaw's sister company). The Depose app is designed for on-the-fly depositions, coming with a pre-programmed selection of common deposition questions.
Of course, there's also the apps lawyers make themselves. To help cover the mobile market, or just make things easier for their busy clients, law firms have produced over 50 different mobile apps. Some of these are, of course, not incredibly necessary -- such as apps which simply direct clients to the lawyer's website. Others are downright brilliant. One clever group of Telephone Consumer Protection Act practitioners made an app that immediate converts unwanted telemarketing calls into potential lawsuits, right from one's phone.
Related Resources:
- Show Me the Money: The Best Apps to Pay Friends Back (The Wall Street Journal)
- When Everything's Mobile, Does Your Firm Need an App? (FindLaw's Technologist)
- We (Lawyers) Just Got Replaced By a Contract-Drafting App (FindLaw's Technologist)
- 5 Developments for Lawyers from Google's Annual Tech Conference (FindLaw's Technologist)