Law Office Technology

PCLaw 8.04

PCLaw version 8.04 in now available.

Amicus 7 SP2

Amicus 7 SP2 will make you restart your Amicus Server, so it is an after hours install.

Multiple Invoices

A great feature in PCLaw is the ability to recreate multiple old invoices,

instead of having to print one at a time.  PCLaw gives you the ability to chose a date range or an invoice # range.  Simply go to the billing tab and then recreate the bill.

Amicus 7 Service Pack 2

Amicus 7 Service Pack 2 is out today.  Make sure you backup before installing!

HotDocs CIC

Sorry for the lack of updates this past couple of weeks.  Besides being very sick and having a major crisis at a firm, we have also managed to become HotDocs CIC's.  The LexisNexis tests are usually difficult.This is to make sure the CIC knows what they are doing, and this is the hardest test.  It does not help that I took the training class two weeks after Katrina damaged my house, and finished on the same day Rita flooded it.  I have to say that the HotDocs staff was pretty accommodating to my needs and I really have to thank them.  Needless to say, Law Office Technology is now fully certified in all three areas of LexisNexis Legal Software: Accounting and Billing, Practice Management, and Document Generation.  I like to tell people we have achieved LexisNexis Holy Trinity status.  Anyway, updates will continue on Monday.

What to ask for; for Christmas

Since the holidays are coming up, and more importantly, the end of the 2006 tax season, many firms will be making last minute tech purchases.  You might want to download Microsoft's Vista Upgrade Adviser to see if your computer can run Vista.  You can get it here.

This program will tell you if your hardware is up to speed and what programs will or will not run with vista.  It will also give you an install checklist.  This is a great tool by Microsoft.

Entry Numbers

Lets say you add 4 time entries into PCLaw: A, B, C, and D that were on the same date by the same lawyer.  If you were to create a bill, the time entries would show up in the order of: A, B, C, and D.  However, if you edited entry B for a spelling mistake, the bill would have the entries listed as A, C, D, B.  Every time you create a time entry in PCLaw it is assigned a numerical value.  The first entry into the system will be 1, the next will be 2 and so on.  When you edit a time entry, PCLaw acts like you are creating a completely new entry and assigns it a new number. 

Dupage County Bar Association

The good folks at the Dupage County Bar Association posted a "post" by me talking about smartphones.  Here is the link.

Vista

I got to go to a Microsoft T2 event today, which was basically a preview of Windows Vista for companies like ours that support, install, and sell Microsoft products.  I have been a big fan of Windows XP and thought it was the best product Microsoft had put out.  (I am still pissed about  ME), so much so, that I have not been that excited about Vista.  I guess I had the mentality of, "if it isn't broke, don't fix it."  Well, this event completely changed my mind.  Vista is so good looking. (I have not had a date in a while).  Besides looks, it is super efficient.  One of the worst things that happens during the work day is being forced to shutdown your workstation.  You lose time  waiting for your computer to boot up and then have to reopen all your programs.  With Vista, your workstation will restart much faster and open up to the exact programs that you had before.  The other big improvement I noticed is that it is about five seconds faster to jump to other programs and windows features.  You don't have to drill down 5 windows to find the system restore.  I will install Vista as soon as Microsoft releases it to us and the give reports on how Amicus, TimeMatters, PCLaw, HotDocs, and Worldox work with this new software.  The same goes for Office 2007.

Bouncing your server with a split install

If you are running Amicus Attorney Client Server edition, you either have a split or embedded install.  An embedded install means Amicus Administrator must be running at all times, where as a split allows you to run part of Amicus as a service allowing you to close the Amicus Administrator and still have users logged in.  When restarting or shutting down your server while running a split install, you must stop the Amiucs service or your database will get corrupted.  Before you stop this service, make sure that no one else is in Amicus.