Opiniones de Amicus Attorney

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.

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 Premium is a reliable product. Once it's up and running correctly, there are few bugs. It is a highly flexible program chock full of more options than anyone could ever use. I prefer to avoid the cloud, too much risk of privacy issues, so even though an in-house server is old school, I prefer it this way. MS Exchange sync which gets calendars and contacts to the cell phone is excellent since 2015, best it's been since the old days of synching to the Palm Pilot. While I am listing a number of cons below, this software is the center point of our practice.

Since this software was purchased by Abacus Corp in 2016, the price has gone up 75% --
what a sticker shock! IMHO, the tech support under the new owner is no better or worse.
As for improvements to the product, the new owners seem to be focused only on selling their own add-on products --- the announcements tout how AA Premium now links to Abacus Product XYZ, but AA Premium has received any new features. They promised a cell phone app for remote access as part of the February update to AA 2017 and it still has not been released. They have added links to their add-on extra accounting and law products, but not updated any features of the core Amicus Attorney program. There is still no iPhone or Android app for remote access, one still has to use a browser on the cell phone to reach AmicusAnywhere. The process for writing SQL reports is complex! Also, the move from WordPerfect to Word (a necessary evil in today's world) meant losing the highly flexible document merge abilities of WordPerfect. I've been with AA since 2001; if Abacus doesn't produce new features, however, I will look to move my office to another product that seems more modern even at the risk of going to a web-based product when my two-year contract expires.

Amicus Attorney was a wonderful program back when you could actually purchase the software. Great time and billing functions, great calendar and client/contact management, and just great overall legal case management. Then they switched to subscription only, and it basically quadrupled my overhead cost.

It was only about $399 or $499 per year for the first user license before it became a subscription, and you could get away with upgrading ever other year. Now an annual subscription is ~$828 per user, and you have no choice but to pay that every single year if you want to use the program. It’s highway robbery. Also, integration with Quickbooks has always been a bit rough, but it’s manageable once you figure out the quirks. I refuse to subscribe as the pricing is way too high. Now that they have all gone this route, there are few (if any) good and AFFORDABLE case management solutions for very small firms.

The software is highly organized. I know where all my main functions/features are and they're fairly easy to use and understand.

We don't use most of the higher functions of Amicus because they are so difficult to learn to work with and it costs a small fortune for training, not to mention the time it takes. We don't use documents or communications for this reason. Billing can be a pain if I want to break something down a different way. Reports are not easy to generate and don't seem to have the functionality I would like.

We are able to customize pages and add new fields to collect data. But data is worthless unless you can get it back out in a useable report, which this program cannot do without a degree from M.I.T.
The support is slightly above average, but we were forced to contact them almost daily.

Too many to list. Program crashes DAILY! Not intuitive, huge learning curve. The quality control in awful and it is a certainty that any version upgrade will break a feature(s) that was repaired in prior versions. We DO NOT rely on the calendar since we found it is not accurate and never synchronizes with Outlook as promised, over, and over, and over. Since being forced into a subscription based model, we have found it is no longer cost effective. We opted to have a developer custom write a program for us with all of the same features provided by Amicus Attorney. Development to distribution and support, we will realize a 90% reduction in annual cost, but have a more robust program and better support.

It's easy to use when it works. Most users can be up and running in a day.

The program has a huge problem with the accounting link between Amicus and QuickBooks. The link breaks multiple times per week. Abacus, the cloud provider for the product, has no way to easily fix the problem. You may have to wait literally for days and sometimes as long as a week for the tech support department to fix the problem. During that waiting period, you lose all accounting functionality. This is completely unacceptable. I've notified Amicus and Abacus multiple times and it is clear at this point and after nearly two years of this disappointing performance that the companies(neither Amicus nor Abacus) have any intention of resolving the problem. We have nearly 30 licenses and a fully staffed accounting department. Amiucs sold us their accounting software package representing that it would work. It does not work because of the constant disruption of the link with QuickBooks. I've been an Amicus client for nearly 18 years. We have made the decision to replace the product.

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.

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.

The calendar, communication center, and file management modules are invaluable and much better than just using Outlook.

The billing feature is very cumbersome and is not easy to use. The billing templates are terrible and you must have extensive knowledge of Report Builder to modify the templates or to create new ones. I integrated Amicus with Timeslips before I switched to the billing component . Transferring billing information between Amicus and Timeslips was a problem because it would send data both ways every time I ran a sync and I would end up with the same timeslip as often as 10 times.

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

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.

Following is my email to a technical support representative after another wonderful experience:

I am still out of the office, but have been testing Amicus on that workstation with great success the past two days. I'm a bit baffled by the whole thing. I will share the only change to the machine since we last spoke I uninstalled the OEM Microsoft Office 365 Click-to-Run software that came installed w/the Dell PC. I had installed Office 2016 when it arrived, and configured to our MS account, appropriately. However, in my attempt to clean up any unnecessary applications, I removed that small component and voila!!!

Thank you so very much for your diligence and professionalism! My experience in working with you has been superb!"

Although we have experienced some issues, the technical support team always assists in a timely manner.

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.

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.

Centralization of documents, email, phone calls etc. It is extremely valuable when more than one lawyer is working on the file.

Issues with PCLAW link. Not happy with customer support. They do not seem to be able to assist with some issues and do not call back when they say they will. We still have unresolved issues. The software was purchased in November, installed at the end of December, and we still have problems. We want to get the issues resolved before we being with the training of new users. Therefore we are frustrated with the delays as the new users are still not using the software, even though I am paying for them.

The software is very easy to learn and use. It helps arrange all of our cases in an organized manner. Calendar features provide our office with a day to day schedule. The software allows the office staff to leave case notes and memos without the use of extra paper.

The required updates. It has been difficult trying to updated abacus changes through our server. Once the changes have been made, it appears that software enables our staff to keep track of client files efficiently.