Abacus Law support can be reached at their paid support number 800-488-3334 from 6a – 5p.  They require the law firm’s office phone number or for user to login to Abacus and grab their Abacus ID for Abacus Law support.    As for the Abacus Law software, it has a lot of built in functionality.  Though, it may be looking a wee bit tired of an interface with the advent of cloud companies deploying subscription software.  Their software is broken up into three core parts of their suite.

Abacus Law – Case Management

Abacus Accounting – Billing

Abacus TimeSlips –  Internal Messaging System

New startups like RocketMatters are encroaching on Abacus’s turf with their fresh looking SaaS software.  For those who still require Abacus law support but just the basics for setup and deployment, continue below.

 

Abacus Law Application Server

The Abacus application server doesn’t require much to run.  However, it would place the legal world in peril if that server decided to die tomorrow.  With that said, we have a page dedicated to a couple specialty PCs for installing the Abacus Law application server on for very small law practices.   Please consider the following workstations acting as a server from that blog post.

Optiplex 5000 –  Mini Tower.  Note:  There’s no redundant hard drive so when the drive dies, so does Abacus.

Dell Precision 3420 – Better performance hardware with third party RAID add-on.

Abacus Law Workstation Setup

It is time to deploy Abacus Law client for the workstation.  We will take you through the drive mapping followed by initiating the executable for installation law and doing this yourself instead of calling Abcaus Law Support Team.  It best to utilize the service account if Abacus is not acting as a file server, managing multiple user accounts, and does not have Active Directory support.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Install Abacus on this workstation

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Message Slips?  It’s advisable to install everything unless told otherwise, you can always disable later.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Backup, backup, backup!!!

You can store backup locally but make you have a script to auto backup to something like Synology or use Carbonite, Mozy, Google Drive Backup and Sync and or some fancy backup tool.  .  Make sure everyone is off Abacus applications prior to backup.

ProTip!  Volume Shadow Copies should be considered.

Check the default location (v23) to see if your organization is backing up there.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

You can view who is on or off Abacus before kicking off the backup or make it an SOP for users to close their application before leaving for the weekend.

 

 

 

 

Please check mark the two boxes for a full backup

 

 

All must be closed for full or partial backup –  Plan for backups for once a week.  Shadow backups?

• abacus law
•  abacus accounting
• message slips

Abacus Law support Summary

 

The software is an integral part of the majority law firm lives.  Hopefully, we made it a little bit easier to understand the IT aspect of things.