Amicus Attorney and GTD?

  • Thread starter Thread starter beckweaver
  • Start date Start date
B

beckweaver

Guest
Has anyone tried customizing the law office software Amicus Attorney for use with GTD? What customizations did you employ and how has it worked for you?

If not, have you customized any other law practice management software for GTD?

I am an attorney currently using Amicus Attorney and PCLaw software to operate a sole practice devoted to collaborative family law (a settlement-focused, non-litigation approach to divorce and family law problems).

The To Do orientation of Amicus is less helpful than I think the GTD approach would be.

Thanks for your help!

beckweaver
 
I use "Abacus" legal tracking software which is similar to Amicus. I use the calendaring features to record trial dates, hearings on motions, depositions, client appointments, etc. I also use the "notes" feature tied to each client to keep up to date on the case without needing to pull the actual file from the file cabinet.

I have not "coordinated" Abacus with my tickler file, though have thought about how I might do that. So far, everything is working fine and I certainly do not miss my in-box and cluttered desk.

Good luck!

Danny Hardesty

www.dannyhardesty.com
 
Amicus Attorney and GTD

I don't use Amicus, but have used TimeMatters for a long time. I think that Wells Anderson ( www.activepractice.com ) is working on a GTD-based white paper showing how to setup/use GTD with TimeMatters. His site does have a more generalized paper on it currently re. GTD and practice management software.

I've been gradually incorporating GTD principles into my practice via TimeMatters over the last few months. However, one of the things that I've run into is trying to keep my personal GTD items separate from my professional life. This is mostly a coping mechanism that allows me to keep a safe distance between my own life and my client's lives and "issues" given that I practice primarily in divorce and family law. I really don't like to be reminded of Client X's problems when I'm working on, say, my garden and start to write down a new "personal-life" project that comes to mind! Unlike the original poster, my practice is highly adversarial/litigation based, with collaborative law cases few and far between, unfortunately.

I currently use TimeMatters solely for client GTD items and a Moleskine notebook for my personal GTD items. I keep a stack of blank 3 x 5 notecards in my car and in my Levenger wallet as my ubiquitous notetaking tool with Fisher Space Pen for easy jotting and then processing into the appropriate system (TimeMatters or notebook). I gave my Palm PDA to one of my partners about a month ago and don't miss it a bit. :)

TimeMatters uses a series of Classification Codes that can be customized easily, with one set for Events and one set for ToDo's. Both are easily customizable to "context" based lists and can be quickly filtered. I meet once a week (Monday 9 a.m.) with my legal assistant and my secretary to plan the upcoming week. For this meeting, I push my entire ToDo list from TimeMatters into an Excel spreadsheet. I then sort once by client and print it, and then once by date and print it. Based upon these two lists (which contain the same data in different sorted order), we plan the week ahead. Works pretty well, although I would like to also spend some time on Friday afternoons doing a more formal "Weekly Review" just by myself.

If you're using TimeMatters, I also highly recommend the "delegation system 2.0" setup that can be found at Tom Rowe's website:

http://www.otb-dev.com/resources/white_papers/pdf/delegation2.pdf
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Top