|
|
|
|
| Amicus Telephone | Utilities |
| Any attorney
that has clients or a phone has experienced a love-hate relationship with phone messages.
We all face the dilemma of time versus client contact. Add to that mix our need to
document our activities to justify billing and message slips can quickly become so
prolific that a practitioner's office can easily become buried beneath a sea of pink. What
to do? This fear prompted me try Gavel & Gown's message tracking software, Amicus Telephone. I have been running Amicus Attorney, the company's case management program, for almost four years now, and I wanted a way of getting rid of those little call-slips that fill my desk, fall into the cracks, litter the floor of my car and are pasted all over my computer. This seemed like an obvious solution. Amicus Telephone works with Amicus Attorney to create a slip-free environment. What a dream! I called Amicus and ordered its five-user version. Since we were moving into a new building, I made sure our new phone system's hardware was compliant with Amicus Telephone (more on this later). I then called Amicus and let them know we'd like some help with installation. Thus began the following saga. The way the system is designed to work is simple: A person calls and the receptions answers. She then transfers the call to the requested party in the office and hangs up. Their phone begins to ring, at which time their TAPI interface reads the Caller ID information and instantly sends a message to their computer. If the Caller ID information has been associated with a contact person in the Amicus database, the caller's name will pop-up on-screen, asking if the party wants to accept the call. If the party refuses the call, the system will automatically forward the call to the next station indicated during set-up (in my case, to my paralegal). This person has the option to take the call and inform the client that the party is unavailable at the time or refuse it. If again refused, it will then be transferred to another person, and so on. Once the call is accepted, Amicus Telephone brings up the file and phone slip window, and begins a timer. During the call, whoever accepted the call may type information into the computer's telephone slip. If a paralegal or secretary takes the call, there is the option to make a "call back reminder" for the attorney to call the person back. When the call is completed, Amicus Attorney will request a time entry for the call -- great system for billing purposes. Before discussing the actual install, I'll detail our hardware. Remember, thanks to our move we were able to start out by creating the most advantageous environment for the software (or so we thought). We bought a dual Pentium II server from Dell with 256 MB SDRAM and a RAID 5 three-drive configuration. We also put in an Intel hub with each computer having the 10/100 Base-T Ethernet cards. Also in anticipation of Amicus Telephone, we purchased a Comdial telephone system. I found Comdial to be the best product for our investment. Gavel & Gown includes a list in their manual that gives the systems that they work with. The one thing I didn't think about in all this planning was that I needed the physical ports on the back of each computer to hook in the TAPI device. Of the five machines, two were easy; the others took some work. We moved the mouse to the PS/2 slot, freeing up the physical 9-pin serial port, allowing us to connect the device to the existing port. The others needed additional COM ports added. With the telephone guy over one shoulder and the computer guy over the other, as well as Amicus' technical support on the speaker phone, I did the first workstation install myself. It took about 15 minutes. We then worked on getting all the software installed on all the computers. This is when the problems started. The first problem was isolated to the Comdial system and the TAPI interface. Apparently, the Comdial system transfers the stations ID information before transferring the Caller ID information,which then does not allow our files to be associated with the specific Caller ID information. There is nothing unique to a client about "Station 15!" Without the unique Caller ID information, the system doesn't work that well. The problem of the Caller ID information caused Gavel & Gown to go back to their R&D to get their system to work with Comdial's telephone switch. Gavel & Gown was able to create a new DLL to fix the problem, which they sent to me via e-mail. It was like a poltergeist was unleashed on my network! The telephone began picking up when it shouldn't have, and the pop-up boxes weren't sure where to keep the contact information or when to ask me for it. Add to this the fact that the Comdial installer had not completed the setup of the telephones and nobody was sure what buttons to push or how to use the phones. We had to get some relief! Three weeks later we had the Comdial system working right, and we were shown what buttons to push and how to transfer calls. Low and behold, Amicus Telephone now works like a charm. Honestly, my billings have gone up as a result of the Amicus Telephone. I was amazed at how many calls I never logged on a time sheet. Most importantly, every client's computer file has a chronological record of every call. This is by far the most important feature. The screen pops are nice and the association with client files is important, but the record of telephone contacts and the information that is typed by the person in the firm who handled the call is priceless. I can now go to any client's file and see when the paralegal talked to them or if my partner answered a question. Both the attorneys and the staff have to be disciplined in recording calls, but Amicus Telephone makes the task much easier, and the added features of "call back reminders" and alarms for clients that haven't been contacted in a given number of days are worth the money and the time to learn. |
Gavel & Gown (800) 472-2289 www.amicus.ca Windows 98 $199 per station Reviewed by Mark Welton, managing partner, Welton & Williamson, Crestview, Fla. PROS CONS VERDICT |
| Home | | Issue Archive | Resources | About Us | Contact Us | Subscribe | | Subscribers | Advertisers | Updated 09/19/01 |
