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Amicus Cloud Brings Artificial Intelligence to Your Firm's Documents
March 17, 2020
Today's TechnoLawyer Buyer's Guide report covers cloud practice management software with new AI tools that automatically categorize your firm's documents so you can find them instantly.
Amicus Cloud Brings Artificial Intelligence to Your Firm's Documents
Artificial intelligence (AI) will have the same impact on law firms this decade that the cloud had last decade. Given the importance of documents in virtually all legal work, AI is poised to have a disproportionately large impact in document management.
Amicus Cloud in One Sentence
Amicus Cloud is cloud practice management software with new AI tools that automatically categorize your firm's documents so you can find them instantly.
The Killer Feature
Amicus Cloud enables you to import multiple documents simultaneously to any client file (matter). In just a few seconds, the new AI-based Auto-Tagging technology applies "semantic and key phrase extraction tagging" to the imported documents.
Translation — Amicus Cloud scans the documents and creates up to five tags per document based on its content. The AI uses existing tags when there's a match to prevent near duplicates. You can edit or remove tags before accepting them. Most importantly, you can search for documents using these tags.
At the same time, another AI technology called Auto-Summary "writes" a summary of each document. These summaries enable you to get the gist of a long document without having to read it.
Amicus Cloud now also includes OCR, which automatically converts any scanned document images into searchable text. This ensures that the new AI technologies work on all documents added to a matter.
"Amicus Cloud is the single easiest way for a small firm to manage billing, documents, email, and other practice-related information with optimal security and minimal effort," says AbacusNext Global Product Marketing Director Tomas Suros. "Auto-Tagging and Auto-Summarization take this ease-of-use to new heights."
Amicus Cloud uses AI to auto-tag and auto-summarize your firm's documents.
Other Notable Features
Amicus Cloud brings desktop-like functionality to the web browser. For example, it's multimodal with the ability to open multiple windows. Most importantly, Amicus Cloud features tight integration with Office 365. Two technologies — Inbox Control and Email Scanning — automatically file sent and received email in the correct matter, yet you can still use Outlook on the desktop and your phone as you normally would (the same goes for calendar events and contacts). You may not want to use Outlook because Amicus Cloud offers full email functionality (compose, reply, forward, etc.).
As for Microsoft Word, you can open, edit, and save new documents without having to export/import. Amicus Cloud's Precedent Workflows automate your practice by combining task assignment, Word templates, and document assembly. The user responsible for a task receives a prompt and can autofill any required documents with information already in Amicus Cloud.
Amicus Cloud offers a number of unique billing technologies. Nearly every action from sending an email to logging a phone call prompts you to create a time entry. You can email bills to clients and/or present them in the secure client portal. The Collection Assistant keeps you apprised of overdue bills and can send a payment reminder with one click. The Abacus Payment Exchange (APX) gateway enables you to accept ACH and credit card payments without having to pay a third-party provider such as LawPay.
What Else Should You Know?
Each matter in Amicus Cloud contains a Chronology of all associated information — bills, calls, documents, email, events, tasks, etc. Each of these information types has its own dashboard and feed within a matter. You can also create custom fields to track any type of data required and use this data to populate document templates in a Precedent Workflow. Amicus Cloud costs $49 per month per user. You can try it for free for 30 days.
Neil J. Squillante is the founder and publisher of TechnoLawyer, an award-winning network of free email newsletters for lawyers and law office administrators. Many consider TechnoLawyer newsletters the only ones they need. A Fastcase 50 award winner, Neil has a long track record of inventing successful advertising and publishing technologies and related best practices. Previously, Neil practiced commercial litigation at Am Law 100 firm Willkie Farr & Gallagher. He received his J.D. from UCLA School of Law and his B.A. from Duke University. At UCLA, Neil served as a Managing Editor of UCLA Law Review.
