Zenas: A Legal Case Management System

For solo practitioners using the WordPerfect Office Suite

Zenas is a case management system written using only the WordPerfect Office Suite, centering on the Quattro Pro spreadsheet. It is set up for solo practitioners such as myself and it is offered free of charge to any who find it useful, whether for solo legal practice, other legal practice, other business uses, or for studying spreadsheet programming. I simply ask that if people find it useful, that they remember the poor and consider an extra donation to a charity for the relief of poverty.

Installation. Although many functions of the spreadsheet are usable immediately, to utilize all features, you should place the files in folders with these names:

FolderInstructions
C:\Cases\Zenas 1. Create this folder manually.
2. Drag all of the notebooks (qpw files) from Zenas.zip into that folder.
C:\Cases\Zenas\Macros 3. Create this folder manually.
4. Drag all of the macros from ZenasMacros.zip into this folder.
C:\Cases\Zenas\Forms 5. Create this folder manually.
6. Drag all of the files from ZenasForms.zip into this folder.

Users can change the default location of files by manually editting them. See the Zenas.pdf manual for details. I decided to hard-code those locations in order to allow the macros to be used right away.

Zenas generates case-specific mindmaps, but does not contain the software for viewing them. Among those that can view these mindmaps, both Freemind and Freeplane are available for downloading. On the use of mindmaps in a law practice, see my discussion on this site. For galleries of mindmaps for other uses, see here and here.

The files. Here are the files for the Zenas system:

11/02/24  08:50 AM           215,462 Zenas.zip
11/02/24  08:50 AM            44,561 ZenasForms.zip
11/02/24  08:50 AM            83,775 ZenasMacros.zip

Zenas.zip contains Zenas.qpw, the Quattro Pro notebook at the center of the system and all of the other notebook (QPW) files it uses. Zenas.qpw contains sample case data. Feel free to change or delete them and to add your own data. Selected screenshots are available. Zenas.zip contains:

11/02/24  08:50 AM           324,928 Zenas.qpw
11/02/24  08:49 AM            28,672 ClientContactBook.qpw
11/02/24  08:49 AM            32,955 NewMatter.qpw
11/02/24  08:49 AM            10,752 Diary.qpw
11/02/24  08:49 AM            52,408 ZenasForms.qpw
11/02/24  08:49 AM            10,240 Status.qpw
11/02/24  08:49 AM            25,600 SetDeadlines.qpw
11/02/24  08:49 AM            18,586 Problems.qpw
11/02/24  08:49 AM             9,216 Suits.qpw
11/02/24  08:49 AM            26,624 Book.qpw
11/02/24  08:49 AM            18,944 SendAll.qpw
11/02/24  08:49 AM            11,264 ContactSearch.qpw
11/02/24  08:49 AM            11,776 TrustBalances.qpw
11/02/24  08:49 AM            12,851 UnbilledTime.qpw
11/02/24  08:49 AM            13,824 Balances.qpw
11/02/24  08:49 AM             9,234 BillingsSearch.qpw
11/02/24  08:49 AM            10,240 OperatingSearch.qpw
11/02/24  08:49 AM            14,336 PeopleSearch.qpw
11/02/24  08:49 AM            13,313 CaseSearch.qpw
11/02/24  08:49 AM            14,933 CaseDiary.qpw
11/02/24  08:49 AM             6,656 TrustAccount.qpw
11/02/24  08:49 AM            53,292 TitlelogViewer.qpw
11/02/24  08:49 AM            38,496 Projects.qpw

ZenasMacros.zip contains the following Perfectscript macros:

03/09/23  01:25 PM            11,687 ZenasClientFiles-Testing.wcm
02/12/23  12:35 PM             9,581 ZenasClientFiles.wcm
11/04/22  10:56 AM            33,838 ZenasMindMap.wcm
09/07/18  09:50 AM             4,459 ZenasFileFolders.wcm
09/06/16  01:11 PM             3,074 ZenasMailMerge.wcm
05/01/16  02:51 PM             8,185 ZenasLaunch.wcm
04/13/16  03:55 PM            18,549 ZenasShowCase.wcm
03/10/16  06:28 PM             2,702 ZenasShellExecute.wcm
03/10/16  01:14 PM            35,535 ZenasMerger.wcm
02/29/16  02:09 PM            21,922 ZenasPickCase.wcm
02/25/16  12:54 PM            16,107 ZenasShowPerson.wcm
02/25/16  12:31 PM            17,596 ZenasPickListedCases.wcm
02/25/16  11:39 AM            30,234 ZenasPickPerson.wcm
02/25/16  07:04 AM            16,086 ZenasPickActor.wcm
02/25/16  06:59 AM            15,033 ZenasPickList.wcm
02/22/16  07:32 PM            11,805 ZenasPhoneNo.wcm
02/20/16  05:44 PM             4,289 ZenasDiaryTime.wcm

ZenasForms.zip contains form files used by Zenas.

11/02/24  08:49 AM            75,264 Invoice.qpw
04/18/15  07:13 AM             3,727 Envelope.wpt
04/18/15  07:13 AM             3,519 Envelope.frm
04/18/15  07:13 AM             4,412 CertificateOfService.wpt
04/18/15  07:13 AM            14,141 Caption.wpt
04/18/15  07:13 AM            16,038 Caption_NDGa.wpt
04/18/15  07:13 AM             7,809 CoverLetter_Clerk.wpt
02/26/15  04:17 PM             3,524 FileLabels.wpt
01/24/15  11:38 AM             4,179 standard.mm
01/24/15  11:38 AM             6,109 Case_Template.mm
11/11/14  01:51 PM               229 Dollars.png
06/30/14  11:40 AM             3,998 TrustCheck.wpt
06/30/14  11:40 AM             3,998 OperatingCheck.wpt
11/19/13  03:06 PM             3,459 ClosedFileSheet.wpt
10/23/13  03:36 PM             4,005 BoxSheet.wpt
10/21/13  12:55 PM             2,640 FileSheet.wpt

Zenas.pdf (January 25, 2015) is a 4.4 MB manual explaining how to use the Zenas system. As explained below, many changes have been made since that time, most of which split functions to different spreadsheets. The core functions remain largely as displayed in this document.

How-to guides. These PDF files contain multiple screen shots to show how to use selected features of the Zenas system. These files were created with Corel's Presentations.

Importing Data into Zenas 391KB April 13, 2013
Opening a New Case 285KB April 13, 2013
Adding Actors to the Case 548KB April 13, 2013
Changing Data on the Case and People 516KB April 13, 2013
Closing (and Re-opening) a Case 332KB April 13, 2013
Using the Time Sheet 288KB April 13, 2013
Sending an email to multiple people involved with the case 382KB April 14, 2013
Adding Rule-Based Deadlines/Ticklers 435KB April 14, 2013
Handling Billing 481KB April 14, 2013

Change Log. Since April 2014, all changes, whether major or minor, are noted on the Log sheet of Zenas.qpw in columns AI and AJ. That change log can be viewed here.

Prior major revisions.

Zenas macros were first re-written to utilize WordPerfect's document assembly functions ("merges").

In April 2013, the accounting system (interface and macros) was extensively re-written to improve and automate more functions.

In October 2013, the macros for assembling case-documents that were written at the start of the year were replaced. Though they were bulletproof, they were cumbersome and relatively slow. The new system involves a macro that takes data directly from Zenas and places it in forms newly coded to use the macro. In November 2013, the table-handling feature of new macro merger was modified for greater stability in generating invoices.

In December 2013, the entire Zenas notebook was revised to apply one consistent font and interface, thus eliminating unnecessary formatting and reducing its size by about one-half. The listing of parties on the CaseView page now links connected parties by color.

Later major revisions.

In May 2014, the method of viewing data captured by Titlelog was revised to get around the nuisance of Quattro Pro's somewhat broken ParseExpert system. A new notebook, TitlelogViewer.qpw, was added to deal with it.

In and after August 2015, many of the functions in Zenas.qpw were split out to separate QPW files, to improve both the aesthetics and the programming.

In March 2016, the system of generating invoices was re-written. The invoice form was changed for clarity and then created in a QP template rather than being merged into a WordPerfect document, improving its speed too.

In late 2017, I began moving more of my work to the LaTeX system. One change in Zenas was to generate PDF invoices using LaTeX directly from Zenas. By adjusting the macro, the user can still generate them via the Invoice.qpw spreadsheet.


A Quattro Pro Cheat Sheet (July 18, 2013) is also available here. It contains over ten pages of notes about how to use QP functions and macros to get data from databases, put data into databases, and manipulate the data in databases, and then use it in WordPerfect.