Law firms in 2022 are faced with new and complex challenges to remain efficient, profitable and compliant. With flexible working, more stringent regulation and greater expectations in regards to collaboration and transparency from clients, firms are placing greater importance on legal technology to manage and find a competitive advantage.
Document management is a tool that can provide a true competitive advantage whilst addressing those challenges. A cloud-based document management system has the power to keep your digital filing in one place, but easily within reach to both access and add to.
No doubt the demand for legal-specific document management stems from the proliferation of free, generic systems with one-size fits all designs—think Google Drive and Dropbox. While such solutions may work for small businesses, they lack the powerful features needed to meet the challenges of corporate law departments.
There are several benefits that a legal-specific document management system can offer firms, including:
1. Superior security
Legal-specific document management provides stringent protocols to automatically enforce security policies and measures not found in generic, consumer-grade systems. NetDocuments
offers three layers of customer-managed encryption, the creation of ethical walls and setting multiple data prevention policies for granular control of user actions.
For the level of security legal departments require, a consumer-grade, generic system is no match for a legal DMS.
2. Stricter governance
When it comes to security and governance, the stakes couldn’t be higher. Anything less than comprehensive security and governance tools puts an organisation at risk of exfiltration, lawsuits, massive fines and a tarnished reputation.
Though systems vary, a trustworthy legal-centric DMS should provide stringent user controls with reporting and audit trails. Generic systems, on the other hand, provide minimal security and compliance measures.
Minimising the risk of exfiltration, malware infestations and enormous monetary fines present a compelling argument for legal-centric document management.
3. Streamlined collaboration
A mature legal DMS facilitates its own adoption. For instance, NetDocuments includes matter-specific workspaces configurable to the department’s existing workflow. Change tracking and version histories are more comprehensive and are easier to use. Advanced version control allows the firms to distinguish between versions submitted to external and internal stakeholders.
Secure, around-the-clock remote access must be available across a wide range of devices with two-way file syncing. And when it comes to scalability, it must be seamless for larger or growing corporations.
With legal-centric document management, you can greatly enhance the user experience while instituting more stringent, behind-the-scenes control.
4. Matter-specific with advanced search
Managing hundreds of thousands of documents, each with a different level of sensitivity, among an army of stakeholders can be daunting at best. An organisation’s document storage conventions may differ between departments and individual users. Add limited search capabilities into the mix and document retrieval for an in-house legal team is more than a costly waste of time—rather, it puts the team at risk of missing key information germane to a given matter.
A worthwhile legal document management system offers matter-centric document storage with advanced search capabilities plus indexing and metadata for rapid document location and access.
5. Email management
With nearly 125 billion business emails sent and received daily, efficient email management becomes imperative for legal teams. Mismanaged emails can be disastrous in case of audits and security breaches.
A full-featured legal document management system will offer an accompanying email management system. Some may even include the use of artificial intelligence so emails are filed according to company policies on compliance, retention and destruction. An integrated email system also sequesters privileged information from general content.
About NetDocuments
You can trust NetDocuments to remove the barriers to efficient document management and transform your documents into an efficiency engine for collaboration, productivity, and growth – without limitations or restrictions.
With NetDocuments you get market-leading features in a document management solution, including:
- 24/7 access from anywhere
- Security and compliance through the Cloud
- Business transparency with NetDocuments Analytics
- Customisable flexibility with purpose-built add-ons
- Scalability through open APIs and integrations with multiple applications
As a NetDocuments worldwide Platinum Partner, Advanced are accredited to deliver, train, and support NetDocuments. As a first step, we will advise and support you in selecting the document management functions that can deliver exactly what you need.
Following implementation, our training team can deliver tailored onsite, remote, or online training sessions to ensure smooth user adoption. And you will always have access to our ISO-accredited support team who are available 24/7/365 to ensure on-going ease and efficiency.