Benefits of Document Management

Document Management System software is the ‘killer-app’ of the modern law firm. We have completed the move to computer based accounting, docketing and billing. Completed document creation and calendaring. Completed email and messaging using technology. What do we do with all the electronic bits of data and documents we have created? Where are the easy to use electronic filing cabinets?

Over the years, there has been a definite increase in the use of technology within the legal industry. Software applications are being used in all aspects of law from trial presentation to dealing with the daunting task of document management. Technology has significantly affected the methods of communication over the years as correspondence has transitioned from paper letters and documents in the postal mail through conventional faxes and courier mail to digital documents attached to emails. This will undeniably only increase in the years to come as we see the introduction of PDA’s becoming an ever more popular component of the typical business infrastructure. Traditionally a piece of mail is delivered through the door and the document is placed in a file and stored in a cabinet within the firm. As technology has brought us to a world of digital documents, the approach should remain the same in that an email with its attachments should be placed in a file and then stored in a cabinet on your computer, in contrast to a physical location within the office. We have come across a common approach without the use of third party software that we will discuss further, which has some shortcomings.

This approach to document management is outlining a folder structure in a server based environment that has a folder for each respective client. These folders are located on a shared resource that all users have access to upload and download firm wide. Whether the documents are stored under the client name or case name this approach facilitates a breakdown of the documents based on a certain criteria which allows the end users to find them quickly. Additionally, firms can break down documents into further sub-categories such as pleadings, correspondence and research which allows for better organization of the firm. Documents generated in the office are stored in these folders digitally as well as incoming emails with attachments. This approach is the most intuitive and works wonders toward helping a firm keep organized. There are several limitations to this approach but one of the most obvious limitations is the fact that when an attachment is saved to a folder the association between the document and the email is sacrificed. Alternatively with a few additional steps the email can be saved to the folder structure but this approach prevents the attachment from being a part of the document store and is only accessible through opening the email. Another widely used approach is creating folders in Outlook and saving client emails to these folders but this strategy obviously separates incoming correspondence via email from other digital documents that have not been processed by email such as faxes, drafts, scanned documents and printed correspondence for courier mail. This divide between documents is not a feasible solution as users have to assume where a specific document may be located and even more problematic is the fact that the document may only be accessible to the specific user and not shared firm wide.

There are many software applications that provide an array of benefits over the conventional windows folder structure approach. Programs like Worldox, Netdocs, DocsOpen and Interwoven concentrate on document management whereas practice management applications like Time Matters have a built-in document management system. Each one can be used to ease the task of document management. The primary function of any Document Management application is to facilitate an automated way to save documents to a specific folder with as little human intervention as possible. Worldox, for example, intercepts any file being saved to the computer and prompts the user to choose a profile and description that automatically saves the document to the correct folder and filename on the network. Relying on users to manually save these files to the correct location on the network and to use an intuitive filename works with reliable staff but more and more firms end up in situations where they have to open several documents before they find the intended document due to obscure file names . When a firm uses a document management application, this facilitates a standardization that provides an extra level of uniform organization firm wide. The ability to locate a document quickly leads to major cost savings as dealing with unsearchable paper files is inefficient and searching for your digital files without success is also a significant contributor to unbillable time.

Some of the more feature specific benefits of Document Management systems are text indexing, security and version control. Text indexing constantly adds the words contained in new documents to a database that can be searched effortlessly to find a specific word throughout the document store. I have always been under the impression that if the folder and file naming convention is intuitive enough a firm should not need to search the entire database for a specific word but in cases of a conflict search this feature is priceless. The added security that document management systems offer is also worth mentioning as relying on windows methods of password protecting files has its limitations of poor passwords and accidentally misplacing the passwords. Whereas any document management system worth its weight in salt provides layers of security to documents based on a pre-determined specification that can be based on administrative rights, department rights or any rights the firm specifies. Security features can also be used to block access to a document that is currently being used by another user so that simultaneous changes are not made to any document firm wide. Another feature that document management systems perform effortlessly that is difficult to do with the conventional folder structure approach is version control. Traditionally firms rename documents in numerical order to maintain a system of version control and lay in their initials to indicate who made the most recent revisions. This obviously is far from ideal as the onus is on the user to rename the document each time, and as mentioned before, any approach that relies extensively on the user without automation always leads to issues in the long run. The few document management systems we recommend such as Worldox, Time Matters and Net Documents simplify version control as they store the previous versions in memory but make available the most recent version and automatically show which user made the most recent changes. If a user requires version ten of a document they can access this with a few mouse clicks. Another reason why this approach is so beneficial is that if a firm saves all the existing drafts of a document in the regular document store you can imagine the clutter this would create after a few months. There would have to be someone with a detailed knowledge of the documents to go through and clean up the document store every so often so that the final documents are what are retained over time. Needless to say any good document management system should offer a reliable method to backup and easily restore your document database in case of a fire, server meltdown, flood or any disaster.

DOCUMENT MANGEMENT SOFTWARE ENABLES

- Cost Saving through faster and more efficient access to documents

- Text indexing

- Uniform document structure

- File naming convention firm wide

- Increase Security

- Version control

- Disaster recovery

Open your web browser today and start investigating Document Management Systems. The three we refer to above are good starting places.

- Worldox - www.worldox.com

- NetDocs - www.netdocuments.com

- TimeMatters – www.timematters.com