An Interview with Ron Collins, CEO of Gavel & Gown Software (Part II: Future Plans)
This is the second part of our interview with Ron Collins, CEO of Gavel & Gown Software, the company behind Amicus Attorney, and now, Amicus Cloud. Yesterday, we discussed the present state of Amicus Cloud. Today, we talk about the future.
Let’s talk about the future. What about document production? Will that include any actual legal forms or templates, or is it a create-your-own sort of system?
Absolutely. If you go back in history, you’ll find that Amicus Attorney was the first practice management system that supplied document assembly, or document automation as it’s sometimes called, as a tool that you can use inside practice management.
We have a deep history in that, we were the first to see its value, and we have some truly phenomenal capabilities in that regard in our premium desktop product.
It's something we've already been working on in depth in our cloud product. One of the joys of the cloud products is instead of annual releases, every few weeks with cloud we can introduce new features and capabilities. In the not too distant future, one of those periodic releases will have document automation in it. It's going to be very, very good and very, very powerful.
What I've noticed is missing from the existing cloud platforms is that they all have correspondence production, like for sending emails, but none act as a full replacement for HotDocs or other legal form production software. Is that coming in the future?
Absolutely, Willie. I'm glad you asked that. We've always called it document assembly, which is the ability to apply intelligence and legal decision making into the generation of a legal document. A lot of the existing cloud products are really just fill-in-the-blank type systems. We're not doing just a fill-in-the-blank type system. We're doing proper document assembly.
Any plans for native Android or iOS apps?
Yes. You will see that in our cloud product roughly at the end of March. You'll already see that in our small firm product and you'll be seeing it in our premium product within a few weeks. We're bringing out smartphone apps for all of our product lines within the next six weeks.
That's all from us and Mr. Collins. We'd like to thank him for his time and for giving us some insight on what the future of Amicus Cloud, and the cloud-based practice management industry will look like.
Related Resources:
- The Cloud and Why Lawyers Should Give a Damn (FindLaw's Technologist)
- Amicus Cloud: Robust, Microsoft-Loving Cloud-Based Practice Management (FindLaw's Technologist)
- Box: A Bigger (Better?) Cloud Storage Option (FindLaw's Technologist)