What? Why? How? The Ultimate Guide for Legal Document Management
By PracticeLeagueDecember, 2020
Modern Law firm practice necessarily involves a wide range of functions, involving a significant amount of paperwork and documentation. Whether relating to matter-centric information, transactional practices, having a robust DMS platform ensures efficient streamlining of document storage, access, and retrieval.
Legal document management software is just about this. Documents that were once managed physically or/and manually is now replaced with document automation service used on a template basis or curated to suit the organization's needs. To define further, we may start by comparing it with the legacy processes that enabled storing documents on a hard drive and shared with a shared server drive. The application of cloud-based storage such as Dropbox or Google drive comes into a picture, which enabled saving documents to retrieve for later use. However, none of the above allows the end-users to do anything other than viewing or making necessary changes.
Introducing, DMS into the functioning of law firms is in a way, a long-time coming. As we move on, we understand the application, the viability, and the overall efficiency of the system, which in a way can make a quick turnaround to things (and, of course, the manner) in which workflow processes have changed over the time.
Understanding What Document Management System Can Do to Streamline Law Firm Functions
The Legal Document Management System is designed for the modern law firm operations to simplify and bring efficiency to document management processes. It enables:
Complete automation and workflow for end-users to access, retrieve and store documents with matter centric software
Works as an advanced management system for disaster recovery of documents, integrating data silos such as contracts, complaints, and compliances
The DMS integrates a host of features and functionalities for matter-centric operations, efficient email management, document tagging, and profiling that enable users to store, access, and retrieve documents easily to save emails directly to a matter fluidly.
DMS: All the More Relevant for Law Firm Functions
Since law firms work with all kinds of documents for contracts, pleadings, case papers, finding the relevant document, and storing them securely by profiling appropriately can remove the bottlenecks in the overall workflow processes. Categorizing documents and bridging inadequacies by taxonomy processes is a method used to identify and access the relevant document at the click of a button. This goes to explain why a robust DMS is vital and necessary for law firm functioning. Making it a part of the daily functioning is an effective solution to reduce high volume/low-value workload in the office. Besides, teams get to collaborate overwork and access documents from anywhere and everywhere, this is a key takeaway too.
DMS: For Enterprise-related Legal Functions
Typically, Document Management System is designed to benefit the law firms by providing them the right platform to manage, organize and docket all documents used for litigation, transaction, or for referral purposes. DMS for Enterprises are pretty much designed on the same lines as well, which is integrated well within the ELM platform. There are a host of features designed with security in access policies, document tagging, email notifications, and automated alerts. Evidently, the key highlights of a Document management system is also the key differentiator from the legacy document storage systems, in a way as it provides for a built-in organizational system for documents, as well as a host of features that includes document versioning, audit trails to track user access.
The Key Highlights For Document Management System Includes:
Automated Document Version Management: The feature allows its users to view, restore, compare the previous documents and every version that it has gone through
Secure Centralized Document Storage: Acts like a repository for the safe and secure storage of documents that also allows users to access and make requisite changes to them
Index and Search: Enables users to search and retrieve documents by using the right keywords and clauses.
Document Tagging: The user-friendly tool, DMS for law firms enables users to access files pertaining to summons, motions, complaints; in other words, all documents of concern for in-house legal departments.
Automatic OCR: The functions enable the conversion of documents and images from PDF files to text-enabled documents. As a result, all documents are automatically indexed for future use in any area of legal practice.
Scan and Fax Integration: Self-explanatory as it is, the DMS can be integrated with external applications with Scan and Fax integration.
E-signature Platform: What takes the DMS to the next level is the ability to execute living documents seamlessly with e-signature compliance.
The ability to store and manage documents efficiently with the RazorLex and RazorCube platform by PracticeLeague has brought in some notable changes to the manner in which document organization was carried out with legacy systems in play. The simple cloud storage has made it possible for lawyers to access and retrieve documents securely as much as it is created a platform to store documents elsewhere in the cloud seamlessly. To wrap up, the legacy systems in all its shortcomings, have been replaced with the cloud, thereby providing a higher degree of security, accessibility, yet a higher level of visibility.
“PracticeLeague offers a unified and an integrated modern legal technology ecosystem that automates and streamlines the complete legal operations. Adopted by several legal departments across the globe, this secure Enterprise Legal Management is designed to enable seamless collaboration across business entities, stakeholders & technology systems to boost efficiency, visibility & control.”
