Introducing…Amicus Accounting™

We are pleased to announce that we will be expanding the Amicus family of legal software products in the upcoming year. Our new product, Amicus Accounting, is a time, billing & accounting product designed for small to mid-sized law firms.

"We are excited to be bringing another great software product to market that will help to make law firms more productive," said Ron Collins, President of Gavel & Gown Software Inc. "For years our customers have been asking us to take the Amicus philosophy and apply it to a billing product. And that is exactly what we have done."

Amicus Accounting will be a companion product to Amicus Attorney, creating a total solution for firms looking to integrate their front office and back office processes into a single easy to use tool. It will also be sold as a stand alone solution. Amicus Attorney will continue to integrate with other time & billing solutions. "We have built our customer base by linking Amicus Attorney to all the major legal billing products on the market and we will continue to link to these products," said Les Hansen, VP Sales & Marketing at Gavel & Gown. "Amicus Accounting will simply provide customers another option in selecting the software products that are best suited for the firms".

Amicus Accounting is slated for release in 2006, so stay tuned for more information.

Shared Resources
By: Chris Arrendale of Best Law Firm Solutions, Inc.

Wouldn't it be nice to create calendar events for a conference room, or even find out where the firm laptop is? With the Shared Resources and the Group Calendar feature in Amicus Attorney you can!

"Shared Resources"

1. Go into the Amicus Administrator to set up your Shared Resources. Please get everyone out of Amicus Attorney for this process. It is always recommended to perform a backup of Amicus Attorney prior to making any changes to the database.
2. Select Configure > Other from the top menu
3. Select the Shared Resources tab
4. Add your Shared Resources including conference rooms, client cancellation calendars, firm laptops, firm projectors, etc.
5. Click OK to accept the changes to the Shared Resources calendar
6. Go into your Amicus Attorney Office and select the Calendar
7. Select the Group tab on the Calendar (in the lower right corner of the screen)
8. Select the Profiles button (in the upper right corner of the screen) and you will see this screen:
   
   
   
   
9. Click the New button and you will see this screen:
   
   
   
   
10. Name the profile and click the team members button and you will then see the following screen:
    
    
    
    
11. Select the button at the bottom that is titled, “Display All Team Members” and add the appropriate resource from the list of Shared Resources you created in the Amicus Administrator.
12. This is where you can select the conference rooms, client cancellation calendar, firm laptop, firm project, etc. from the list and add it so that you can create calendar events and/or to dos for your shared resources.
13. Click OK and OK again to create the Profile
14. Now, every time you need to view a certain Profile, you can come into the Group Calendar area of Amicus Attorney and view it, just by selecting the Profile. This works great for the receptionist who is looking at everyone’s calendar all day long for scheduling purposes.

Compliments of:

Chris L. Arrendale
Best Law Firm Solutions
8975 Roswell Road, Suite 201
Atlanta, Georgia 30350
Tel. (770) 998-3800
Fax. (770) 998-3945
Web: www.bestlawfirm.com

Chris L. Arrendale, is an Amicus Attorney Premier Consultant with Best Law Firm Solutions. He is the Director of Technology as well as a certified law office software consultant. Chris received his AA from Oxford and his BA in Political Science and Sociology from Emory University. He received his MS in Software Engineering and Information Technology from Southern Polytechnic State University (Magna Cum Laude). Chris is a Microsoft Certified Professional, Microsoft Office Specialist and holds certifications in Microsoft XP, Office XP, PC Master Technician, NT Administrator, Networking Technician, Information Security, E-Commerce, Wireless Concepts, Internet Technology, and Webmaster. Chris is also an active member of the Association of Computing & Machinery, as well as the IEEE. He has many years of experience working in a law firm environment and consults on hardware, software, trial presentation, network, security, wireless, and handheld needs. He is also a certified consultant/trainer on Amicus Attorney, PCLaw, CaseMap, TimeMap, NoteMap, TextMap, Amicus Assembly, Worldox, CompuLaw, ActiveWords, Adobe Acrobat, and is an authorized reseller of Word Perfect, Microsoft Word, and PaperPort.

Creating Custom Document Groups

Amicus Attorney makes document management easier by putting your information right at your finger tips. Customization options make tracking your documents even easier, because you can group them according to your preferences.

This Civil Litigation File shows the document groups that have been create for this file type.

Document Management: Saving your documents, letters, memos, etc to the relevant files. Whether created in your word processor, transmitted via email, or scanned into your system, all of your documents can be saved back to the pertinent File in Amicus Attorney.

Your Amicus Administrator can create Document Groups that everyone in the firm can use to help better organize the documents related to your files.

Creating Custom Document Groups

Launch Amicus Administrator. Choose Configure > Files...

In the window that appears, select the Documents Tab.

Custom document groups are created by file type. This is important because you might would want to track different types of documents for your real-estate files for instance, then you would for your personal injury cases.

1. Select the appropriate file type (Administrative Law will likely be show by default).
2. To add a new document group, simply click the new button on the right (Existing document groups can also be modified here with the use of the edit button). Each file type may have up to 20 document groups.
3. Once you are satisfied with the changes, click OK at the bottom to accept your changes,
4. The next time you log into your Amicus Attorney office, you will see the changes (remember that it is always a good idea to do a backup of your Amicus Attorney data before making any customization changes -- that way you always have an option if you encounter any problems).

Amicus Attorney comes with many predefined Document Groups, which can be modified or added to as necessary, giving you many options for managing your documents.

For more information on document management within Amicus Attorney, please see the section "Working with documents related to a file" in Chapter 7 of the Amicus Attorney User Guide. This is accessible from within your Amicus Attorney Help. Choose Online Manuals > User Guide.

Serving Smaller Clients Profitably

by Edward Poll, J.D., M.B.A., CMC

Ed Wesemann in his book, the First Myth of Legal Management Is That it Exists, suggests that small clients disproportionately drain the resources of law firms while providing a disproportionately small contribution to firm profits. I agree that the size of the client is important; everyone wants to serve larger clients.

And, the contribution of the client's revenue to the firm's total gross revenue may be an even more important concern. If your larger (however you define that - whether by number of matters of by dollars collected) client makes up a reasonably significant percentage (more than 10%), you are at risk even if the "drain" on your resources may be small and the contribution to profits proportionately larger. If that client should leave for whatever reason, you will experience a big hole in your revenue. If your client's contribution is only 1 or 2%, you then can afford to "fire" the client without severe consequences to you.

I am all in favor of seeking larger clients with more money and more interesting challenges. This effort, however, must be balanced to assure that the firm doesn't wind up with only a few clients, larger though they may be, who put the firm at risk if they should leave.

You may be willing to accept this risk for the short-term with the intent of getting more clients so that the percentage allocation to the "larger" client is reduced while maintaining the billings at the same level for the client.

But, be sure that no long-term capital or other expenditures are made at the behest of such larger clients without some type of assurance or guarantee that the business will stay with you until at least the amortization for the new expenditure is completed. In the longer term, a strategy based on fewer, larger clients will almost always lead to disaster.

© 2005 – Edward Poll

Compliments of:
Edward Poll
LawBiz Management Company
Venice, California
(310) 827-5415
www.lawbiz.com

About the Author:
Edward Poll, J.D., M.B.A., CMC, is a coach to lawyers and certified management consultant who shows attorneys and law firms how to be more profitable. Ed's latest book is Collecting Your Fee: Getting Paid From Intake to Invoice (ABA 2003); he is the author of Attorney & Law Firm Guide to The Business of Law, 2d ed. (ABA 2002); Secrets of the Business of Law: Successful Practices for Increasing Your Profits. To make suggestions or comments about this article, call (800) 837-5880 or send an e-mail to edpoll@lawbiz.com. You can also order a free e-zine or visit Ed on the web at www.lawbiz.com.

Posting Time Entries with Activity Code of "none"

Issue:
After upgrading a version of PCLaw to the PCLaw version 7 you can no longer post time entries which have an Activity code of "none"

Cause:
This issue is caused because the version 7 PCLaw now requires a default Task code be set to accept the none Activity code from Amicus.

Solution:
To resolve the issue the preference must be set in the PCLaw Administrator.

1. Open PCLaw and Amicus Administrator and run backups of each program.
2. Open PCLaw and select File > Matter > Global
3. In the Select Matters to View dialog, click OK.
4. A prompt appears stating that you must choose the fields for all selected Matters and then enter the new values. Click OK.
5. In the Matters – Global Change dialog that appears, activate the Default Task Code checkbox and type in BW for "Billable Work" in the blank field, and click Apply.
6. You will be prompted to confirm your choice to change the selected fields for all Matters that you have chosen. Click Yes. When you are ready to post Time Entries to PCLaw, you may post them with an Amicus Attorney Activity Code of "None".
   

For further information on this subject please refer to our Version V, Technical Resource Guide for PCLaw Integration at http://www.amicusattorney.com/support/resourceguides/VersionV/features/PCLaw.pdf.

YOUR LEGAL LAUGH
Your monthly dose of humor...

Compliments of: www.legalhumour.com

Amicus Attorney Premier Consultants are professionals who are nationally qualified to sell and install all Amicus Attorney products and to provide their customers with on-site training and support.

Training Programs Offered by our Premier Consultants:

Here are a few of the training sessions being offered by some of our Premier Consultants.
For more information or to register for a class, please contact the consultant firm directly.
All times listed in ET unless otherwise indicated.

CD-ROM TRAINING

2b1, Inc.
San Francisco, CA
415-284-2221
www.2b1inc.com

Amicus Attorney V Basic Training: PC Desktop training for the Amicus Attorney user. Easy-to use and easy-to-follow animation covers the most used features of Amicus Attorney V.

For more information, visit their web site: www.2b1inc.com/t_products.htm

CLASSROOM TRAINING

Amicus Attorney V classroom training by:

For more details and to register, please visit: www.bestlawfirm.com/register.aspx

ONLINE TRAINING

ProBill Law Firm Solutions
Boca Raton, FL
800-299-9177
www.probill.net
administration@probill.net

For more information, contact ProBill Law Firm Solutions via e-mail or phone.