Law Office Technology

Matter Numbering

General Matter Info

Matter numbers can be up to 12 characters and must end in a numerical number.  Setting up matter numbering is a system setting found under Matter.  You can also disable automatic numbering here.

Automatic Numbering by Firm

If your last Matter ID is 06-0001, then your next Matter ID will be 06-0002.  It is pretty straight forward. 

Automatic Numbering by Client

This can be a little more tricky.  If I have this set up and my first   client id is BayCra, my first matter number will be BayCra-001.  If I am creating a new matter and choose BayCra again, my matter id will be BayCra-002.  If I changed BayCra-001 to 42-001, the next time I type in the client BayCra it will default to 42-002.

Mattering by Type of Law

This would be great, yet it does not exist.  At least I cannot figure out a way to make it work.  I have a lot of clients that have alphanumerical abbreviations for types of law.  Their firm might designate 72-##### as insurance defense and 43-##### as products liability.  This helps them tell types of law apart.  There is no way in PCLAW to make that happen now.  I recommend emailing PCLAW at wishlist@pclaw.com if you want this feature.

The Matter Manager in PCLAW will allow you to filter types of law.

Amicus Attorney and Firefox

I love FireFox and never use Internet Explorer if I can help it.  Amicus does use Internet Explorer in its To Do when it is set to launch a website.  I have found a way around it.  When creating a new To Do on Assistance Type go to  Run Program instead of Launch Web site.  In Application you want to browse to the location of FireFox on your computer which is usually: C:\Program Files\Mozilla Firefox\firefox.exe

In parameters, you need to type in the the website address.  When you click on the Do Button, it will now launch that website.

 

Company, People and PCLAW

I have blogged about the  people contact before and the upgrade between Amicus 5 and Amicus 7.  When you convert your contacts, Amicus looks at them and if it sees any characters in the Name Fields, it makes it a person.  If not, it will make it a company.  This was simply put, a really bad ideal, because the majority of people will put the company's name in the last name field. 

Anyway, I figured our firm would go back when we had time and manually create company cards for all our companies.  The problem is that we have a majority of these companies as primary clients on matters linked with PCLAW.  All I wanted to do is created a new company card, delete the old company person card, and make the new correct company the primary client in Amicus.  This will not work because the primary client is linked to PCLAW.  You cannot just delete a primary client without it messing up the matter exchange.  The workaround is time consuming, so before you link with your accounting system, I recommend you go through all your Matters and for all the ones that are primary clients and are a company, CONVERT THEM BEFORE YOU LINK!!!

Never Open Outlook Again

With Amicus 7 you never have to open up outlook again.  That statement is really true.  In Amicus V, you could associate emails with files and contacts but you would still have to go into outlook and clean emails out of the inbox.  If you left all your emails in the inbox, it could take Amicus forever to open because it would have rescan every email in your inbox.  The new communications module is wonderful.  You can actually look into outlook without having to open it. 

When I start Amicus in the morning, I go to my Com Center and open  it up.  I look at all my emails and Amicus will tell me which ones have been associated to files and contacts and which ones have not. 

For emails I wish to associate to with files and contacts, I can open the email and manually choose a file and contact to associate with it.  You are not just limited to one file or contact but could associate it to multiple files and contacts.  You also can highlight multiple emails and Click on the Save and Associate selected emails on the left hand side and associate them all at once. 

After I read an email I can click dealt with and it will leave the outstanding emails list and just be assoicated with the file or contact records.  I can right click on that email and either delete it from outlook or move it to a saved folder.  I still like to save all my emails in folders and will probally continue to do so.  Following the last steps, I now do not have to go into outlook because all my emails have been cleaned out of my inbox. 

Milestones in Amicus 7

A new feature in Amicus 7 is Milestones.  Milestones are critical events or To Dos  that can be created for past, present, or future.  One of the advantages is that it can be created in the past and linked to a precendant even though it is created in the past.  A Milestone created as a to do will be marked green and will not carry forward and date will not change to the current date.

Confused?

Let me explain.

Say you are a personal injury attoreny and have set up a precedant that allows you to track presciption dates based upon the date of accident or loss.  You create the Predendant, and enter in the date of accident.  It then calculates the date it will prescribe, plus a couple or reminders before that date.  The calculations are based on the date of accident.   Before Milestones, when you went to the file and created the precdant, it would not let you change the first event to any day that was in the past.  Unless we entered our Prescription Date Precedant on the actual date of accident, it would not work.  Now, you can create the precedant, make the first event a To Do Milestone, and change the date to one in the past.  The calculations will now be correct.

Accounting Types

You can choose three different types of accounting with PCLAW: Cash, Modified Cash, and Accrural.  Very few firms use Accrural in the United States.  Of course my first big PCLAW install was an Accrural System so just not learning it was never an option.  You really should discuss with your accountant which one you are.

CASH

Income is recored when a payment is recieved by a client.
Cost advances are recorded as expenses.

MODIFIED CASH

Income is recored when a payment is recieved by a client.
Cost advances are recorded as assets until paid by the client.

ACCRURAL

Income is recored as soon as an invoice is created
Cost advances are recorded as assets until paid by the client.

My big problem with Accrural is that clients sometimes take a long time to pay or never pay.  So having Income being recorded as soon as an invoice is created can have bad tax implications, especially if you create a whole bunch on invoices in decemeber and dont collect to that January.

Linking with other Programs

If you have PCLAW version 7.2 or above you might need to have a plaalink.key to link to other programs like Amicus Attorney. 

1. To create this key, go to the Data folder where PCLAW is stored on your network.  It will have the Dyndata and Statdata folders in it. 
   
2. Right click and create a new text file. 
   
3. Call PCLAW tech support.  When you give them your serial number, they will give you a code you need to type this code into the text file. 
   
4. Save the text file and close it. 
   
5. Rename it to plaalink.key.