Abacus Anouncements

Prosecutors See Technology Savings Related to Budget Goals

San Diego, CA - February 16, 2010 - Hit with budget cuts while workloads increase, agencies are struggling to find ways to save money, without sacrificing the requisite quantity and quality of their work.

With AbacusLaw Prosecutor software, legal professionals in government agencies get the benefits of case management technology (lowering their cost per case and simultaneously handling more cases effectively), previously enjoyed only by private practice attorneys.

Cost and time saving benefits include:

• All case intake, document generation, calendaring, reporting, accounting/time management and synchronization are contained in one system. No additional database or reporting technologies are needed.
• With everything in one program, there are no costs for multiple vendor products (licenses, updates, support, maintenance, training or administrative personnel).
• AbacusLaw is the only user-configurable system of its type: database structures, screens, reports, queries, calendaring rules, and court forms are completely configurable within the program.
• By using one, integrated system, training and administration are simpler and cost effective.
• Linking all information electronically reduces the need (expense) to locally copy and store tons of paper, and accessing documents with mere mouse clicks eliminates looking for files in use by others or potentially misplaced.

Abacus Government Systems President Dennis Baldwin explained his company's development of Abacus Prosecutor: "Every agency deals with people, documents, and cases. AbacusLaw puts them all in one easy-to-use, configurable for each department, database system which produces tremendous cost savings.”

Abacus Introduces the Case Dashboard & Intake Wizards for Personal Injury Attorneys

San Diego, CA - December 17, 2009  -With the release of Abacus Personal Injury Specialty Version, law offices in this specialty can do things available in no other single program:

• INTAKE WIZARDS: Start new cases quickly and accurately with automated PI intake wizards. Our single entry system minimizes delays, data validation reduces mistakes, new case rules improve case workflow and our integrated conflict checks reduce errors.
• CASE-FLOW RULES: Reduce case delay and keep your PI cases moving forward with case-flow rules.
• CASE DASHBOARD: Get a concise summary of case status and quickly access case data from the case dashboard.
• DOCUMENT AND FORM GENERATION: Reduce mistakes and wasted time by auto-filling your PI documents and forms.
• CASE CALCULATORS: Analyze medical, settlement, negotiation and wage numbers quickly with Excel based case calculators.

Abacus President Judd Kessler explained his company's development of this specialty version: "Personal injury cases involve a high volume of interconnected data, including facts, people, events, documents, forms, correspondence and email. Successful firms efficiently handle this data, which prevents case bottlenecks, delays, malpractice risk and lost revenue.  We created Abacus Personal Injury to help attorneys organize data and streamline case workflow."

AbacusLaw 2010 Highlights Speed and
Ease-of-Use

San Diego, CA - November 2, 2009 -With the release of AbacusLaw 2010, law offices can now do even more to organize and simplify their practice. Here’s a sampling of the feature enhancements:

• Grab and Add: Create new contacts in Abacus without typing. Copy any name and/or address from another program, document, website or email signature block. "Add from Clipboard" to have Abacus automatically create a new contact record.
• Open multiple windows simultaneously: You can see more than one Name, Event, or Matter window at a time, to jump between tasks or compare records.
• Synch with newer smart phones: Abacus is now compatible with Palm Desktop 6x and Blackberry Desktop Manager 4.2-5.0.
• Administrators can prevent access to Abacus to make changes to the server, perform other updates or run a backup. No need to go to every workstation to log Abacus users off the network.
• Save and Log: The new save and log feature establishes a unified naming convention and path for saving word processing documents and forms. No more having to manually set up case folders.
• Lightning fast search for text in the notes field: If you've used Notes for certain data, but never created a searchable field for it, now you can quickly find them.

Abacus President Judd Kessler explained his company's work on the new version: “AbacusLaw development is always focused on the latest technological trends, ensuring our customers can meet the needs and challenges they face today. Attorneys like the comfort of using our software and the reliability in accessing and protecting their data. AbacusLaw 2010 expands all of these attributes."

Judd Kessler Interviewed on National
Legal Network

San Diego, CA - September 2, 2009 - Abacus CEO Judd Kessler, Esq., was recently interviewed by Scott Drake of the Legal Broadcast Network. His interview was featured on the daily show, "Speaking of Justice" . Mark Wahlstrom, the founder of LBN, called the interview "first rate" and was pleased to report high traffic to the video on their site.

Mr. Kessler discussed, among other topics, his recent Amazon best-selling book, Dangerous Law Practice Myths, Lies & Stupidity. The book has 35 short, humorous stories about common law practices that are currently dangerously out of date. Watch the 12-minute interview.

Abacus Customer Care Team Moves to New Facility

San Diego, CA - August 3, 2009 - Keeping up with the high growth in sales of its software products and services, Abacus Data Systems opened a new Customer Care Center in San Diego, CA on August 3, 2009.  The facility triples the size of the space available to house call center agents and technical support staff.

Glen Guy, Director of Customer Care, opened the doors at 6 am PST and welcomed the first shift. “We are committed to bringing extraordinary service to our customers and partners. We know it begins with providing an excellent work environment for customer care agents. We are extremely happy with the new facility, a state-of-the-art resource.”  Guy said.

The new facility is equipped with a digital VoIP phone system designed to improve capture of in-coming support calls, optimization of agents’ time, and team collaboration. It also allows for continued growth and expansion, adding additional support and development resources as necessary.

Dangerous Law Office Tactics Exposed

San Diego, CA — June 25, 2009 — In his new book, "Dangerous Law Practice Myths, Lies and Stupidity", Abacus president Judd Kessler, Esq. identifies the many techniques that have been recommended to attorneys over the years, but put their firms at serious risk.

Joined by 5 leading specialists in the legal industry, Mr. Kessler's book presents crucial advice to attorneys and their staffs through the use of entertaining and insightful anecdotes. Thirty-five myths are layed out before the reader, ranging from low fees to rolodex use. Legal professionals will clearly identify these areas of misdirection, recognize how they impact their own practices, and learn what to do to avoid the downside that typically comes from each.

Save shipping and handling when you get the book at www.lawmyths.com.

Abacus’ Worldwide Presence Reaches 60 Countries

San Diego, CA — May 22, 2009 — Abacus Data Systems has now reached the 60 country mark. The appeal of AbacusLaw has been driven in part by firms looking to:

• Track schedules for important events
• Bring up client information quickly and easily
• Link emails, documents and notes to client and case records
• Share information with multiple people in the office
• Work with a vendor dedicated exclusively to law office software

AbacusLaw’s global popularity is growing daily. Abacus President Judd Kessler observed: “As competitive pressures impact attorneys in every nation, AbacusLaw software is a vital component of successful law practices. We are pleased to be working with so many outstanding firms. We’ve enhanced our software and expanded support for our customers around the world.”

Abacus Rainmaker Helps Law Firms Grow Despite the Economy

San Diego, CA — April 14, 2009 —With the release of Abacus Rainmaker, attorneys have the ability to capture and understand critical data about their clients and prospects, the firm's marketing efforts and its client service. Adding Abacus Rainmaker to AbacusLaw v18 provides the following benefits:

• A better return on your marketing dollars
• More effective prospecting
• Better client service
• More repeat business
• More referrals
• Improved brand image

Abacus President Judd Kessler explained his company’s development of this specialty version: “Attorneys' AbacusLaw case and contact data is a goldmine for their firms. Abacus Rainmaker helps you capture and process that information in easy ways, giving you valuable insight into what's working and what isn't. You'll learn where to save on marketing campaigns that are under-performing, and where to boost your investment for increased new business. While some firms have stalled during the recession, our customers' firms can gain momentum and out-perform their competition by using Abacus Rainmaker.”

Abacus Streamlines Forms and Calendaring for Immigration Attorneys

San Diego, CA - December 10, 2008 -With the release of Abacus Immigration, law offices in this specialty can do things available in no other single program:

• INTAKE FORMS: When interviewing a client, select and fill the appropriate intake form - citizenship, employment, visa petitions, etc. - and Abacus Immigration automatically creates the matter record, creates contact links, sets rules-based calendar events and prepares the data for seamless output to immigration forms.
• COURT IMMIGRATION FORMS: To fill any PDF immigration form, such as a notice of entry of appearance as attorney, petition for alien relative, or application for visa and alien registration, just select the matter record, then the form. Abacus Immigration fills the form with a single mouse click.
• LEGAL CALENDARING: Abacus Immigration's fully integrated alarms, reminders, and comprehensive reporting ensures all your hearings, client meetings, information requests, and filling deadlines never catch attorneys by surprise or fall through the cracks.

Abacus President Judd Kessler explained his company's development of this specialty version: "Attorneys on our staff and in law firms across America participated in creating this comprehensive, practice-specific program. Data captured at any point in the client relationship can be used without re-entry for contacts, letters, court filings, billing, accounting and more."

Abacus Announces Lowest Cost, Most Powerful Judicial Council Forms

San Diego, CA - December 3, 2008 - Abacus Forms automatically fills in Judicial Council forms from your case records without re-entering data. You can do other things with Abacus Forms that your current system can't do, such as:

• See blank forms in a preview pane so you know you're choosing the right one
• See your completed forms in easy-to-view forms folders and in the preview pane
• Create your own fill-able version of any PDF form from any jurisdiction or agency

Abacus President Judd Kessler observed: "You may know that Abacus offers all this in our full AbacusLaw system. What you didn't know is we now offer a version of Abacus Forms for Judicial Council that doesn't require you to have any other Abacus program." Starting from a simple intake form you can produce a completed form or group of forms to print or email to the court. Each time you select a court form, Abacus will auto-fill that form quickly and easily with any matter and linked names information. You finish completing the form, then print and save it as a PDF. Abacus Forms keeps all the contacts, matter and notes information for your cases. Mr. Kessler noted: "Abacus developed the best CA Judicial Council forms software and given it the best pricing of any product in this category. We're growing our forms business at a time when other vendors are discontinuing theirs."

Intake and Court Forms for Family Law Attorneys

San Diego, CA - July 9, 2008 -With the release of Abacus Family Law 2.0, law offices can do things available in no other single program:

• INTAKE FORMS: Automatically create a new matter with linked contacts, events and notes quickly and accurately - all from just a single screen.
• SPECIALTY SCREENS: New custom matter screens for divorce, custody, guardianship, domestic violence, support and paternity streamlines work flow.
• PDF FORMS: AbacusLaw auto-fills your PDF court forms from matter and linked names data. Legal professionals can add, edit and customize any form using the built-in forms designer.
• COURT RULES: Automatically generate calendar deadlines using the rules set by courts in your jurisdiction or your own office preferences.