As the name implies, TortPro is a program specifically designed for personal injury attorneys. In concept, it can best be thought of as a Personal Information Manager for P.I. cases. As opposed to an expert system that would guide you through a P.I. action, TortPro simply maintains and organizes all of the numerous types of data that surround a personal injury action.

Although it can be used by a single user, TortPro comes only in a network version, which is really its raison d'ˆtre. With all attorneys and office staff accessing and supplementing the same files and notes concerning a case, the case should be better organized and managed than if a traditional paper file were passed around. However, if the program is networked, all the data files must reside on a single server. This will make the program less useful for notebook users who want to have all of the case information with them at all times.

TortPro installed easily. The entire installation, including entering all of the information specific to my firm and computer, took less than an hour. TortPro is not a large program, taking up less than four megabytes of memory. The program requires four megabytes of RAM to run, but eight are recommended.

Opening a new case file is very simple. You click on "New Case" and TortPro presents several boxes to complete. The program elicits a great deal of useful information, without being overly demanding. For example, in addition to asking the obvious such as case name, date of incident, and attorneys assigned to the case, it also has boxes for type of incident and source of referral. Thus, beyond providing case support, the program could be useful in tracking marketing efforts and profit centers.

Once a new case file is opened, TortPro will accept just about any imaginable information that might concern a P.I. case. It tracks the case status, settlement negotiations, insurance coverage, liens, expenses, witnesses, and even the birthdays of clients so that birthday cards can be sent.

Like any good information manager, TortPro also allows calendaring upcoming events and deadlines. But TortPro goes further. It allows the creation and assigning of rules to events. For example, you can enter all of the deadlines that flow from filing a complaint, such as serving the complaint and filing the summons. TortPro would then calendar the dates by which those tasks must be accomplished. Tasks can be assigned to specific people, so printing a calendar of events will reveal not only upcoming deadlines, but the persons responsible for meeting those deadlines.

Without question, TortPro is a useful database and calendaring system. But in using TortPro, I was left with the impression that this is a program still in its infancy. Many of the features that are now standard in Windows programs are absent from TortPro. For example, moving the cursor over a function button does not show the purpose of that button. Most disturbing of all, there is no help file. Although a help button occasionally appears on various screens, clicking on it does nothing. This lack of help is exacerbated by the paucity of documentation. The instruction manual consists of 40 photocopied pages containing mostly screen shots. The documentation provided no answers for the problems I encountered while using the program.

I was also disappointed by TortPro's lack of error-trapping safeguards. Every P.I. attorney's greatest fear is missing a statute of limitation deadline. Appropriately, therefore, TortPro tracks this important deadline. However, if you fail to enter the date of the incident, TortPro simply assumes the deadline is two years from the date you are entering the information, and enters that date in your records. An inattentive clerk could easily generate an erroneous (and disastrous) statute of limitation date. And nothing would indicate to subsequent users that the date was based on a false assumption.

TortPro also failed to flag identical case names. Two different users could input information under the same file names, never realizing two files for the same case had been created. Even worse, information from a different case could be entered into a case file with the same name.

Another problem with TortPro is the selection of word processors it will support -- there isn't one. It will support only Word for Windows. If you happen to use Word, then TortPro has a nice interface that will allow you to link Word documents to the TortPro case file. With a single mouse click, you can instantly see every document that has been generated in the case. This provides an easy way to quickly check on the status of pleadings, discovery and demand letters, even if that information has not been properly entered in the other sections. TortPro will also merge information directly into Word files, making it a simple matter to create boilerplate documents. However, if you use WordPerfect or some other word processing program, you forfeit these important features.

TortPro is available from Justice Software, Inc., (800) 756-3694. It costs $1,500 per law firm for one user, and $800 for each additional user.