the ultimate legal document management
TRANSCRIPT
THE ULTIMATE LEGAL DOCUMENT MANAGEMENT
SOFTWARE GUIDEBy Uptime Legal
Table of ContentsINTRODUCTION ..............................................................................................3
CHAPTER 1 - HOW DOCUMENT MANAGEMENT WILL TRANSFORM YOUR LAW PRACTICE .....................................................................................4
1. Matter-Centric Content Management .................................................... 4
2. Emails are Documents Too ....................................................................... 6
3. Search and OCR ......................................................................................... 7
4. Goodbye Servers & IT Headaches ............................................................ 9
5. Have Everything, Anytime, Anywhere .................................................. 10
CHAPTER 2 - PRACTICE MANAGEMENT SOFTWARE ≠ DOCUMENT MANAGEMENT SOFTWARE ..........................................................................11
What is Practice Management Software? ................................................. 12
Cloud Computing Sidebar: On-Premise, Web-based or Hosted ............ 13
Popular Practice Management Applications ............................................ 13
Closing the Loop .......................................................................................... 15
CHAPTER 3 - EVALUATING DOCUMENT MANAGEMENT SOFTWARE (8 QUESTIONS TO ASK) .................................................................................16
1. Is it Really Document Management Software? .................................... 17
2. Is the Software Matter-Centric? ............................................................. 18
3. What Are the Software’s Capabilities? .................................................. 19
4. Is it (Really) Cloud-based? ....................................................................... 21
5. Is OCR Included, and Automatic? .......................................................... 22
6. Is the Software Easy to Use and Navigate? .......................................... 23
7. Does the Software Force Your Firm to Conform to It? ........................ 24
8. Is Data Migration Included? ................................................................... 25
CHAPTER 4 - DOCUMENT MANAGEMENT SOFTWARE REVIEWS ................26
EPILOGUE - 5 REASONS YOUR LAW FIRM NEEDS EMAIL MANAGEMENT 29The Fundamental Problems with Email for a Law Firm .......................... 29
The Solution: Email Management Software ............................................. 32
Closing the Loop .......................................................................................... 35
INTRODUCTION
Today, there are more different methods and systems (good and bad) that law firms use to manage their documents and email than ever before. Not long ago, a firm’s options were either (a) special document storage (management) software, or (b) A local file server (EG: “The S:\ drive.”) And not much else.
Today, there are (almost) too many options. You have file servers, sim-ple cloud storage services, premise-based document management software, cloud-based document management software, practice man-agement software… and more. The sheer variety of options, categories and methodologies can be daunting.
In this guide, we’ll cover everything you need to know to define your firm’s specific document management needs, understand the options available to you and identify the right type, maybe even the exact prod-uct that will help your firm take control of your documents, email and other data.
We’ll start with Why, and describe why exactly every law firm should implement some sort of formal document management system. Then we’ll describe the difference between the Document Management and Practice Management categories of software (it matters). We’ll give you some practice pointers on how to evaluate different document man-agement platforms and will follow up with our own review of today’s leading legal document management suites.
Finally, as a bonus, we’ll share with you 5 reasons that your law firm should also implement a thoughtful email management strategy.
Let’s get started.
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CHAPTER 1 HOW DOCUMENT MANAGEMENT WILL TRANSFORM YOUR LAW PRACTICE
Law firms today leverage a number of different technologies to manage their cases and their practice. From billing and accounting software, to case management software: there are a number of legal technology staples that are in most law firms’ technology toolboxes. One particular tool, however, might be the most foundational and most important to law firms. That tool: a document management system (DMS). And now that we’re in the era of cloud computing, many law firms are imple-menting a cloud document management system for their practice.
Does your law firm use a document management system? Are you thinking of implementing your first DMS? Are you outgrowing your dat-ed, on-premise dinosaur DMS? Or do you remember how much having document management software at your last firm made your life easi-er… and you want to recreate that same magic at your new firm?
In this chapter we’ll explore the benefits of implementing and using a cloud document management platform.
1. MATTER-CENTRIC CONTENT MANAGEMENT
Law firms receive, produce and process all kinds of data and informa-tion: from documents, to audio or video files, to email to notes. I like to think of all of these kinds of data as different types of content. And, regardless of the areas of law your firm practices, all of a law firm’s con-tent should be organized and managed in a matter-centric way.
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A cloud document management system brings this organization to a law firm. Prior to implementing a cloud document management plat-form, I often see law firms with a “wild west” kind of system to manag-ing content:
» Matter documents scattered between local file servers, network
drives and individual computers.
» Matter-related emails spread across multiple employees Outlook
or Gmail accounts.
» Notes saved without any consistency, on paper or in stand-alone
note-taking apps.
» Other files and data stored in Dropbox, Google Drive or some oth-
er, separate cloud app.
In addition to being very disjointed, what I tend to see (with a law firm before it’s adopted a cloud document management solution), there is often little to no uniformity to where, how and why a piece of content is stored in one place or the other. (It’s often left to the discretion of each user, and what they decided to do with the document or content that day.)
A cloud document management system that is matter-centric will organize everything by matter. Documents for a particular case will be saved in that matter record (and probably tagged and organized by document type, such as motion, pleading, complaint, contract and so forth.) Email messages–regardless of who in the firm received them–will be saved and stored in the matter (alongside documents). Notes, from phone call notes, to intake notes, to case law or research notes, will also be saved, stored, time-stamped and organized in the matter, also alongside documents and email.
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A cloud document management platform will bring some much-need-ed law and order to the lawless world of local file servers and outlook folders.
(Example)
2. EMAILS ARE DOCUMENTS TOO
A good, law-firm centric cloud document management platform keeps all relevant content and documents organized by matter. And emails are documents too! A cloud document management system will pro-vide tools to save case or client-related emails into the appropriate matter record, where you can see and review them in the same place you do for matter documents.
The best cloud document management software will integrate directly with your Outlook, and will give everyone in your firm the ability to ef-fortlessly save on (or many) email messages directly to a matter. Doing so not only stores the message in a place other than that employee’s
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outlook folder, but makes all relevant matter-related email for a given case available to anyone in your firm who might need it.
The very best cloud document management systems that manage email well will copy the entire email message, its entirety (header, body, attachments–everything), so you have a permanent copy of that email (again) outside of Outlook, where its easy to delete or mis-file the email.
(Example)
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3. SEARCH AND OCR
There are lots of reasons to implement a legal DMS, but right at the top of most law firm’s lists is: search and OCR. That is, the ability to quickly (and effectively) search across all of your law firm’s cases, documents, email and notes–and always find what you’re looking for.
When armed with a cloud document management system, your law firm will be ruthlessly efficient and searching your data repository, even if its in the terabytes, and finding the exact document you’re look-ing for. When your law firm’s data and content is disjointed (to use my earlier example: Some documents in the S: drive, some in each employ-ee’s individual outlook folders, and so forth), there’s no effective way to search across all of your data when doing a conflict search or looking for that one perfect memorandum.
A good cloud document management platform, when your firm reli-ably stores everything important in it, will index all of your firm’s data: every page of every document, ever word and PDF file, every line of every email… making all of your firm’s data findable. You will, in effect, be your own Google of your firm’s clients, matters and data.
OCR is another, and vital component to search capabilities. OCR tech-nology will take scanned images of documents and convert them to readable, indexable text documents. Without a proper OCR system in place, many of your firms documents (whether you scanned them at your firm or they were sent to you from an outside party) will be un-OCR’d, and therefor will never show up in a search.
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(Example)
4. GOODBYE SERVERS & IT HEADACHES
So far, many of the benefits of implementing a legal DMS have focused on the benefits inherent to any document management software. Next, we’ll look at the benefits of a cloud document management system.
Document management software has been around for a long time. In the past a DMS application was expensive and required (even more) expensive servers and IT expertise to implement and manage. Some of these big, unwieldy document management applications are still around today. But, in our experience, the best, most flexible, most cost-effective and most modern DMS platforms are cloud-based document management software.
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Cloud document management systems are, as the name implies, host-ed in the cloud. This means no servers, to manage, no expensive IT support staff needed and no software to install on every one of your computers. Servers are expensive to buy and even more expensive to maintain. They come with constant maintenance, challenges, cost and drama.
A cloud document management system gets a law firm out of the busi-ness of managing servers and IT, and back in the business of managing its clients and its practice.
5. HAVE EVERYTHING, ANYTIME, ANYWHERE
It may go without saying, but I’ll say it: Having a cloud document man-agement system means that everyone in your firm can work anytime, anywhere form any device. With on-premise file servers or legacy, premise-based DMS software, you’re limited to accessing your matter documents, email and notes to your office (unless you have the fore-sight to copy files and take them with you).
With a cloud-based legal DMS, you have access to your firm’s entire data repository, from anywhere in the world. Every client, ever matter, ever document, every email. Cloud-based software, being browser-based, makes logging into your DMS easy to do from anywhere, putting all of your firm’s data at your fingertips.
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CHAPTER 2
PRACTICE MANAGEMENT SOFTWARE ≠ DOCUMENT MANAGEMENT SOFTWARE
At Uptime Legal we help many law firms evaluate, select and implement software to help them manage their practice. We typically start with a basic needs assessment, which often includes the question: Does your firm need Practice Management or Document Management?
Oftentimes, we realize, the difference isn’t clear to law firms, especially lawyers who are starting a new firm where at their previous firm “all this stuff was just handled for us.”
We realize there’s a lack of clari-ty between Practice Management and Document Management soft-ware, due in part to the slightly overlapping descriptions and in part because of Practice Manage-ment software publishers them-selves. (More on this shortly.)
So in this chapter we’ll describe the difference between Practice Management and Document Man-agement solutions.
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WHAT IS PRACTICE MANAGEMENT SOFTWARE?
Practice Management software, as the name implies, helps a law firm manage their practice. Or more specifically: manage their firm’s cases. While the exact functionality within Practice Management software will vary from one application to another, typically Practice Management software will include
» A customer database
» A case/matter database
» Calendaring–from a simple calendar to rules-based calendaring
» Time tracking and billing
» Accounting (though this is often not included–and left to separate
software)
» Management of the case itself–including details related to a partic-
ular case type
» Form assembly/creation – automatic creation and population of
certain court forms
» Rudimentary document management functionality – explained
next
It’s not uncommon for a Practice Management application to advertise that one of its functions is Document Management. The extent of the advertised functionality is usually basic linking of external documents to a matter, or the ability to add notes/comments to a document. While this may very well be all the Document Management functionality your firm needs, by the true definition of a Document Management System (DMS)–this is not document management. It’s a small part of the func-tionality that a true, full-featured DMS includes.
You could call it “Document Management Light”.
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Again–semantics aside, if this basic interaction between your Practice Management software and documents is all you need, you may not need Document Management. But read on: and as you learn about the functions furnished by a full DMS, you’ll see the distinction and will (hopefully) be able to discern if you need Document Management
CLOUD COMPUTING SIDEBAR: ON-PREMISE, WEB-BASED OR HOSTED
A quick sidebar and definition for different iterations of cloud-based solutions. Today, applications fall into two categories:
Web-based applications (sometimes called cloud-
based, or natively cloud): these applications are hosted
with the provider and accessible via a web browser; and
On-Premise applications: software that requires
an on-premise server to host the software. On-
Premise applications can also be hosted in a Private
Cloud such as our own Uptime Practice, “cloud-
ifying” the application and making it accessible from
anywhere, without the need for an onsite server.
POPULAR PRACTICE MANAGEMENT APPLICATIONS
» Popular Legal Practice Manage-
ment applications include:
» Clio – Web-based
» CosmoLex – Web-based
» MyCase – Web-based
» Rocket Matter – Web-based
» PCLaw – On-Premise or Hosted
» Time Matters – On-Premise
or Hosted
» ProLaw – On-Premise or Hosted
» Tabs3 / Practice Master -On
Premise or Hosted
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What are Document Management Systems (DMS)?
Document Management Systems, again as the name implies, helps a law firm manage their documents.
Some law firms, especially smaller ones, may need nothing more than a place to store and organize documents.
Though, many law firms need more sophisticated tools to catalog, search, comment on and generally manage their firm and matter doc-uments.
Just like Practice Management software applications, features and func-tionality will vary from one Document Management solution to anoth-er, but typically a DMS will include:
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» A structure to organize documents, such as projects or matters.
» Indexing & search: so users can perform searches across all docu-
ments and the content within them.
» Version management: the ability to view and compare previous
versions of a document.
» Document check-out/in: to keep other users from modifying a doc-
ument.
» Microsoft Office Integration: Save documents directly to the DMS.
» Tags/Metadata: Tag or code documents as different types (such as
contract, or motion).
» Email management: Store and manage emails like documents.
» Change alerts: Notifications when a document is changed.
» OCR: Convert scanned documents or image-based PDF files to
text-enabled, searchable documents.
We’ll cover the leading law firm Document Management applications in a future chapter.
CLOSING THE LOOP
Hopefully this comparison brings contrast to the two different types of software, and hopefully you have a better sense of whether your law practice needs Practice Management software, a Document Manage-ment System, or both.
Does your firm need to track time, create invoices, manage cases and calendars? If so–your firm needs Practice Management software.
Does your firm need to store and organize documents and email, man-age document versions, OCR documents, index and search for docu-ments? If so–your firm needs a Document Management System.
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CHAPTER 3
EVALUATING DOCUMENT MANAGEMENT SOFTWARE (8 QUESTIONS TO ASK)
Now that we’ve covered how a Document Management System will transform your law practice (and talked through the important distinc-tions between Document Management and Practice Management soft-ware), lets explore how to go about finding the right document man-agement platform for our firm.
A good law firm document management application will help keep mat-ter-related documents (and email) together, will make searching for and finding what you’re looking for easy, and will generally bring law and order to an otherwise wild-west of files, folders and disjointed systems.
But finding the right law firm document management software isn’t as easy as it may sound. You may realize that the world of legal software is nebulous and full of terms with overlapping meanings. You may realize that you don’t know what you don’t know, which makes your journey all that much more difficult to navigate.
As you set out to find the right law firm document management sys-tem, you may not even fully understand what questions to ask.
At Uptime Legal, we’ve assisted hundreds of law firms solve problems by finding and implementing the right technology solutions. So, with that experience, in this chapter we’ll cover 8 important questions to ask when evaluating law firm document management software.
Let’s get started.
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1. IS IT REALLY DOCUMENT MANAGEMENT SOFTWARE?
As a review, many practice management applications (while great soft-ware) advertise “Document Management” as a feature, which is often confusing (or unintentionally misleading). Its worth repeating, because this is such a common misconception.
Legal Practice Management (LPM) software, which is a different cate-gory and type of software, often provides many different functions for a law firm. Client and contact management, calendaring, time tracking and billing. And often in an LPM’s list of features they’ll name “Doc-ument Management” as a feature. Which leads many law firms that don’t know better to assume that this Legal Practice Management solu-tion also includes document management.
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It usually doesn’t. Practice Management software is not Document Man-agement software.
And I’m not arguing semantics here. LPM software, which your law firm may very well benefit from, sometimes will provide very rudimentary or watered-down document management capabilities. (You could de-scribe it as “Document Management Lite.”) And if that’s all your firm needs–perhaps it will be enough. But many law firms need a level of sophistication and nuance that traditional practice management soft-ware don’t provide.
So, again, don’t be fooled into thinking that your case management or time and billing app has the document management functions your firm requires. Or at least, don’t assume it by default. Dig in, and under-stand the functions and features.
Which brings me to our next question to ask when evaluating a legal document management solution.
2. IS THE SOFTWARE MATTER-CENTRIC?
Document Management software is made for and used by many indus-tries beyond law firms. Healthcare. Financial services. Insurance. And as a result, many document management platforms aren’t made for law firms, they’re made for the masses.
You’ll often see this when you start diving deep into the functionality and flow of a “generalist” document management platform. You’ll see functionality and features that no law firm would ever need. You’ll no-tice a lack of true matter-centricity.
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A matter-centric document management system is one where, for the most part, all documents, email and other content is stored and orga-nized by matter. And every matter has attributes that make that matter easy to find and manage: things like case type, open date, and assigned staff.
Some document management applications have objects called “fold-ers” or “projects,” that can be retro-fitted to act like a matter if you’re a law firm… but you’ll quickly realize that the functionality of the software and its container objects simply wasn’t designed for law firms and legal departments.
Without a matter-centric document management system, a firm’s case information, documents, emails, and other data is likely to be scattered among several disjointed systems.
I recommend implementing a document management platform built specifically for law firms and legal departments, and one that is clearly matter-centric.
3. WHAT ARE THE SOFTWARE’S CAPABILITIES?
Labels and semantics don’t matter. Capabilities do.
So it’s important to define your firm’s requirements before evaluating any specific law firm document management products. What does your firm need? What problems are you looking to solve? What are must-haves, and what are would-like’s?
I recommend sitting down with the key stake-holders and decision-mak-ers within your firm and define your objectives and requirements in your firm’s new document management platform.
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Your list of requirements may include things like:
» Matter-centric document storage and organization.
» Microsoft Office integration
» Email management
» Document check-out / check-in
» Document version management
» Document tagging and profiling
» Indexing and searchability
» Document metadata
» Audit trails
» Security and permissions management
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Whatever the requirements, I recommend you identify them and as-sign an urgency to each. This will help your firm hold up any potential suitor against your requirements and will help clarify which law firm document management product may be a good fit, and which are not.
4. IS IT (REALLY) CLOUD-BASED?
In today’s world, there’s almost no reason to buy and maintain an on-premise server. On-premise IT comes with headaches, downtime, unexpected costs and lots of drama. And legacy, server-based docu-ment management software (including otherwise good document management software) often requires a hefty server with lots of horse-power and space, which drives up your firm’s costs even more.
What’s more, modern law firms need mobility. They need to be able to access their matter files, documents and email from anywhere. From the office. From home. From the courthouse. Just another reason to seek out a cloud-based solution when searching for the right law firm document management platform.
Some of the legacy DMS platforms, which have always required an on-premise server (and the necessary IT support to keep it up and run-ning) offer their legacy DMS solutions in their own hosted environment. This is not only expensive but can cause integration challenges with the rest of your law firm’s technology.
So, make sure the law firm document management software that your firm is evaluating is truly cloud-based.
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5. IS OCR INCLUDED, AND AUTOMATIC?
OCR, or Optical Character Recognition, is the technology that converts a scanned image, such as a contract you’ve scanned, into readable, searchable text.
By default, a scanned document is essentially an image. You’ve proba-bly seen this before: you use a scanner to scan a hardcopy document, and the resulting electronic file is an image, almost like a photograph of the documents. (In fact, that’s exactly what it is.)
This means that the text in the document you’ve scanned isn’t actually text at all–rather your scanned document is a photograph of text. This means you, as the user cannot select, copy or paste any text from the document.
And more importantly: you can’t search for text in a photograph. That’s right–these raw, scanned documents will never show up in a search. If that scanned document has a key piece of language or text that you’ll need later–you’ll never find it in a search in its raw, un-OCR’d format.
OCR (which stands for Optical Character Recognition) is the process of converting the image of a scanned document into actual text–that can be selected, copied, pasted and–most importantly: indexed and searched. OCR software processes these raw, “photographs of docu-ments” files, interprets what it discerns as characters (letters and num-bers) and converts them to actual, searchable text.
It’s fair to say that having an OCR solution is integral to having a paper-less law firm, and integral to any law firm document management sys-tem. The problem is: many document management applications don’t include OCR capabilities. Some omit this entirely, others offer integra-tion with third-party OCR software, something you’ll have to buy, set up and maintain on its own.
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I recommend ensuring that the law firm document management soft-ware you consider has automatic, integrated OCR.
6. IS THE SOFTWARE EASY TO USE AND NAVIGATE?
Over the years, I’ve seen hundreds of law firms implement (or try to implement) new software of one kind or another. Some are wildly suc-cessful, others fail. What separates the successes from the failures?
Adoption.
Meaning: Do the end users (everyone in the law firm) embrace, learn and use the software… or do they resist using the new software?
Adoption is vital to a successful software implementation, and critical to achieving the goals you set out to accomplish by getting the soft-ware in the first place. And when it comes to adoption, how easy the software is to use, navigate and make use of is a make-or-break factor.
The trend of modern software tends to be an easy-to-use, minimalist design that doesn’t overwhelm the end-user, which makes learning the software approachable and doable.
Unfortunately, many older applications, including and especially older law firm document management applications, are just the opposite. Their interfaces are overwhelming. Navigation is not intuitive. The look and feel is dated, confusing and convoluted.
This can absolutely kill user adoption, kill your investment into law firm document management software, and upset morale. Make sure the software you evaluate has a user interface and user experience that is simple, clean, intuitive and easy to use.
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7. DOES THE SOFTWARE FORCE YOUR FIRM TO CONFORM TO IT?
Some law firm document management software forces you to do things a certain way.
For example: take document profiling. Profiling is the process by which you categorize and add metadata to a document when storing it in your DMS. For instance, when you create a new brief, you might want to code it as a brief along with other information: tags, document dead-line, and so forth. This kind of categorization can be very useful to a law firm.
However, what if your software forced you to do this every time? Ev-ery random word doc, PDF and documents that may or may not be particularly consequential. Some document management applications force you to go through a comprehensive profiling process for ev-ery document, every time.
Good software makes your life easier, and your job faster. It doesn’t get in your way. Some law firm document management software, unfortu-nately, does exactly the opposite and force your firm to adapt to the way it works, rather than the software adapting to your law firm.
This will not only increase the time it takes to do your job, but will, as I explained above, hamper morale and undermine adoption. I recom-mend that when evaluating law firm document management software, you look carefully at what the software forces on your firm.
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8. IS DATA MIGRATION INCLUDED?
Our last item is an important one: Is migration and ingestion of your existing documents included in the software/service?
Making software and providing professional services are two very dif-ferent businesses. As a result, many publishers of law firm document management software don’t provide migration services as part of their offering.
If your law firm will be implementing document management soft-ware, chances are you have a significant amount of existing data and documents to organize and move into your new DMS. Perhaps you’re coming from a local, on-premise file server (and using the S: drive). Or maybe you’re graduating from basic cloud storage such as OneDrive or Dropbox. Either way–organizing, cataloging and moving your data into your new document management platform is no small task.
The problem is often that software publishers don’t take this on them-selves. Instead, they farm this responsibility out to outside consultants, resellers and technology companies. The challenge this often creates, in the many law firms I’ve spoken with, is serious quality control issues.
The reseller who you retain to perform your migration may or may not be suited to the task. And the DMS software company may very well shrug and tell you to find a new consultant/reseller if things go poorly. (This is a scenario I’ve seen many times.)
Nobody knows the law firm document management system better than the company who created it. For that reason, I always advise law firms to select a law firm document management product where the com-pany’s own staff manages and owns the data migration, start to finish.
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CHAPTER 4 DOCUMENT MANAGEMENT SOFTWARE REVIEWS
You now understand why your firm would almost certainly benefit from document management software. You now also have a sense of what factors to consider when looking for the right document management platform for your law firm.
Next, we’ll take a close look at the top four document management applications for law firms:
» Worldox
» iManage
» NetDocuments
» LegalWorks
Worldox is a popular document management system for law firms. It’s server-based, which means you’ll need to own and main-tain an on-premise server to run it. Worldox is a mature product: it’s been around and used by law firms for over a decade. Worldox is powerful and capable, and integrates with Tabs3, a popular legal practice management and accounting application for law firms.
Learn More About Worldox
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iManage is a long-running DMS. It is powerful and robust and provides as many, or more functions to manage documents and email as other Document Management Systems in the indus-try. It has a powerful index and search engine which works across document and email. It does require significant server resources, and requires an IT expert to implement and administer. iManage can be run on your own in-house server or in a private cloud.
NetDocuments was among the first cloud-based document management applications. NetDocuments is used by a variety of industries including legal, accounting and financial services, and is well-regarded in each industry. NetDocuments includes ndOffice, its Microsoft Office integration. Being web-based, NetDocuments does not require an on-premise server, nor does it require soft-ware installation apart from ndOffice.
Learn More About iManage
Learn More About NetDocuments
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LegalWorks is a cloud-based, matter-centric document & email management system. LegalWorks will keep your documents, email and notes organized by matter, indexed and searchable. LegalWorks includes document versioning, powerful search, inte-grated OCR, scan and fax integration, Microsoft Office and Out-look integration and document tagging/profiling. LegalWorks is available stand-alone or bundled with Microsoft Office and Ex-change email.
Learn More About LegalWorks
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EPILOGUE 5 REASONS
YOUR LAW FIRM NEEDS EMAIL MANAGEMENT
Before we wrap up our guide on law firm document management, we need to cover one important element in just a little more detail: Email management.
Email is a staple of communication for any business, including–and maybe especially–law firms. But keeping on top of your email, keeping them organized and searchable and sharing them with the rest of your firm can be a real challenge. And that challenge only grows as your firm does. So, to that end: Here are 5 reasons you probably need law firm email management.
THE FUNDAMENTAL PROBLEMS WITH EMAIL FOR A LAW FIRM
Email is a great tool to communicate: Long conversations with clients, concise conversations with opposing council. Email certainly does what it was meant to do fairly well, but on its own: Email comes with a host of challenges to law firms.
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1. Matter Information Segregation
Email lives in its own closed system (email software). That is, when you’re having a relevant conversation with a client on a particular mat-ter, this conversation, along with any attachments or pertinent infor-mation, is stored in Outlook (or your favorite email software/service). Other important matter related information, including documents, case notes, matter data, and so forth–will be somewhere else. Maybe in your Practice Management software, maybe on your local file server. But in any case: matter-related emails are segregated from the rest of your matter data, which means inefficiency, wasted time and a poten-tial for mistakes.
2. Not Centralized, Not Shared
Another problem inherent to email for law firms is lack of centralization. You may be one of three legal professionals within your firm working on a particular case, for instance, and may be trading emails with a cli-ent. Perhaps these emails are vitally pertinent to the matter, and sup-port you’re extra-diligent about saving email mail to a particular folder for this matter in Outlook. Kudos to you for being so organized–the problem, however, is that that doesn’t help the other people working on this matter. They may need to review a particular email chain, or know what you said in a recent reply. Email, on its own, is fundamentally de-centralized.
3. Organization? Good Luck with That.
Another fundamental problem with email and typical tools to manage it (such as Outlook or Gmail) is that you are left to your own devices when it comes to (a) developing a system to keep your emails organized, and (b) sticking with that system. Yes, Outlook and Gmail give you some
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tools: folders, rules and tags… but it’s still on you to put those tools to use, develop a process to organize emails–and stick with that plan. And of course: there’s nothing ensuring that the rest of your firm follows the same rules for keeping things organized and matter-centric.
4. Email Search
Searching email with built-in email software is hit-or-miss. In fair-ness, Gmail has got email search down pretty well (though Gmail still suffers from the other fundamental law firm email management chal-lenges discussed here). Outlook on the other hand can often let you down. The index engine is prone to breaking, which makes searching slow or impossible. What’s more: Because the indexing for Outlook is done individually on each computer: Your outlook index and search may work great on one computer, but be completely broken on anoth-er. (I say this as an otherwise avid Outlook fan.) Leaving search to your email software is a mixed bag at best.
5. OCR – It’s on You
Another thing that basic email software leaves you on your own to deal with is: OCR. Have you ever been emailed a scanned PDF document, opened it and noticed… you can’t select, highlight or copy any of the text? It sort of looks like a photograph of a document more than an electronic file. In fact: that’s essentially what it is: This particular docu-ment has not been OCR’d, which is the process of converting a scanned document to a full-text document. If a document isn’t OCR’d, its less easily editable by software such as Adobe Acrobat, and won’t be found in a search. (Because, again: it’s a photograph, not text.)
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Yes, your law firm staff can manually OCR every PDF file in every email you ever send… but good luck making sure everyone does it, every time. Outlook and Gmail, or any basic email client, will leave you to your own devices when it comes to OCR.
THE SOLUTION: EMAIL MANAGEMENT SOFTWARE
The solution to these fundamental email challenges is implement-ing software that was meant to organize and manage email, and do it in a matter-centric way. A legal-centric Email Management System is sometimes part of a broader Document Management System (DMS), sometimes referred to jointly as a Document and Email Management software for law firms. (Titles, titles.)
Law firm email management software keeps your emails organized, searchable and sharable to your whole firm. Most Email Management software works by integrating with your Outlook, allowing you to quick save or send emails to a matter, in a digital file within the document and email management database.
1. All Matter-related Data in One Place
A Document and Email Management System will keep all matter-relat-ed data together in one place: Documents for a matter, emails pertain-ing to that matter, case notes and more–all in a single system. After all: When you’re working on a particular case: don’t you need speedy access to all potential types of data?
For example, in our own LegalWorks document and email manage-ment system: when you open a matter record, you’ll have a tab for documents, for email and for notes relating to that matter: All together in one place.
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2. Centralized and Shared
Unlike individual Outlook folders scattered between multiple attorneys in your firm: With a law firm email management system emails are stored in a single, central database. And–a database that is accessible to your whole firm. With a law firm email management system, when one user saves a relevant email to a matter, the rest of the firm work-ing on that matter can see and access that email (along with any other documents or data relating to that matter).
3. Perfectly Organized
With a law firm email management system, the system does the organizing, as opposed to the user. There’s no need to manually create an Outlook folder or a Gmail tag for a new matter: In many document and email management applications, when you create a new matter you can automatically start saving emails to that matter. For instance, in LegalWorks, a list of your current matters appears right in Outlook.
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You can easily drag emails to a matter to save them. Then, when you (or someone else in your firm) needs to find an email: They simply open that matter and peruse the emails saved to that matter. In a good law firm email management system, users can filter, sort and search by sender, recipient, attachment and email date.
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4. Search that Works
In a law firm email management system, indexing is done by the soft-ware itself. Indexing is the process where the document and email man-agement software crawls and indexes every email (and document) you store in it–so you can quickly search for a phrase and find what you’re looking for. The index of good, legal-grade email management software is traditionally more robust than Outlook, and work without breaking. What’s more: the index itself is centrally stored: no need to wait for each individual compute in your office to update its search index.
The bottom line here: With a law firm email management system, search works every time, for every user.
5. Integrated OCR
Finally: OCR. A good law firm email management system will OCR scanned PDF files automatically. Meaning: when I send you a PDF that I scanned from my scanner (which I didn’t OCR, because I’m too busy or didn’t realize I should), and you store my email in your email manage-ment software: the software will automatically OCR the PDF for you.
This will not only save you hours every month, but will ensure that the PDF’s you receive and save are indexed and searchable. Email manage-ment nirvana.
CLOSING THE LOOP
If you and your firm are struggling to stay on top of matter-related emails: You’re not
alone. And there’s software made just for law firms that help you do it. We recom-
mend you at least evaluate one or two document and email management platforms.
Your firm’s productivity depends on it.
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MORE INFORMATION
For more information on cloud software
for law firms, please contact us:
Uptime Legal Systems
7500 Flying Cloud Drive
Suite 640
Eden Prairie, MN 55344
888-878-4632
https://UptimeLegal.com