It seems most useful as a little combat minion used to push dudes over/off stuff. Pre-casting one before a fight and it doesn't even eat up any action economy, it's just free shoves.
But I agree, the first character I played was a Wizard and one of the things I first tried to do was to Mage Hand something to myself and couldn't figure out how to do it if it's possible. I did discover you seem to be able to push goblins off cliffs though.
