# CARET Legal review (2026): is it worth $79 a month per user, billed yearly? > Cloud practice management with billing and accounting for law firms Checked Nov 12, 2026 ยท graded Nov 12, 2026 by ToolGPA. CARET Legal is a cloud practice management platform for law firms. The old Zola Suite address, zolasuite.com, now redirects to its site, and the login still runs on a zolasuite.com subdomain. It covers matters, email, calendars, tasks, contacts, documents, time and billing, legal accounting, a client portal and integrated payments. Higher plans add workflow automation, AI document summaries and the CARET Analytics dashboards. - **Category:** Law Practice Software - **Made by:** CARET - **Website:** https://caretlegal.com - **Runs on:** Web, iOS, Android - **Who should skip it:** Pricey if you want dashboards, workflows or custom permissions, which start at $99 a user a month. - **Facts last checked:** Nov 12, 2026 ## Pricing As of Nov 12, 2026, CARET Legal is a paid product with a free trial, starting at $79 per user / month, billed annually. - **Pricing model:** Free trial - **Free plan:** None. - **Free trial:** Free trial offered on request; the length is not stated on the pricing page. | Plan | Price | What you get | | --- | --- | --- | | Enterprise | $79 per user / month, billed annually | Email, documents, calendar, tasks, billing, accounting, client portal, LEDES invoicing, integrated payments and 24/7 phone support. Implementation fee extra. | | Enterprise Plus | $99 per user / month, billed annually | Adds CARET Analytics standard dashboards, automated workflows, custom permissions, department-based accounting, native document editing and AI document summaries. | | Enterprise Insights | $119 per user / month, billed annually | Enterprise Plus plus configurable CARET Analytics reports and dashboards, with custom visualizations and metric selection. | Read from https://caretlegal.com/pricing/ on Nov 12, 2026. Prices change, so confirm with CARET Legal before buying. ## Key features - **Matters, email and calendars:** Matter management with automated workflows, tasks and a calendar, plus email that syncs with Microsoft 365, Google Workspace or any IMAP account. - **Billing and accounting:** Time tracking, LEDES and split billing, pre-billing and legal accounting in one system. The vendor's billing page says it follows ABA and IOLTA guidelines. - **Payments:** Clients can pay retainers and invoices by credit card, ACH or e-check through the client portal, using the vendor's CARET Pay processing. - **AI features:** Quick Summary condenses long documents, and the vendor lists Capture for suggesting billable time, Command for flagging items that need attention and Court Rules for deadline calculation. - **CARET Analytics:** Standard dashboards and reports come with Enterprise Plus. Enterprise Insights lets a firm configure its own dashboards and metrics. - **Mobile app:** Native iOS and Android apps for tasks, contacts, calls and texts, with Touch ID protection and a business card scanner. ## Good for - Small and mid-sized firms that want billing and accounting inside the case system - Firms that work in Outlook or Word and want plugins for both - Firms that want a phone support line open around the clock ## Worth knowing - Pricing is per user plus a one-time implementation fee whose amount is not published. - The zolasuite.com address now redirects to caretlegal.com, and the vendor's pages do not say how the two names relate. - Dashboards, automated workflows, custom permissions and AI document summaries start at Enterprise Plus ($99 per user / month). - The Outlook and Word plugins are listed for Windows only, and the free trial length is not stated. ## ToolGPA grades **GPA: 2.2 out of 4**, graded Nov 12, 2026. CARET Legal, the new name on the old Zola Suite address, is cloud practice management with matters, billing, accounting and payments, from $79 a user a month. The workflows, dashboards and AI summaries sit on the $99 plan, and an implementation fee is added whose amount isn't published. - **Value for money: C.** $79 a user a month billed annually, which is where the dearer quarter of law-practice tools starts. Dashboards and workflows need $99. - **Free plan and trial: D.** A trial is offered on request, and its length isn't stated. No free plan. - **Features: B.** Matters, email and calendars, billing and accounting, payments and a mobile app. Nothing basic is missing, though the extras are on higher plans. - **Ease of use: C.** No store rating on record. A practice and accounting system comes with an implementation fee and setup. - **Platforms and integrations: B.** Web with iPhone and Android apps and eight integrations. The Outlook and Word plugins are Windows only. These are ToolGPA's own grades. Graded from this listing, whose facts were read from CARET Legal's own pages on 12 November 2026. Not based on using the product, and shorter than our full reviews. ## Where it stands among law practice software - CARET Legal's GPA of 2.2 is higher than 19 of the 25 other law practice software we grade, and level with 5. - It stands best on features (B, above 21 of 25) and worst on free plan and trial (D, above 13). - Its paid plans start at $79 a month for each person, against a middle price of $59 for the category: 7 of the 10 others that charge start lower. - On features, ease of use and platforms it scores 2.7 out of 4. 1 tool scores higher and costs less. The category's chart of price against score: https://toolgpa.com/charts/law-practice ## Keep it, or make your own? **Keep it.** To replace CARET Legal you would be making client trust accounts kept the way bar rules require. That is not a weekend's work, with an AI app builder or without one. It is one of the better ones too: its GPA of 2.2 is higher than 19 of the 25 other law practice software we grade. It costs $948 a year. - You could make: Case management, time tracking and invoicing: an app builder makes these well. - You could not: Client trust accounts kept the way bar rules require. - You could not: Live feeds from your bank, which take an agreement with each bank or a service that has them. - You could not: Connections to other products, each kept working as those products change. - You could not: Connections that pull numbers from dozens of other services. - You could not: A real app for iOS and Android. Something home-made would be a web page. - You could not: It is priced for each person, which means accounts and billing for a team. - You could not: The depth: we grade its features B, which means it covers the whole job. A judgement by ToolGPA from this listing, by rules that are the same for every tool. Nothing was built to test it. ## Works with Microsoft 365, Google Workspace, QuickBooks Online, Lawmatics, NetDocuments, OneDrive, HotDocs, LawToolBox **Tags:** Case management, Time tracking, Invoicing, Trust accounting, Bookkeeping, Dashboards, Workflow automation ## Alternatives - [Clio](https://toolgpa.com/tools/clio): Practice management, legal accounting and legal AI for law firms. [Compare](https://toolgpa.com/compare/clio-vs-zola-suite) - [MyCase](https://toolgpa.com/tools/mycase): Case management, billing and client portal for small law firms. [Compare](https://toolgpa.com/compare/mycase-vs-zola-suite) - [PracticePanther](https://toolgpa.com/tools/practicepanther): Law practice management with built-in payments and accounting. [Compare](https://toolgpa.com/compare/practicepanther-vs-zola-suite) - [Smokeball](https://toolgpa.com/tools/smokeball): Practice management with automatic time capture and court forms. [Compare](https://toolgpa.com/compare/smokeball-vs-zola-suite) - [CosmoLex](https://toolgpa.com/tools/cosmolex): Law practice management with trust and business accounting built in. [Compare](https://toolgpa.com/compare/cosmolex-vs-zola-suite) ## Sources The prices, plans, platforms and features above were read from these pages on Nov 12, 2026: - https://caretlegal.com/pricing/ - https://caretlegal.com/ - https://caretlegal.com/integrations/ - https://caretlegal.com/ios-and-android-mobile-apps/ - https://caretlegal.com/billing-and-payments/ - https://caretlegal.com/case-management/ - https://caretlegal.com/about-caret-legal/ Page: https://toolgpa.com/tools/zola-suite Listed by ToolGPA (toolgpa.com).