Law Office Technology

Vista and User Account Control - It Solves most Vista Issues

I walked into a law firm last week to install Amicus Attorney on a new Vista Machine.  As I entered the attorney's office, I noticed that he was on the phone with Microsoft Tech Support.  He told me that he installed Adobe Professional 8 earlier that morning on his machine and when he tried to register it, Vista gave a fit and it crashed Adobe.  He was on the phone with Adobe Tech Support for an hour and a half before they transferred him to Microsoft Tech Support which he had wasted another hour. 

As we were waiting for tech support the attorney asked if I knew how to fix the problem.  My response was, shut off User Account Control in Vista, register Adobe and turn it back on.  He tried this and it worked.  It took about 5 minutes.  I am shocked that neither Adobe or Microsoft thought of this solution as in my experience it is the first thing to try when you have a vista issue.  Warning, when you shut off User Account Control you must restart your workstation. I have posted directions on how to do this below. 

Start --> Control Panel --> User Accounts --> Turn User Account Control on or off

Uncheck Use User Account Control (UAC) to help protect your computer

Restart the workstation

Upgrade to Amicus Attorney Small Firm 2008 New Features Video

http://www.amicusattorney.com/upgrade08/#

 

Pretty good video.

Amicus Attorney Small Firm 2008

For full details about new features in Amicus Attorney 2008 Small Firm Edition, consult the What’s New available from our website at http://www.amicusattorney.com.  A summary is listed below. 

·    Navigation Pane - Amicus Attorney 2008 Small Firm Edition has a new look!  A Navigation Pane, shown in all main module views, provides easy access to any of the Amicus modules.

·    New Tasks module - The new Tasks module provides a variety of views along with filters and functions specially designed for easy management of To Do's.

·    Merge Contacts - Team Members can now combine the information from two Contact records into one directly from their own Contacts Index, rather than having to rely on the Team Administrator.

·    Outlook and E-mail Integration enhancements - If E-mail Integration is enabled, you can have an e-mail signature automatically included in new E-mails that you send directly from Amicus Attorney.  Also, the Outlook access alert that commonly appeared periodically while you were working in Outlook or Amicus is now handled automatically.

·    Explorer brad view of Folder documents on Files - Each Amicus Document of type “Folder” is now listed in the Documents submenu at the top of the brad in the File Details.  Upon selecting one of these items from the submenu, a Windows Explorer-based view of the folder appears embedded within the File Brad.

·    Automatic Spell Check - When typing in a text box field, such the File Summary field in File Details or a Notes field, your text can now be checked automatically if set in your preferences.

·    Auto-Text - This feature is useful for quickly inserting frequently used words or phrases, or for correcting frequently misspelled words, in text box fields such as a Time Entry description or a Notes field.  If you enter an Auto-Text word (followed by a space and/or a punctuation mark), that text will be changed automatically as set in your preferences and if automatic spell check is turned on.

·    Help format - All online helps have been converted to Microsoft HTML Help format for Vista compatibility.

·    Those who upgrade from Amicus Small Firm (5.7 or 5.9) will now see the following additional features:

o        Rolling Backups and Mirror (Additional) Backups

o        Practice Packs

o        PaperPort Link

o        Juris Link

o        Accounting Templates for Brief Accounting, Dexco, Juris, LegalPRO/SoloPro, Legalmaster, Legal Vision, Legal Vision (TBB), Canterbury Lighthouse, Manac ASA400, Manac PC, Quill, Solace Accounting, Solace Millennium, SOS Practice Manager, and Verdict.

PCLaw 9.0 is here

At first glance PCLaw 9 has made drastic changes to the visual appearance of the program.  You can see below how the side bar has changed.

PCLaw 8.0	PCLaw 9.0

 

If you are alarmed by the changes, PCLaw has given users the option of switching back to the classic view.  You can right click your mouse in PClaw and select Switch to Quick Step Classic which will bring back the previous version view.

Amicus 7, HotDocs 6.2 and Check line 59

I recently put in Amicus 7 at a firm in Jackson, MS that had been using Amicus 5.5.   After the install I went to test out their HotDocs documents which started causing all sorts of problems.  I Called Amicus TechSupport and found that there was a patch for Amicus that solved some HotDocs 6.2 issues.  After installing the patch I started getting the error message below: 

Working with Jeff (who was great, I am saving his email and extension for future use) from Amicus TechSupport, we discovered that although the firm was using HotDocs 6.2, some of their documents had been coded in a previous version.  This did not cause a problem with Amicus 5, but does with Amicus 7.  We added all the HotDocs Documents from Amicus into a template library and converted them all to work with HotDocs 6.2.  This solved the problem. 

Amicus 7, Outlook and Crashing

I had a client that was having major problems with Amicus crashing when he was in Outlook.  I checked out his preferences for the Outlook link and saw that his Amicus was set to Exchange with Outlook every 1 minute.  I changed it to 15 minutes and he has not had a crash since.

 

Searching Custom Fields in Amicus 7

If you want to be able to search custom fields in Amicus 7, make sure Include in Search is changed from False to True.

TomTom

I finally got GPS back into my life.  I had been using TomTom Navigator 5 with my Treo 650 and 680.  When I made the switch to the Treo 750 this software would no longer work.  I had to purchase Navigator 6 which  I was not sure was going to work because it was not listed as a supported device.  Here are several things I love about having GPS on my phone.

• It is extremely portable so when I need to travel and rent a car, I can  bring it with me.
  
• It tells me the exact time that I will arrive at an appointment.
  
• It gives me traffic reports and alternative routes.
  
• I can install and use it on my laptop.