Law Office Technology

Display Settings

The new minimum Amicus Display settings are 1024 X 768.  If you need to see if your computer has these settings, right click on the desktop, Go to Properties --> Settings  --> Screen Resolution.

Multiple Sets of Offices

One of the useful things about PCLAW was that you could setup more then one set of books.  This happened quite a lot as even in large firms, partners tend to sometimes have their own LLC's where they do some legal work.  You can now do this in Amicus as well.  At an office, you could have multiple Installs on Amicus Server installed.  When you logged into Amicus, you can choose what server to connect to.  Now, I am not exactly sure why you would want to do this, but I can bet that it will come up sometime or another.  For us consultants, it is great.  I have full blown Amicus 7 running on my laptop for demos.  When I get back to the office, I can choose what database to connect to.  This is pretty cool.

Concurrent Users

Okay, maybe I missed this part at training in Vegas because I was still trying to recover from the night before, but Amicus now licenses by concurrent users instead of users.  This means that if you have a firm with 10 licenses you can create 15 users, but only 10 can be in at a time.  Great for temporary employees.

Word Toolbar

Okay, I know I have been on an Amicus binge.  I will try to post on Worldox, PCLAW or HotDocs today.  Anyway, if you were an Amicus version V user and you want to install the Amicus Toolbar in Word, you need to remove the old Amicus Word toolbar.  To do this, Go to My Computer --> C: --> Documents and Settings -->  (Your user profile) -->  Application Data --> Microsoft --> Word --> Startup.  Then delete anything with Amicus in there.  aatask.dot, savetobrad.dot, amicus.dot are some of the ones you will find.  Then go install the toolbar.  One of the things different on the Toolbar is that you should a UNC path to point to your Template folder instead of just choosing a drive letter and mapping it.  I love this because this cause so so many problems in version V.  On Amicus Firms that I did not install, I would see workstations that all had different mappings to their document folders on the server.  This would basically render the document brad worthless, because everyone would have invalid paths on their workstations.   Moving to UNC  was a very smart move.

Outlook Link

If you wish to enable the link between Amicus and Outlook, you must be running Outlook XP (2002) or Outlook 2003, Outlook 2000 is a no no.  One of the cool things about the link is you can choose to sync all contacts, or just a particular contact group.  The different steps it takes you through are pretty straight forward to setup the link (Office --> Preferences--> Links).  Make sure you backup your outlook.  1500 contacts will take about 15 minutes to sync for the first time.  Don't worry if the progress bar does not move for most of the time.

New Video Podcast

I have just created the first Video Pod Cast on how to unlock records and data in Amicus Attorney Version V.  Click here to view it: http://www.ourmedia.org/node/230304.  I recommend downloading it to your workstation first.

Before you convert to Amicus 7

In Amicus 7 contacts can either be Individuals or Companies. During the conversion, to decide which the contact is, Amicus scans the First, Middle, and Last Name Fields and if there is any data, it makes it an Individual. When creating a company contact card in 5, many firms put the name of the company in the last name field as well as in the company field for easier searches. If you do this, your contact will be an individual in Amicus 7 and you will not be able to change it to a company. You would then have to delete the contact and re enter it as a company. So before you convert, you need to go through all your contacts that will be company's and make sure there is nothing in the first, middle, or last name field. This will save you a lot of time

Where are the Special Files in Amicus 7

In Amicus Version 5.5 and below there was a section in Files called Special.  This is where most firms put their non-billable files and firm administration.  In Version 7 you can choose between All, Active, Billable, and Non Billable.  There is NO Special Section.  All files are either Active or Closed.    

However, Active Files now have a special status.  It is defaulted to None.  If you want to   If you want your to duplicate the file structure of Amicus 5:

 

1. Create a File Type called Special, and assign all the files that were Special in Amicus 5 to this type of law. 
2. Under Special Selection, you could add all the files types that were in your Special Files.

You could also change the way you label files.  Some firms I dealt with had a File Type called CLE and they would have various files relating to Attorneys CLE Training Classes.  What you could do now, is

1. Create a File Type called Training
2. Create a Special Status called CLE

This would allow to you to either look at all you Training Files and then narrow it down to CLE.

Amicus 7 Works on a VPN

As I write this, I am getting sticky from our Office Administrator about something I forgot to do.  The amazing thing is that I am sitting in a coffee shop 20 miles away from our office.  I have a vpn connection to our server over the coffee shops wireless network.  Amicus 7 works over a VPN!!!  Anyone who tried to do this in version V knows what a big deal this is.  Because I am in the field so much I am rarely at the office.  In version V, I would get to my house at night, vpn into the server and remote update, and then go to sleep.  Most times this would work but now I can go home, and immediately see what is going on.   If I stop for a bit to eat, I can log into Amicus and see all the phone messages.   The VPN is so slower then being in the office.  There is  a 3-5 second delay on  opening up somethings.  However, going to the calender and files happens instantly.  This is a big step in the right direction.

Before you install Amicus 7

Usually when I install a client server application, I install the program on the file server and then go to the website and run all the updates.  Then I start pushing it out to the workstations.  THIS WILL NOT WORK WITH AMICUS ATTORNEY 7!!!  You need to install the program on the server and then install at least one workstation.  Then you can install updates.