Amicus Attorney Erfahrungen

Good software that could be great

Kommentare: Paperless offices require careful organization and this program provides a good platform. It is a little pricey, but their customer support is great.

Vorteile:

The interface is well designed, it does a good job of maintaining data integrity. I feel that it does allow me to keep fairly organized, and it is helpful as far answering the phone and being able to get right on top of things, it is great. The sync with Outlook works most of the time, and it does a nice job with duplicates. The time keeping seems to catch almost everything, but needs improvement.

Nachteile:

There are two possible setups, I think I chose the wrong one for my situation. If you have a "split" setup then unless you are on your network, you cannot do a lot of necessary things --such as generate documents, The handy tool that pulls up all your documents that you will need at trial, you guessed it. Finally, there are things that should be easier to do, such as copy complete tables of data.

Amicus Attorney was my first legal management software. We both started together almost 40 yrs ago.

Vorteile:

Permits me to practice law. Amicus is easy to use and very intuitive. It's just clicking away, and getting things done. Now, I can be anywhere and use it from my tablet or a laptop computer if I am out of town

Nachteile:

I was never able to incorporate Amicus' billing software so I continued to use Timeslips, and both work well together. Now that Timeslips is getting expensive, I may give their billing software another try. Perhaps now it is intuitive as Amicus Attorney.

Amicus is a bit Old School

Kommentare: It wasn't great. They promised upgrades but never delivered. The company sold four times during our seven years. It got expensive over the seven years.

Vorteile:

It was pretty easy to set up and there weren't alot of upfront costs. In our early days, it was beneficial.

Nachteile:

Customer service was scarce and often wasn't able to resolve our issues.

For our purposes, this software does everything that most the firm members expect of it.

Vorteile:

The calendaring feature works as expected, and all members associated with that event are able to see the event on their calendar and make any changes or updates to it, as necessary. The telephone feature works, even if you don't have your phone system connected to your computer, as it allows you to make notes and keep track of your billable time. The time entry assistant is really nice, as it allows you to identify items in your day that you may have overlooked for billing purposes.

Nachteile:

Does not integrate as seamlessly with WordPerfect as I had hoped, an does not lend itself to some email providers other than outlook.

Good for Small Law Firms

Vorteile:

The ability to track the time of anything you do in the app. Whether you're marking that you completed a task, sending an email, making a phone call, etc., as long as you're tracking it in Amicus, you can put in a time entry for it.

Nachteile:

Because it's online-based, we've often had connectivity issues. Because we use Amicus all day, everyday, if we can't access it, it's a huge problem for the business.

Tech support is slow and usually never calls back

Vorteile:

I like the overall software. However, for the cost, the accounting side is lacking, and the tech support is horrible. For the price of this software, I expect more.

Nachteile:

The cost and the tech support. If you are going to double the cost of the software, you should at least have good tech support. The last couple of times I have called in I was told my issue needed advanced technical support. I have still not had a call back, even though I was promised a call back in 24 hours. I have had to hire an outside consultant at my expense to fix this problem. I have difficulty justifying paying a monthly subscription fee for this horrible support. I would love an answer to this, but when I ask on tech support calls they have no response.

Amicus Critique

Kommentare: I have used various versions of Amicus continuously since 1999. When it works it is very good. The program kind of reminds me of the General Motors cars that my parents used to buy. Every car had it issues. GM always promised that next year's care would be trouble free and better than ever. But it never happened. I keep Amicus because there is to my knowledge nothing better in marketplace and because the cost of replacement is probably not justified. However the Amicus program that I use is still very flawed.

Vorteile:

I like it because it organizes me. It is easy to use (when it works) and very logical.

Nachteile:

I am unhappy with the many flaws and quirks of the system. If you buy it you will have to become best friends with a really smart computer geek who will be able to sort out the many idiosyncrasies of the system. It crashes routinely. I am happy that I pay my computer technician a fixed monthly fee because otherwise I would be in financial trouble.

We support networks that are leaving this software

Kommentare: It was wonderful at first.. like all marriages but the honeymoon is over. Seriously though guys, you were killing it but now two large labor law firms in Boston are already switching and i am sure we will hear of more.

Vorteile:

We liked that it was not TimeSlips! (A joke) we liked that it works with QB/has remote access built in and so forth but that is when it works.

Nachteile:

The support staff is touch and go.. sometimes you get a wizard that has to go into SQL and switch out something othertimes you get people that keep remoting in but nothing seems to happen. We hear tons of frustration from our clients (Boston law firms) who were the ones that selected the software based on other firms recommending it.. but that was before. A lot of folks are leaving.

Poor Support

Kommentare: I was a big supporter of Amicus Attorney and referred several local firms to them. Their support staff was great. Ever since the merger with Abacus, the support quality has dropped significantly. I'm so fed up with them that I'm going to switch to a new case management program when my current Amicus contract is up.

Vorteile:

It was a good, easy to use program with excellent support.

Nachteile:

The support is now terrible. The support staff has limited knowledge of the program, which has become buggy since the merger with Abacus. They are quick to refer matters to the "next level" support person who will call you back. But they don't call you back. You have to keep calling them.

Simple yet multi-faceted interface for case management

Kommentare: Many legal associates (of our firm) used this and brought us on-board. It was a good way to handle the scale of operations, cases and billing information without getting too complicated.

Vorteile:

The simple billing, case and time management functionality is a winner. It's also a decent document tracking and management tool.

Nachteile:

The support isn't up to the mark. It varies in the depth and quality of integrations. It might work great with one tool but not so much with another.

Past user

Kommentare: I was not happy and I avoided using it

Vorteile:

i did not like amicus at all. there weren't any features that I found user friendly.

Nachteile:

It was very outdated. It was not simple to use, it was hard to manage

The new way to practice law

Kommentare: Overall I like Amicus. I looked at a number of applications, some less or more costly and settled here after talking with other attorneys who use a number of different applications. Amicus helps you become more organized, particularly if you are in a smaller firm environment. It can also reduce your overhead by reducing the need for staff because of how it integrates information, particularly timekeeping and billing.

Vorteile:

This program is a good integration of: document management for clients; contacts; task and deadline tracking; timekeeping; billing; and, an email program. The fact that it can be accessed online and via a phone app is a major plus. You don't have to travel with a laptop and can access all of your files anywhere. The way it sorts emails, documents and everything else by client files that you can create is very useful in keeping you organized. Depending upon the settings you select, much of this is done automatically by the application. Multiple users can access and work on client files and immediately share their work with other attorneys in the firm. It's a very collaborative platform. I like the integration with QuickBooks and truly appreciate the ability to work with operating and client trust accounts. However, QuickBooks is the only financial management program with which it integrates. I have been at this almost a year and learn a new function daily that improves my effectiveness for clients. Their technical support has been great. I am crazy about their support staff and can tell you this is a major reason that I have stuck it out through a steep learning curve. I also appreciate the fact that it has an open forum where users can recommend changes and improvements. I am impressed that Amicus actually takes action on suggestions and has adopted user recommendations. This is a nice value add proposition.

Nachteile:

There are some significant limitations. The application integrates seamlessly with Microsoft Word but not at all with the WordPerfect suite of programs that many attorneys find to be the standard in the practice and better that their Microsoft counterparts. Amicus indicates that it is considering creating an integration with the WordPerfect suite. Amicus limits users to 20 GB of space that is not much in this day and age. Expanding the account size within Amicus is very expensive. The application integrates with Dropbox, which is a more affordable option to add storage space. Yet, oddly, it does not integrate with Microsoft OneDrive. This is also a new functionality that Amicus says it is considering. When evaluating this program be mindful of this restriction as it can easily double the actual cost of moving to this platform. Getting documents out of and putting them back into a client file is a bit cumbersome. It also takes time to learn how to save versions of the same document and the versions are not easily seen. Moving emails around is a awkward. It is time consuming to select a group of emails for filing. Similarly, you cannot select an entire conversation on a subject, regardless of whether it is in your Inbox or Sent box, and place them in the client file. So, in some cases you need to clean both Inbox and Sent mail and place items in the client file. A real time killer. I have found that the application times out or snags on occasion.

Much more clunky than we had hoped. Large learning curve. Making do for now.

Vorteile:

TIME & MATTER MANAGEMENT: Timers and time entries are pretty simple. Knowing all people involved in a matter all in one place; engineers, judges, etc. is a great feature. Adding emails to a file is a good idea but time-consuming. Having all the data for a client in one place is good. BILLING: I like that the Billing and Attorney sides are separate. Billing and accepting payments works quite well. Amicus can do split billing which is important to us. The interface with Quickbooks is quirky but after 1.7 years of working with it we've figured out most of the issues and found workarounds. Reports can be downloaded to Excel which is vital to my managing the firm.

Nachteile:

CONS: The end-user learning curve is huge and not intuitive which has led to a lot of attorneys entering time and not using Amicus for anything else. Text onscreen is exceptionally small, and for most users, problematic. The interface is not intuitive and takes a lot of trial and error to find the best ways to find what you want or report on the issue. We were lead to believe that the document management interface would work for us, but upon trial found out it would not work with our setup. So we're still dealing with Microsoft Explorer for managing documents, which is problematic. Overall our approval level with Amicus is likely only around 50%. There are so many features that we liked in the concept that has been difficult to get attorneys to do because the interface is not user-friendly. TIME & MATTER MANAGEMENT: Data for our conflict database did not translate well from our previous system so conflicts checks take too long. Adding emails or files to the matter is very clunky. Ticklers are quirky and hard to work in Outlook. Tickler Reports are too limited events with no date range, or date range but no file selection. Running tickers for only one matter is impossible. Need more filters. BILLING: Reports downloaded to Excel are impossible to use due to all the merged fields and lack of use of tables. We have to download Reports to CSV and spend time figuring out what the column headers actually are. I use the selection tools to view onscreen matters or time entries by

Amicus Attorney Review

Kommentare: I have a small 5 attorney firm. with a large support staff. At any given time, we handle about 1,000 active files. Our practice is very paper intensive. We've tried to go paperless, but it doesn't quite work with out type of practice, so we still do things the old fashioned way ... with file folders and legal pads. I've been an Amicus Attorney user for over 10 years. Prior to that, I tried and use several other "name brand" case management systems. Until about a year ago, we used the Amicus Small Firm program and it worked great. We switched to the Premier edition when we upgraded our server and all of our workstations. The premier edition was more adaptable to our practice. First of all, it was faster, second, we liked the better document management and third, for a rather small increase in cost, we got more bells and whistles. There are at least a half dozen firms in my area that are now using Amicus because of my recommendation. The links with other programs like Outlook are seamless. One calendar entry in Amicus updates Outlook and my laptop and my phone. I have not seen another case management program that has a document assembly system for letters, pleadings, emails, faxes anywhere as sophisticated as Amicus Attorney's. Also, check out their "Do" button and their "precedent" processes.

Vorteile:

Their support is fantastic. Very little wait time. The support people are courteous, knowledgeable. and patient.

Nachteile:

In many ways, the program is overwhelming for some of our staff. It takes a lot of time to train new staff members on the program. Also, there are many things that the program does that I haven't been able to use because it takes a lot of time to set up those things. This is probably more of a problem with smaller firms that don't have staff who just handle equipment use. In addition, we're WordPerfect users. I feel that the program works slightly better with MS Word.

Amicus is generally an ok product, but is lacking in several respects.

Vorteile:

It allows the members of my office to act as wild ducks flying more or less in formation, i.e. it provides a common path for all of us to stay organized and communicate regarding information in our system.

Nachteile:

I would switch to CLIO if I did not have so much data that would need to be replicated. (History creates inertia.)CLIO has so many good features and provides such good training I don't like Microsoft exchange and several features require Microsoft exchange. I don't like it that the process of exiting the software changed in the last upgrade - I have been using the software for 20+ years and suddenly the way of minimizing the program has become the way of closing the program -,my muscle memory tells me to do it one way and some bright techie has decided that what I have been taught through year of use is no longer correct. I don't like it that there is no free training module for users we bring onto the team. Booking a private training is too pricey. Tech support is spotty. Sometimes you get a poor techie who cannot help with the problem- in such cases we call in again and hope we get a good techie (we frequently get someone on the 2nd or 3rd call who can solve our problem. Upgrades are buggy and it takes several patches to get things right. Abacus has an immigration module that is not available for Amicus. I get way too many sales calls and e-mails for Abacus Cloud. I am not paying the company to be a marketing prospect.

Amicus for Small Law Firm

Kommentare: Cloud Amicus Online. Generally good. Customer support has been decent. Occasionally access is slow during particular times of day. This can be annoying if one is trying to upload/download large documents or use email during these delays. Would like to see maintenance schedules published so we would know when to anticipate delays. Would also like to pre-release information and a users' organization set up to provide feedback for new features and revisions to old ones.

Vorteile:

Product is generally intuitive. Email, phone, task, calendaring, contact management, and document management, time keeping, expenses and billing are well integrated. New client portal is very usual.

Nachteile:

Client portal features need to be expanded to allow cases (files) to have finer level of access control when multiple clients within a file require different levels and different document access. We would be more inclined to use document templates if we understood them better, in particular setting up logic driven variable paragraphs. Security controls relative to document folders need to be expanded to allow different levels of access for different levels of users. E.g. I should be able to delete and rename folders I create, but without admin privs, not delete/rename folders created by others. Would like to see editors incorporated into document management instead of requiring that these be done off line and then uploaded.

I used Amicus Cloud for several years. It is intuitive, easy to use, but limited.

Kommentare: It kept track of emails for me for years. That is a monumental task, and I found the product very useful for this purpose. It creates invoices pretty easily.

Vorteile:

It is intuitive and easy to use. The interface is logical and pertinent to lawyers and law practice. No special training or programming is necessary to use the system. Because it links to Outlook, all emails, contacts, etc. are instantly synchronized with Outlook and smart phones.

Nachteile:

The word that best describes this software is SLOW. It operates by linking to Outlook, and you will frequently sit there watching the hourglass swirl waiting for the task to complete. Because the software is not a stand-alone product, it is limited in what it can do. It does not really integrate documents , and the only way to manage or track work flow is via Outlook tasks. It keeps track of emails only so long as the email address is active with Microsoft Exchange - if you ever deactivate an email address, you lose access to all emails associated with that address. Abacus Law bought Amicus, and it seems that Abacus has little or no interest in maintaining much less improving this product.

Amicus Attorney has been a fine product for years

Vorteile:

The calendar and data base are easy to use.

Nachteile:

We used Amicus for many years, and spent a lot to purchase the program. I was disappointed when Amicus discontinued servicing our product in favor of a web-based product solely.

Was a good product before purchased by Abacus

Kommentare: We are just waiting out our contract to leave. The billing problem described above makes the program absolutely unusable.

Vorteile:

The layout is attractive, and it has a lot of features and reports that are useful. It integrates fairly well with Quickbooks.

Nachteile:

This was a good product before Abacus purchased it. Now they don't support it and it has terrible glitches they don't know how to fix that make it nearly unusable. Our billing software requires INDIVIDUAL printing for each bill now - hundreds of clients each month - taking up dozens of hours of staffing time to get bills out. Each month. They have offered no solutions. There are other issues, but that is the worst one. Also determining current balances is challenging, and the program messaging function is poor.

Needs some work......

Kommentare: Honestly, the prior Amicus program was much better than the online version. But I am making this one work.

Vorteile:

I like that I can have all of my Clients and cases easily accessible.

Nachteile:

The mobile app leaves a LOT to be desired. After a couple of years of use, I still can't see a calendar on my app or transfer my calendar to Outlook. I have also asked that the new company develop the ability to print a "NEW MATTER REPORT" like the old Amicus had. I received an email quite some time ago indicating that they had accepted my suggestion but this program still does not have that ability to my knowledge.

Not happy with support- there is none!

Vorteile:

Works well for what I need it to do. I can keep track of time and clients, it sends out reminders and helps me stay on top of what I am doing. Even though the program works, I am not happy with the service.

Nachteile:

Company sold me on the 2016 small firm update, then cancelled the software a few months later and went to a cloud format only. I don't need that format and the company has stopped supporting the 2016 version. I have a problem I can't fix and they won't back up their product. They knew they were going to the cloud only, yet still sold me on an update I would not have support for. Now I am stuck with a program that I need assistance on, and no one will help. I feel abandoned by them. I bought the program because they worked with Apple, then they stopped doing that and forced me to buy a Parallels program just to keep using Amicus. If I had to do it all over again, I would not purchase Amicus. The support is terrible.

Overall, Amicus does what I need it to at a price point that is reasonable for my solo practice.

Vorteile:

I like the overall management capabilities and ability to keep track of time and bill. Although I have not used it yet, I like the client portal idea and ability to accept payments.

Nachteile:

The email system is inconsistent. Sometimes, cutting and pasting into a message will disrupt the formatting of the email and often times, different fonts are used in the final message even though the message you are writing - those inconsistencies do not show up. Oftentimes, the server is slow and cannot send the message or loses the message and you have to start all over - this is the worst. I often have to reload Amicus because it gets "stuck" on a page and cannot move forward. I wish the phone app was more functional.

Amicus Attorney Software

Vorteile:

The ability to integrate your emails, calendar, reminders, and case load all in one is what sets amicus apart. Whenever I have had a problem the support team has acted promptly and efficiently. Very courteously as well.

Nachteile:

Many of the features take to much time to set up. As a small firm, we do not have a separate IT department and simply cannot deploy amicus to its full potential. Also, I have seen staff become overwhelmed with the software. Training can be tedious.

It's only as good as the users

Kommentare: Amicus Attorney is capable of being a one stop shop when it comes to case management, but your users have to be trainable properly and they actually have to use the program accordingly for this to be true.

Vorteile:

Amicus Attorney is a very robust case management program with tons of beneficial features. It has the ability to streamline repetitive tasks and entries.

Nachteile:

We deployed Amicus Attorney almost twenty (20) years ago. A lot has change over the years, some good, some bad. The decline in tech support has been the most unfavorable change.

The hub of our office.

Kommentare: comprehensive case management.

Vorteile:

Interface is very intuitive and staff finds it easy to use. It synchronizes with with QuickBooks, our accounting system.

Nachteile:

Customer support is lacking. We have had to rely on outside consultants to a great extent for synchronization issues and updates.