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CREATING PROLAW REPORTS USING MS

EXCEL

Wouldn’t it be great to have an Excel Report that directly connects and reads from your ProLaw

database in real-time? Something that can eliminate the many steps and hours it now takes to

create a custom report for your firm that should be quick and easy to accomplish.

Currently it is likely that you have to take the following steps in order to generate a report that

your firm has asked you to create:

Run the ProLaw report you want

Export it to CSV

Open it from Excel

Massage and format the data to your needs

And, you need to do this “each time” you need the same report for a different period or

matters. A lot of work/time involved right?

Well, you can now tremendously simplify that task by creating an Excel report that connects to

your ProLaw database in real-time and you can refresh it any time you want and always have

the most recent information.

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What you need to know to get started Server Name

ProLaw database name

Some SQL basics

Know the SQL for the report you want to create

How do we do that, then?

Let’s get started with a practical example. We are going to create a new report that lists the

Matters Opened in February - Top 10 Clients.

Below I give a detailed explanation, step by step, how to do this.

1. Open Excel, Go To Data and Click on Connections

2. Click on Add Connection and the “Existing Connections” window will come up

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3. Click on Browse for More

4. Click on New Source

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5. Select SQL Server and click next

6. Enter server name, leave Windows Authentication and click on next

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7. Select the Database you want. Select the first table listed and click on FINISH

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8. You will then see you connection and click on Properties

9. Enter the Following query in the Definition Tab SELECT top 10 ClientSort, Count(*) TotMatters FROM Matters

WHERE Year(OpenedDate) = 2010 and MONTH(OpenedDate) = 2 GROUP BY ClientSort

ORDER BY COUNT(*) DESC

10. The final outcome should look like this one below. Click OK.

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11. You will get a prompt like this one below. Just click on Yes

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12. Close the Workbook Connections screen

13. After you have completed you connection, place the mouse in the cell you want to get

started and from the Data Main Menu, select Existing Connections. Select the connection

you just created and click “Open”

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14. It will ask where to place the results. Click on Ok

15. You will get your report to look something like the following

16. Each time you want to refresh the report go to Data Menu and click Refresh All

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CONCLUSION You can create any type of ProLaw report in Excel for as long you know the SQL Statement. In

ProLaw, after you pull a query, you can always click on Show SQL Statement and it will give you

the SQL used. Some time you will be able to use that query, if it is something simple. For more

complex reports as Aging WIP, Aging AR, Billing Analysis, Revenue Realization, etc, the SQL

query you read from ProLaw will NOT work because they are using temporary tables in SQL that

are not available in your SQL Server. Therefore you will need to create those queries yourself.