Due to the number of documents legal cases generate, one of the most important aspects of running a successful legal practice is to have a secure and easily accessible content management system.
But Legacy ECMs, are deemed to be no longer fit for purpose and have been proven to slow businesses down in this ever-increasing digital world.
To stay ahead, and with more people working from home, it is advisable to modernize your firm so that your lawyers can securely work from anywhere, at any time and with anyone whilst adhering to the highest security and governance controls. SharePoint Online allows you to do just that. This cloud-based system with state-of-the-art security allows collaboration between co-workers and increases productivity with metadata tagging. So, all you need to bring to the table is legal your prowess.
Not convinced yet? Here are five reasons SharePoint Online can help your firm today.
1. Internal file organization
Many legacy ECMs are a nightmare to navigate. Documents are easily lost or difficult to find. Busy legal professionals do not have the time to search through millions of files to find the one that cracks the case.
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iManage to SharePoint migration success story #1
J. Sagar Associates (JSA), a leading Indian law firm providing legal services to Fortune 500 companies, had over 1 million content items spread across a complex iManage Worksite deployment. Plus, a high volume of un-filed documents on individual users machines due to the constraints of device-based iManage licensing.
After successfully migrating to SharePoint Online with the support of Proventeq and Migration Accelerator, JSA can easily retrieve and store internal and case-related documents. SharePoint tags and metadata help JSA's teams efficiently store documents whilst streamlining the search and retrieval of them. This also enables them to filter documents by a range of criteria, such as document type, and via unlimited custom tags or properties, such as author and date.
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Not only does SharePoint Online help classify content, but customizable Team Sites allows legal teams to create sites for specific processes like depositions, motions or witness files. All these documents can be explored, moved and shared between colleagues, thanks to SharePoint Online's handy search tool. So you won't lose files.
2. Collaboration and sharing
The growing complexity of legal work is often cross-practice and multijurisdictional. Meaning lawyers increasingly need to collaborate across expertise, organizational, and location boundaries.
SharePoint Online allows legal professionals to efficiently handle caseloads as lawyers can quickly edit, review, and amend documents on the go. The real-time co-authoring function allows multiple users to collaborate on a single agreement, contract or other legal documents simultaneously.
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iManage to SharePoint migration success story #2
McAllister Olivarius, a transatlantic law firm that specialises in discrimination claims and corporate law, was operating on an iManage Worksite system. Managing content from four separate divisions was beginning to limit them, so they decided they needed a more structured and inclusive online environment. They chose SharePoint Online for its collaborative features and ability to create a complete content services platform for the practice.
With SharePoint Online, McAllister Olivarius can now flexibly and remotely collaborate with associates and co-councils, no matter where they are.
“Working with Proventeq allowed us to figure out all of the different mechanics of how to migrate and restructure our data. They allowed us to have a clean break and start working immediately in the new system.”
Honza Červenka, Internal Project Lead - McAllister Olivarius
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3. Security
In February 2021, Campbell Conroy & O'Neil – a US law firm serving as trial counsel in high stakes, complex litigation for leading global brands such as Ford, Boeing and Exxon - were hacked in a ransomware attack.
The law firm said attackers might have accessed clients Social Security numbers, passport numbers, payment card information, medical information and biometric data.
Law firms like Campbell Conroy & O’Neil regularly deal with highly sensitive and confidential information, which of course needs to be protected from security threats (both internal and external) but still needs to be easily accessible to the relevant team.
SharePoint Online allows this by enabling easy-to-set permissions for shared documents that can be further supported by enabling Azure Information Protection. Individual documents are protected, such as contract and business deal information, from being accessed by unauthorised users. Only the correct legal practitioners working on relevant elements of the case can open the document. All of this is controlled and managed by a single admin portal for ease of use.
Furthermore, SharePoint Online employs some of the most complex global data protection regulations which protect confidential information from external cyber threats. The security in place deflects malware, bugs, spam, phishing attacks and many more – without you having to lift a finger.
