seaBILL legal software programs were designed from the ground up to be as simple as possible and still accomplish the task.  In the case of BSA legal billing software for attorneys, the program feature set was specified by practicing attorneys who know what features are most-needed by most lawyers in small offices. Once the features were set, the interface was then designed by lawyers and their legal staff who actually used the program and were videotaped while using various beta versions of BSA.

  Once the design goals were set, the software engineers were required to use the simplest means to accomplish these goals.  All software decisions are reviewed by the company's founders who are experienced computer programmers as well as practicing attorneys.  The software engineers are never allowed to implement complicated or proprietary solutions that might make it easier for them but harder for the user.

  Further, the programs were extensively beta tested by actual users with the sole purpose of eliminating bugs and problems BEFORE the programs were released to the public.  Sadly, in the rush to compete that is the norm in the software world, this is almost never done. Once the bug-elimination beta testing was completed, the programs were released to the public.

  Once BSA was released to the public, the feature requests started pouring in.  Everyone wants a billing program that runs exactly the way his office runs today but is capable of changing the way it works in an instant.  The problem with this is that these customizations and changes will introduce bugs and unintended consequences that interfere with the careful planning and testing.  And, the requests will change from day to day, making it impossible to stabilize the program.

  In many software companies, feature requests are reviewed by the marketing department.  If this is the case, nearly every feature will be quickly added to a software program in order to increase its sales.  This causes the program to quickly lose any relationship to its original design, introduces scores and scores of bugs and problems and, in sum, results in a mess.  In response to these problems, the software company will add a 'technical support' department that becomes its own profit center. Once this happens, there is no incentive to produce trouble-free, easy-to-use software.

  At seaBILL, feature requests are NOT reviewed by marketers but by the original founders of the company - attorneys who remember all too well the problems they had with other programs.  As a result, not all feature requests are approved.  As it turns out, many feature requests are either not a good idea for some technical reason or are simply not common enough problems to warrant the risk of introducing flaws into a program that works exceedingly well.  Compare the almost daily 'patches' and 'fixes' released by Microsoft for its products with programs by seaBILL which almost never require any modifications after release.

  Once BSA time billing software had been on the market a few years, the program had been run by thousands of users in thousands of offices around the world.  The program was battle-tested with millions of person hours of hard use in the first years.  During these first years, the only changes made to BSA were to correct problems.  New features were not added to the program so that the program could be thoroughly tested and completely stable.

  This approach allowed us to quickly identify and correct problems and to rapidly see what issues were commonly misunderstood by users.  In response, we fixed the problems, updated the Help built in system and posted free answers to the most Frequently Asked Questions on this website.  This means that seaBILL software is extremely reliable and that users can find free answers to their 'How-to' questions at any time at no charge.  Since we don't view technical support as a profit center, we have an incentive to quickly fix problems and 'keep it simple'.  Again, since our competitors view technical support as a way to increase revenues, they do not have an incentive to fix problems and make software that anyone can use.

  Due to this unique approach to the business of software design and marketing, seaBILL makes legal software products that are much easier to use and much more stable and bug-free than other time billing software in particular and software in general.

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