Ron Carter, Amicus Consultant

Gavel and Gown has revised their pricing on Amicus products effective 11-26-07. The prices are reflected in the following articles for Amicus Attorney 2008 and Amicus Accounting 2008.
In addition, the price for Amicus Attorney 7 has increased to $699.00 for the first user and $599.00 for additional users. For additional pricing information, please contact us.

Please contact either Carmen 513 368-0042 (crelatores@cni-incorporated.com) or Ron 513 312- 8381 (rcarter@cni-incorporated.com to order the upgrades or provide you with more information concerning the New Amicus 2008 Product Line and how it affects your existing installation.

 

It isn't always necessary for lawyers of law firm staff to be physically present in the office. With telephones (land-line, cell, and VoIP), email, and high-speed Internet access, working at home or in another location can be as good as - or often better than - being there.

In this era of $3+ per gallon gasoline and traffic gridlock, consider remote access and control options that let you access your office software and data from home. And don't just keep the benefits of telecommuting for yourself. Your staff can benefit as well. One of our lawyer/consultants was able to keep a valuable staff member with the firm after she moved 30 miles farther from the office by giving her the option to work at home using remote access software - and that was decade ago when the technology tools were not nearly as advanced as they are today.

Products, services, and technologies such as GoToMyPC, GoToMeeting, LogMeIn, Windows Remote Desktop, Virtual Private Networks (VPN's) and others allow you to be productive at home and on the road by connecting you to your computer or network at the office. Other products such as digital dictation systems let you record dictation at home and email or send the audio file over a VPN to a typist at the office. The process works in reverse as well, so you can effective use your own off-site employees or third-party services such as SpeakWrite.

For help in implementing remote access and control services, including the purchase of hardware and software you will need to make telecommuting a reality at your firm, contact us.

 

The ABA and EPA's ENERGY STAR program have developed a Law Office Guide to Energy Efficiency that encourages law offices to reduce energy usage by 10%.

Important steps that many law offices can take, among many others, to improve energy efficiency include:

• As office equipment of all types wear out, replace them with more energy-efficient ENERGY STAR labeled equipment. This includes computers, monitors, printers, copiers, and facsimile machines.
• Notebook PC's have many advantages when used as a lawyer's primary PC, one of which is reduced energy consumption compared with a desktop PC. Similarly, LCD monitors use less electricity than CRT monitors.
• Turn off lights, computers, copiers, printers, and other equipment when not in use.
• Replace incandescent or halogen lamps with compact fluorescent (CFL).
• Use daylighting as much as possible, instead of lights.
• Enable power management features on computers, including suspend and hibernate where appropriate.
• Upgrade the ambient fluorescent lighting system by replacing the T12 lamps with more energy-efficient T8 or T5 systems, and upgrade exit signs to use light- emitting diode (LED) lamps.
• Use automatic lighting controls such as dimming systems that reduce light when natural daylight is available; and occupancy and motion sensors for, among other things, conference rooms, kitchens, storage rooms, and restrooms. Consider occupancy sensors that power down computer equipment, task lights, and other plug load equipment.

Law offices can enroll in EPA's ENERGY STAR program by making a good faith commitment to improve energy efficiency. A law office that does so qualifies for recognition as an ENERGY STAR partner and becomes entitled to use the program's familiar logo. The law office may then enroll in the ABA-EPA Law Office Climate Challenge program, which encourages law offices to reduce by at least 10% their energy usage, if they own their building, or their electricity usage, if they are a tenant. The ABA encourages law offices to report their energy or electricity savings, and an office that achieves at least a 10% reduction will earn recognition as a Law Office Climate Challenge Leader.

 

In many parts of the U.S., severe drought conditions persist. What does that have to do with saving paper in a law office? As it turns out, the paper manufacturing process uses an incredible amount of fresh water (about 15% of the total industrial water usage). It takes between 15,000 and 20,000 gallons of water to produce a ton of paper. That is almost 10 gallons of water per pound of paper.

How many sheets in a pound of paper? A 500 sheet ream of 20 lb. photocopy paper weighs about 5 pounds, or 100 pages per pound. Therefore, it takes up to 10 gallons to produce a 100 sheets, or a nearly a full gallon of fresh water for a just 10 sheets of paper. These figures can vary considerably depending on the efficiency of the paper mill and other factors. But when you consider how often 10 sheets of paper are wasted in most law offices, these numbers are sobering.

Recycling is great, but its even better to reduced the amount of paper your firm consumes. The practice of law has always been paper intensive, but there are ways to use less paper. Scanning incoming file materials and making the images available over the office network can help reduce paper usage and the inefficient flow of paper through your office. Without digital images on the network, each attorney, legal assistant, or secretary who needs to work on a file simultaneously needs his/her own paper copy (haven't you wondered why there are four copies of certain documents in some of your files?). Not so if they are accessing the document image on-screen over the office network. A well-implemented document management system (DMS), combined with effective scanning techniques, can make it simple to find any document instantly.

Editing a document on screen can reduce the need to print unnecessary draft copies. An on-screen editing also has the advantage of allowing the use of advanced tools in your word processing program, such as the functions included on Word's "Reviewing" toolbar.

If you must print draft copies, print them double-sided. Most modern office laser printers can be set to print drafts on both sides of a sheet of paper. You can even make double-sided printing your printer's default setting, switching to single-sided only for the final version.

Speaking of defaults, many word processing programs set left and right margins at 1.25 inches. Consider resetting the default to 1 inch. Court rules may constrain how much you can adjust margins for pleadings and other court-filed papers. But for internal documents, you could go to .75 inches and save even more paper. This simple change can save a surprising amount of paper.

And don't routinely print each and every email that comes in. We still visit firms where a lawyer's assistant will monitor the lawyer's inbox and print a hard copy of every message for the lawyer to review. A good DMS system will let you save those messages and attached them to a client's digital file for easy on- screen retrieval.

For help in implementing scanning or document management systems, or setting your software and hardware to save paper, contact us.

 

Instead of having to copy and paste the URL of a site that you want to save to your Amicus Attorney library, you can add a button to your toolbar to do this for you. Please note that this only works with the Internet Explorer browser.

 

To add this new button to the toolbar, simply:

1. Open Internet Explorer, right click on the toolbar and select Customize.
2. On the left side of the new window titled Available toolbar buttons, you will see the command for "Add to Library" at the bottom.
3. Highlight this command and click the Add button to send it to the toolbar.
4. Click Close and you will now see this as an option on your toolbar.
5. When you find a site that you would like to add to the Amicus Attorney library, push this button and it will open a new library page with the URL already filled in from the site.

Amicus Accounting 2008 is the new version of our Accounting product. It has many enhancements over the original Amicus Accounting, including easier navigation, the ability to change the Client on an existing matter, enhancements to Accounts Receivable interest, billing and reminder statements, a new payroll add-on option and a more powerful receipt function.

Pricing for Accounting will be $349.00 for the first license and $249.00 each additional license.

 

Upgrading from Amicus Accounting to Amicus Accounting 2008 $99 / license

 

Amicus Attorney 2008 Small Firm Edition is the latest version of Amicus Attorney built on the popular V+ (C++) platform. It is specifically designed for the solo and small firm market. It has significant enhancements over its predecessors.
These include:
a new navigation pane similar to Amicus 7,
a new Tasks module for managing To Do's all in one place,
real time spell check,
text expansion,
email signatures,
Outlook®
email integration enhancements
and the ability to run in Client/Server mode.

This product is for firms with 10 users or less only. It is a superb upgrade for all V and V+ Advanced and Client/Server customers with 10 licenses or less.

Pricing for the Small Firm Edition will be $499 for the first license and $399 for additional licenses.

Please note that these two products are no longer bundled together.

They need to be purchased separately. Of course they still work together wonderfully.

However, it is important to understand that if you are upgrading from the old Amicus Small Firm, you will need to upgrade both the Amicus Attorney side and the Amicus Accounting side if you want to continue using both products.

Pricing for upgrades is as follows

• Upgrading to Amicus Attorney 2008 Small Firm Edition: 1st user / add'l users
• From Amicus Small Firm $249 / $199
• From Amicus Attorney V+ (Advanced or Client/Server) $249 / $199
• From Amicus Attorney V or below (Advanced of Client/Server) $299 / $249

Below is a list of the current versions of important law office software supported by Cooperative Network Integrators, Inc..

Amicus Attorney: Downloads

• Amicus Attorney 7: build 7.1.0.8)
• Amicus Attorney 2008 Small Firm Edition
• Amicus Attorney Advanced V+: v. 5.9.1
• Amicus Attorney C/S V+: v. 5.8.1
• Amicus Small Firm: v. 5.9.0
• Amicus Attorney V: v 5.1.1
• Amicus Attorney X: v. SP1.1

Amicus Accounting:

• Amicus Accounting 2008
• Amicus Accounting Small Firm Edition: v 5.9.0

Amicus Accounting 2008: Update from the Internet via the Check For Updates function available from your Help menu or Maintenance module. Please refer to your Amicus Accounting Online Help for details.

Microsoft Office:

• Click here and select Check for Updates.

Corel Word Perfect:

• Click here then select your version.