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

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.

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.

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.

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.

Moderate. I loved Credenza. I use Amicus because it it is the least bad of the server-based options. I have often thought of retiring from law and working on a program that actually works the way lawyers do. The number one issue is the inability to have a workflow overview.

Easy to keep track of client info and who is who on the file, plus scheduling events

1. Document management sucks. I am sure that I am not the only person who keeps all documents organized in Windows subfolders. We should be abler to access and manage documents seamlessly and use that functionality in Portal. 2. Inability to create a workflow overview: we need to see status of file at a glance. The Chronology function is too cumbersome and is only chronological: not theme/category-organized. It does not tell us what is really going on in the file 3. Email integration almost never works well: multiple duplicate copiers for all recipients and not easily searchable. 4. Inability to immediately create letters to a contact ("person") on a file using firm letterhead. This should be a no-brainer but even your seminars can't teach us that. 5. Server version constantly crashing and freezing, meaning that all notes on the desktop are lost. 6. Notes are really hard to work with: impossible to reply to a sticky in a way that keeps a chain going and shows to whom the sticky was sent. 7. The custom pages function is really primitive

Attorney Schaeffer and I chose Amicus Attorney for our firm many years ago when we went to a legal tech show and I think Amicus was first coming out. We have been through I don't know how many upgrades through the years. My favorite version we have used was the one for small firms. That was our last version. It was easy to use. It had a great look to the program when you opened it up like having a file cabinet. For someone like me with dyslexia it was much easier to view the client page. To me the old version was something Steve Jobs would look at and have approved. It had a good feel and look. I used to like showing it off to visiting attorneys because it was so cool. This new one is just a program. I like the way the documents open with this new upgrade when attached but other than that there is very little I like about this new one. It is a little more confusing to explain the process of inputting new clients. I write our policy and procedure book and I always want to make it so anyone could pick up the policy book and be able to use the program and put in a new client, attach documents, write letters, etc. Maybe it was just that I was used to the old program but there were things that made more sense with it when explaining the process.

Amicus always trys to make a product that is easy to use and learn which this product is. I really like the way it brings up the documents to be able to see them once they are attached to the file. It is also easy to put in notes about the document. I review the medical records and put notes on the file. Your tech people are always helpful and pleasant.

Unfortunately I have found many glitches with this upgrade that I do not like. One is when you are attaching a new person to the file you get choices from the contact list but there is no way to review the person to see if the address for that person is correct. We have doctors who work out of multiple locations. I asked someone at Amicus and they told me there was no way to do it. Our old Amicus program allowed us to do this. Another thing was if someone else has the file open I can not cut and paste from the custom pages area. I prepare depo billing while the attorney is preparing the client and if the attorney has the file open I can not cut and paste info from it. Also because most of us have older eyes we need the resolution made larger on our computers. This distorts the info on the people on the file. You can not see all the phone numbers or the e-mails. Another thing is there any way to make the program use fax numbers with out the ( ) on the area code number. We use ring central for computer faxing and it takes twice as long to try take the () out and put a hyphen in when copying and pasting into our outlook.

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.

Abacus must be in real financial trouble because now they are employing callers who threaten old Amicus customers with risk of data loss or hacking if you continue to use the old Amicus Small Firm Edition. Thank goodness the old program still works great. These callers are really obnoxious and unprofessional. I will never buy anything from Abacus software. I really miss the Canadians with the old Amicus company.

The old Amicus Small Firm edition was THE BEST database system for small law firms until Abacus bought the Canadian company that created Amicus. The old program was easy to learn and use. All of your data remained your data on your computer. No cloud requirement. It interfaced with e-mail and Time Slips. The pricing was good... everything was really great for the small firm law office. Customer support was the best; nice Canadians answered all of your questions. I really, really miss the Canadian company.

When Abacus bought the company they eliminated the Small Firm Edition. They tried to force everyone onto their platform. They went to monthly billing for maintenance and they could terminate your data if you failed to remain with their captive service. I refuse to use a "Cloud" based services because of the risk of hacking. In addition, Abacus almost doubled the price of the old Amicus maintenance plan. I will never do business with Abacus.

For the cost, it is a good program, and it allows all attorneys and paralegals to both communicate and keep track of the status of all cases.

this program is excellent for keeping track of cases, clients, court dates, to-do notices, escrow accounts & billing.

When closing elements of the program, one has to be careful not to inadvertently close the entire program on the user's computer. There is no warning that you are about to close the entire program on your computer. While the escrow (trust) account feature is good, it has limitations. It cannot interface with the bank, so auditing the account is a manual procedure. Also, the escrow function is limited to a case by case report. The program does not give the user an overview of the entire status of all escrows )in a separate report.

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

Some frustrations here and there, but benefits greatly outweighed the issues. The best thing is that I can sleep at night without waking up wondering about this or that case. Really has improved my professional life and hugely improved my personal life, because the software really ties up the loose ends.

Handles all aspects of a law practice: (1) contact management (2) file management (3) document management (4) communication management. I love having everything at my fingertips.

Nothing comes to mind. Works pretty well.

At the end of the day, a legal practice system, even with all of the features I genuinely like, is no good if it is not working. Unlike some other reviewers' experience, the tech support is decent but no one wants to spend their time contacting the vendor to fix bug after bug after bug. Bottom line: we have had to migrate out of Amicus to a more reliable platform.

I have been using Amicus for my law practice for the last 5 years and its predecessor for years prior. It has one of the best, intuitive interfaces (and I have tried several). It is reasonably flexible and customizable. It has one of the best, native document generation modules in terms of features. It is a very decent, all in one law firm solution and priced at the same for other, less robust platforms. The client portal is handy as well.

Amicus suffers from the bane of software development: it has become a spaghetti of code that seemingly generates glitch after glitch and crash after crash as Amicus has added more features to keep up with the competition. My sense is that Amicus has been trying to add on to a code that just can't support all the features, so it is unacceptably unstable.

Awful experience. Felt like we were sold a lemon from a used car salesman who failed to recognize us when we brought the defective product back for repairs.

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 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.

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.

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.

Calendaring "features" are awful. You cannot get a list of deadlines for a particular matter ordered by the date the deadline occurs (it instead orders it by the date the program is set to remind you about the deadline - totally illogical). It claims to offer customizeable reports via SQL reporting, but you'll have to pay someone to figure out how to do this (I have SQL experience and still was not able to figure out how to get a simple report of deadline in a particular matter, ordered by the deadline date). When viewing your calendar for the week, you cannot distinguish between appointments and tasks. Outlook integration is a joke. You would think that Amicus's "to-dos" would map to Outlook's tasks, and that Amicus's appointments would map to Outlook calendar. They do not. CompuLaw integration is clunky - there is a pause every time you want to use it, as it queries another database before you have even told it what event you want to calendar. And it does not automatically specify party names with the associated dates, making CompuLaw calendar entries even more confusing. Worse, everything gets added as a task, even if there's really nothing to be done in connection with the event (sometimes you just want to know when something from the other side is due but no action is required). Staff hate using it, and avoid it, often preferring to calendar things manually, and thereby negating any benefits associated with CompuLaw integration. It appears to have its own idea for how to manage legal workflow. However, there are no online tutorials. To access any of the tutorials requires you to log out of the system and log in to a different tutorial implementation. The "reminders" feature is an interesting idea (you see a task on your to-do list for days preceding its deadline) but ends up being useless because the user interface is so clunky that no attorney in my firm actually relies on this (we just have our staff tell us what it says). Because the synchronization is not effective, there is no real mobile access. To use program, you must access via computer that is physically in office. Every time I start Amicus, the program changes my views in Outlook even though I do not have it set up to sychronize with Outlook. It tries to do too many things (law firm accounting, document management, calendaring, time entry, etc.) without doing any of them well.

I was able to keep my data from my old version of Amicus, but the new one is much more horsepower than I need for a solo practice.

Has the capacity to store and sort a ton of information. I like the calendaring, file integration, and ability to keep track of contacts. The ability to save emails to a particular file instead of trying to retrieve them from Outlook is very helpful.

It crashes too often. It was a bear to set up for a one-attorney shop. It's inconsistent in its own protocols. For example, it says we're supposed to assign one Client ID per client and use that ID for each file, but half the time, it says we can't use the client ID because it's already in use. It doesn't recognize client's email addresses on receipt, and when I go to link an email to a contact already on the list, it gives me a message saying that there are duplicate entries for the email. The same message says to use some sort of command to clean up duplicates, but for the life of me, I can't find where the function exists. The lack of any paper manual is very frustrating.

Meh

If you need technical support, there is none. As far as I can tell there are 2 people working at tech support and you can expect to wait months for an answer that doesn't solve the problem. we have had the same recurring problems with dropped emails for years and there is no solution in sight., we will be switching.

There is not way to distinguish calendar events like continued or settled items that I want to keep on the calendar but maybe change color or be greyed out. There is no way to alert team members that a file has exhausted their retainer so work is frequently done by a conscientious worker without realizing that we won't get paid for it.

I have been using Amicus Attorney since 1997. The office suite provides the backbone to my small sole practice. It keeps me and my two paralegals apprised of all activities, and admirably helps us record time accurately. In its conjunction with Abacus, Amicus has made my practice more adaptive to changing circumstances. The billing features have cut hours each month from my back office labors. I recommend Amicus Attorney to all the young practitioners I mentor.

I have no complaints with Amicus Attorney.