Speeding up Time Matters

Time Matters is such a joke. I have wasted literally hundreds of hours over the years trying to get this piece of junk software to work. Every version is promised to be so great, but each version becomes more and more unstable.

If anyone has any thoughts of purchasing it, save yourself the time and money and simply hit yourself in the head with a two by four until you lose consciousness. When you regain consciousness, repeat. After a few weeks of this, you will have begun to experience what so many others have. But think of the money you’ll have saved!

The ONLY reason anyone continues with Time Matters is because the state of legal case management software is in such a sorry condition. Lawyers meander like zombies between Time Matters, Abacus Law, and Amicus Attorney. Some get tired and go to overpriced products like Needles or more esoteric products that sell for thousands or even tens of thousands of dollars. (I hear Needles actually works.)

If there were a product like Sam described, I’d buy it in a heartbeat. But there isn’t. Time Matters started out as a PIM, anyway, just slightly different than Goldmine and the like.

If someone created a Matter-centric program that also worked with calendaring and kept track of time every step of the way, then we’d have something.

Is it possible that File Maker Pro 10 offers a solution? Maybe, like Sam suggested, a collection of various programs, such as Excel/Outlook/Word/Paperport or OpenOffice3/Ubuntu/(some scanning/OCR program)? I understand one of these days Lightning might catch up with Thunderbird, in which case that will be part of a good solution.

DIGRESSION ALERT: POSSIBLE SOLUTIONS WITH SOFTWARE YOU ALREADY HAVE

I’m thinking of this as a possible workaround: Use Excel as a ‘database’ of sorts. The VLOOKUP function is a powerful way of bring in multiple cells in a row from one sheet into another sheet. Excel is already great for sorting and summing, so in many ways, one can create a simple relational database without all the hassles and bugs of Access (and Time Matters!). One sheet for Contacts, one sheet for Matters, another for Events/ToDos (if not simply in Outlook, with each Matter as its own Category that is assigned to an Email, Appointment, or Task. Likewise, each matter would have its own folder in Outlook where each email Sent and Received is placed. Outlook will sort all Appointments and Tasks per Category by date, subject, etc.) Additionally, in Excel, one have a sheet for every type of subform Time Matters has, but they’d all be on one sheet, whether it be a Phone Call, Mail, Fax, etc. All the Matters (and Contacts) could be in the first couple of columns of the sheet, brought in via VLOOKUP or simply typed in and filled in with Autofill.

Excel easily interacts with Word for Merge Letters. Also, free times abound that will Start/Pause/Stop/Reset and log the Elapsed Time in a given row. Hence, a free, functional Time Sheet. (Or, one could simply subtract the End Time from Start Time.) e.g. http://www.planet-source-code......p;lngWId=1 (Just Google “Excel timer stopwatch” and the first page will have tons of examples.)

The beauty of this Excel/Outlook combination is SIMPLICITY. Plus, it JUST PLAIN WORKS! (Personally, I’ve had Office 2007 twice, but I prefer the ’simplicity’ of Office 2003. Excel 2003 isn’t quite as robust as Excel 2007, but I think it’s good enough for my purposes.

Plus, with so much in Excel, you can export your data if a better solution comes along. (I’d like a solution better than Outlook for that very reason. Who has used Ubuntu? Is it just as good as Outlook? Will it run on XP, or must one have Linux? I know there’s VirtualBox, but does it really work? I’m scared to go Linux!)

END DIGRESSION

I keep going back to Time Matters like a…like a…like a lawyer who wants an all-in-one solution (like a junkie addicted to heroin, me, the lawyer, being the junkie, and the all-in-one solution being the heroin). I just don’t think it exists. (I do have a mentor who takes every opportunity to say how his WordPerfect 5.1 solution still works for him. With only about twelve fields and the beauty of the 8.3 naming convention, he can find anything/create anything in three seconds or less. Seeing that old time DOS stuff run is amazing… And with a ten dollar week-at-a-glance paper calendar, he’s running circles around all of us.)

So, once again:

ABANDON ALL HOPE, YE WHO BUY/CONTINUE WITH TIME MATTERS

and

cobble together what you already have (such as how I described). In the long run, you’ll be miles ahead.

(P.S. I agree with everything most have said about Time Matters ignoring the pleas of the masses to fix their software, and cannot understand how Tom and Wells can say, again and again, that it’s just a few who are having problems and that the CIC forum doesn’t crush dissent. Next they’ll be saying that Time Matters has found the Weapons of Mass Destruction. Actually, Time Matters IS a weapon of mass destruction (IMHO). Don’t let it destroy you in the process!)