The spell allows a caster to animate a dead hand and use it to grab items from adjacent rooms. Once the caster moves, the opportunity is lost.

It might prove useful to allow a wizard to grab items from a dangerous room, or perhaps to retrieve a fallen shield from another room that the caster does not wish to re-enter.

 

While it might be useful in one or two situations, the size of the spell makes it mostly pointless to carry around regularly.