Amicus Attorney - In house Intranet

Dennis Kennedy and Tom Mighell’s new book on collaboration tools and technologies got me thinking. They talk about using Intranets for in-house collaboration. My first reaction was: “that’s way overkill except for the largest firms.”  But then it occurred to me: wait a minute, Amicus Attorney features the equivalent of a built-in Intranet, even if almost nobody uses it.

When you open Amicus, at the left of the “Dailies” page, there are customizable links to web pages - you can use it to link to the firm’s web page, to have the administrator put up important information, or for almost any other purpose.

This can let you link to your firm’s web page, internal documents, or other information. I had one client who used it to display all court appearances, for example.

A related function is the “Library” (also underused). This was originally designed to link to web pages. In this way it could serve as an organized repository for all the useful links that anybody in the firm uses. Since some users will obviously be more adept at Internet research than others, being able to store and organize these links can be a big time-saver. You can also use it to refer to firm documentation, HR manuals, practices and policies, or as a “brief bank” that lists links to the firm-standard forms, pleadings, contracts, retainers, etc.