oh i'm sorry i didn't mean switch to raytrace shadows, i meant tone down your shadow quality value in the maya software rendering tab under raytracing quality... since you aren't using raytraced shadows you can afford to turn that value down to even zero since you're not using it... that might also help decrease your rendering time.

as far as other light sources to use instead of point lights, it's kinda tough since i'm assuming you were using them to illuminate the area around where the point light was... if it's an exterior scene you might want to think about using a directional light... but other than that (since i'm not going to ask to see your scene) i've got nothing.