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The plinth of firm efficiency
A good document management system is a must-have for law firms – it represents security for the primary output of a practice. However, the document management technological landscape has altered radically in recent years, with web-based technologies opening a path to efficiencies only previously dreamed of. David Hovenden reports
Martin Telfer, director, technology, Minter Ellison says “documents are to lawyers what cars are to Holden”.
As a consequence for legal practices, a good document management system (DMS) delivers the security of the primary work product. This is the overriding business strategy that has resulted in the global legal market setting the agenda for what DMSs look like and the functionality they possess.
Whenever you delve into anything technological, a standard set of conversations emerges: pace of change, convergence, consolidation and a constant yearning for the next ‘killer app’ – and document management is no exception. An offshoot of these common themes is that ‘document management’ has become something of a loose term.
Lionel Bird, IT director with Ebsworth & Ebsworth, believes there are now two major categories of document management: traditional document management systems that have been primarily driven by law firms and professional services firms over the past 10 years, and content management which, he says, has in recent years been the area on which everybody has been focusing.
“The interesting thing is that the content management solutions providers have come at it from a different angle to the traditional document management providers,” Bird says. “What’s important in document management is just the pure tracking of documents. The ability to profile a document, to track versions, to be able to conduct an audit trail and see who opened a document and altered it, to be able to check documents in and out of the system.
“However, content management has developed from a workflow angle – to enable the smooth transition of web-based publications.”
According to Colin McRae, manager of information technology at Acuiti Legal, document management at that firm “is a combination of version control and a precedent search engine. Although there is some scope for it in litigation support and records management, both of those areas are handled by other database engines such as Domino and MS Access.”
David Stevens, national IT manager with Gadens Lawyers sees document management in a much broader sense. He points to the firm’s litigation support system as very much part of its DMS.
Utilising an internally developed database system, Gadens manages all of the documents the firm has for large cases. A large case can have up to 26,000 documents, which in hard copy looks like several rooms full of ring binders. Now, the firm scans and indexes all documents relating to a case. “If we’re giving [such documents] to somebody it sits on three CDs as opposed to in six rooms,” says Stevens.
“Our lawyers can search and work on documents from the PCs, rather than walking around thumbing through hard copy. They can also prioritise and make notes,” he adds.
A practical consideration of such a system is the amount of money a client saves purely in photocopying expenses. “If you start copying 26,000 documents, you’re talking thousands and thousands of dollars – especially when you need to give out lots of copies,” Stevens says.
A DMS is really about connecting people with documents, says Rod Pails, national knowledge management director with Deacons. “It’s about how we help people in a law firm to find and share information and knowledge quickly. If you manage your documents well, there’s a lot of information and a lot of knowledge in documents.”
Pails also points to the difference between information and knowledge. “Knowledge is the know-how behind a document. Knowledge management is about managing the know-how and to do that you need a brilliant DMS.
“If you’re talking about connecting people to documents, even if you’ve got a great DMS, you can’t just rely on your DMS to get people connected to documents. You’ve got to have multiple methods to get information to people. People learn in different ways and work in different ways.
Pails adds that Deacons also has a strong connection between the firm’s DMS and its intranet. “We have lists of really useful documents that are automatically updated. The point is that we use a variety of media to get documents to people and it’s all driven by our DMS.”
One of the most essential elements for a DMS is that it’s easy to use from an end-user perspective, says Pails. He also insists that it’s critical for a DMS to be fast: “Clunky DMSs lead to a lack of confidence and people reverting to hard copy documents.”
McRae says that “Search capabilities, coupled with folder/category management, make it easier for the lawyers to locate precedents/templates to produce documents or to locate an existing document when a client calls with a query. This means that documents can be produced for clients with a reduced turnaround time and should also result in a lower cost to the client. The latter hopefully has a knock-on effect in bringing more work into the firm.”
Lawyers at Acuiti are most enamoured with the firm’s DMS’ ability to personalise their favourite documents or categories, McRae says. “Whilst every precedent manager would love to be able to categorise every document in a standard acceptable to every lawyer, this is not always possible. Lawyers can then base their favourites on what has been provided, then add a few extras in that may only be pertinent to themselves.”
There have been significant developments on two fronts in recent years that have delivered real benefits for lawyers, McRae continues. “With the advent of web-based technologies, the DMS vendors have redeveloped their platforms so that there are more web-enabled DMSs on the market than before. Partly in parallel to this, the introduction of three-tier database access to the DMS engines means that the products have become less reliant on desktop processing power, moving it back to a centralised server system.
“This naturally means that hardware costs on the client side are reduced without any loss of functionality or speed. It also opens the platforms up to easier access via Thin Client systems,” says McRae.
Document management systems now need to be widely used globally, requiring them to integrate with web-based systems and to be able to capture emails – an enormous task.
Integration with email, “so we can file those in the same repository and move towards electronic matter files”, is what Telfer sees as the biggest development yet to happen, alongside the continued web-enabling of systems to allow secure access remotely. He also points to the broader content management of all digital assets and integration with hierarchical storage management as likely and necessary future trends.
Like Telfer, Bird points to matter-centric computing as one of the real advantages that the DMS of the future could deliver. “A lawyer should be able to go to one place and type in a matter number and then be able to see all material that relates to that matter,” Bird says. “All documents, and the versioning of those documents, all relevant emails related to that matter and so on. It means that they are able to respond more intelligently to the client because all the relevant information is at their fingertips. In a sense, it is a customer relationship management solution.”
Ideally, one solution would take care of a law firm’s needs, but given that you accept that it’s not currently possible, practical or affordable, integration is the next best thing. “J2EE and microsoft.net currently represent the global development environment standards, and any product that is not built on one of these two, you’ve really bought a proprietary system that doesn’t have much of a future,” says Bird.
“The biggest change with DMSs over the next few years,” says McRae, “will be better integration with other systems to help firms gain a better overall picture of their clients. Most DMS only have marginal hooks in to practice management systems, forcing lawyers and support staff to instigate multiple searches for client data. With the increasing popularity of CRM systems, DMS and practice management systems – coupled with XML/J2EE technologies – will become interlinked so that there is a single interface for those technologies.”
In the future, DMSs may start incorporating tracking technologies similar to that successfully employed by Amazon.com. Just as online book shoppers are told they might also like to consider another book, DMS systems of the future could let lawyers accessing a document know that other lawyers who accessed it also found certain other documents of use.
“It’s getting away from boring old document management and connecting people with common knowledge interests,” says Pails. Something that is particularly useful when firms are spread out across multiple cities.
Stevens and McRae both make the final point that while almost all of the technology adopted by firms is driven by client demand, the firms are very cautious about adopting the latest and greatest technology just because it’s there. “There needs to be a clearly defined cost benefit for our clients before we will adopt a technology,” says Stevens.
“If we have an existing system and it works well, if there is not a good reason to upgrade it, then why do so? Let’s maximise the investment we have made – the capital investment, the training investment, and as long as it talks to whatever else we’re doing, then we’re happy as long as it delivers whatever the client needs.”
“As always, ROI is the biggest driver,” concludes McRae. “Whilst there are definite advantages of having these disparate systems brought together, there has to be serious consideration made as to whether the outlay will bring immediate financial return to firms. Improving efficiencies and driving down turnaround times will also drive down income. Unless organisations have a set plan to re-market themselves to fill that income loss, the new technology will flounder before it can get off the ground.”
27-Aug-2003
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bird , document management , lawyers , documents , law firms , management systems , content management
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