Amicus Attorney Helps Long Island Lawyer Run His Practice With Ease

Amicus provides advanced mobility, modern interface and more

Arthur E. Shulman is a lawyer with 32 years of legal experience. With the help of an assistant, this solo practitioner practices matrimonial law, family court law, real estate and commercial litigation. He’s been a user of Amicus Attorney since the late ‘90s. At that time, he decided to invest in Amicus Attorney, in part, to capture more billable hours.

“Other people I knew had it,” he recalls, “and I saw a demonstration at one of the bar association functions. I wanted something that functioned with my billing program.”

Since then, Mr. Shulman has purchased every release of Amicus Attorney, benefiting from the new features introduced each time. He was happy with the Client-Server version of Amicus Attorney V+, which would exchange data with his iPAQ Pocket PC. But when he heard about Amicus 7, he recognized the program’s new mobility options would work better for him.

Mr. Shulman uses his laptop as his server because it’s a more powerful computer. This used to cause problems when he wanted to work from different locations or computers.

“I looked 7 over and one of the main things I wanted it to do was the ability to use my desktop PC at the office,” he explains. “I use my laptop as a server but if I don’t have my laptop with me, I can now work offline on my desktop PC. Whatever work I’ve done offline, I can integrate it into Amicus 7 much easier than with the previous version.”

Amicus Attorney 7 allows users to work anywhere, whether they’re at home on a laptop or using another desk in theiroffice. Practice information can also be transferred to a pocket organizer or accessed from across the Internet. The advanced application was designed to ensure legal professionals will have access to their vital practice information regardless of where they are physically located. When remote users return to the office and reconnect, any changes made are automatically synchronized with changes made by others in their firm.

Advanced mobility was not the only reason Mr. Shulman upgraded his software.

“I’m bad on billing,” he confesses.“But Amicus reminds me about what I’ve actually done and so it helps. Since this version integrates so well with my billing program, I’m doing better at getting my time entries in.”

In addition, he notes Amicus 7’s new graphical interface offers a more streamlined workflow, with anything he needs just a couple of clicks away.

“The Amicus 7 user interface seems to be more seamless, more easy to use,” he says. “In the older versions you had to close more screens to move along but with Version 7, it seems like you can have more things going at the same time. For example, I find it easier to get to the Notes summary page, with the way it’s now set up.”

One key element of the new version is its use of the SQL database, which many call “the gold standard of databases.” To use the new database, Mr. Shulman converted his old Amicus data to the SQL format.

“The conversion was fairly easy - it didn’t take that long to do,” he says. “I was basically doing it right, but before I took one important step, I called tech support to make sure I was on the right track. I was - and after that everything worked right the first time.”

When asked if he would recommend others making the change from earlier versions to Amicus Attorney 7, Arthur Shulman
answers quickly:

“It was a worthwhile upgrade for me.”