Google Calendar is THE ANSWER to Lawyer Scheduling.

We have struggled for many years to find an adequate calendar solution which accomplishes the following goals:

1. Performs all of the calendaring items that lawyers need each and every day.
2. Group calendaring which allows me to see the schedules of other people on our team, both inside and outside the office network.
3. Universal access to the calendar from whatever computer or device I am working on with real-time updates including all of the various computers that I work from as well as my iPhone.
4. Reminders by pop-up, email and text message on intervals that I choose.
5. No requirements for synchronization which requires my main computer to be networked, by various calendaring software to be running or any other limitations on real-time data. 

Through the years, we have used both Amicus Attorney and PC Law.  We have synched PC Law with Microsoft Outlook Calendar.  We have subscribed to MobileMe accounts in order to synch calendar data from PC Law to Outlook to the iPhone.  In retrospect, I have to wonder what the hell we were thinking? 

Google Calendar handles all of the required elements of lawyer calendaring seamlessly and easily.  We have now been using Google Calendar for a month.  I’m somewhat embarrassed that it took us almost six years to realize that Google Calendar is THE ANSWER to our calendaring needs. 

Comments

[Enrico S.]

One of the great things about Google Calendar is the ability to share your calendar with anyone and have them share their calendar with you. This can be anyone from your spouse to virtual workers. My wife is always wondering what my schedule is and calling my office in order to put vacations and other key events onto my calendar. Now, she can add those to my calendar directly. Our virtual workers are located somewhere else. The ability to see when they are available for projects greatly enhances our ability to send work their way at times when they can actually turn the work around.

If you only want to see your appointments, you can do that. If you want to see just someone else’s appointments, you can do that. Google Calendar gives you complete control of what you see.

The ability to send reminders through a text message to your cell phone is also invaluable. The pop-ups which most calendaring systems use work great if you happen to be sitting right in front of your screen at the time the notice arrives. The one device you always have with you no matter where you are is your cell phone.

I would recommend Google Calendar for any law office. It beats Outlook’s calendar by a mile. And if you’re stuck in a case management system like Amicus Attorney or PC Law, Google Calendar outperforms them by a mile.

[Adrianos Facchetti]

I switched to Google Calendar from iCal about 4 or 5 months ago and I absolutely love it. The only downside to relying exclusively on an electronic calendar is when the judge asks you in court, "is that date good for you, counsel?" Because most courts are cellphone dead zones, I have trouble accessing Google Calendar. This is a problem. My workaround: I set up Google Calendar to synch automatically to iCal so I have the information stored locally on my iPhone. Voila! Problem solved.

Still not as good as having a paper calendar, but I just can't bring myself to do it.

[Barry L. Smith]

I am currently a Time Matters user. As a sole practitioner, TM is overkill and is presently down. I've decided it is time to switch. I was seriously considering Outlook but now think that Google Calendar might work. Does Google Calendar do everything Outlook does?

[Enrico S.]

Yes. Google Calendar does everything Microsoft Calendar does and more. Best yet, it all happens in the cloud, accessible from anywhere....

[CJK]

How do you sort by matters in google calendar

[Adam]

The only way to "sort" by matters in google calendar would be to insert a unique matter code into each event, and then you could search for that particular matter code. Or, you could create a new calendar for every matter. Neither solution seems very elegant to me. I generally just put the name of the client in the description of the event.

[Rob Dean]

I use Google Calendar to sync my desktop computer, Palm Pre, and iPad to the same calendar. It's great!

[Greg]

To "sort" matters I use the client's first initial, last name, and case number - e.g. J. Doe (12345). I can then search on the client last name to find all matters related to that client, or on the case number to find all appointments related to that matter. Works great.

[Mose Highsmith]

Will Google Calendars synch with Amicus Attorney? I like having the calendar events tied to the client file in Amicus.

[John]

I just started using this cool software ScheduFlow Online by Duoserve. It works through the Internet. It's not a website but rather a full-fledged software which is pretty cool. They released a mobile version just last week. I no longer have to sync! Hooray! All my schedules, everywhere, all the time.