Document Management For Law Firms
Tuesday, May 15, 2012 at 1:13PM
One of the biggest problems in law firms, especially contingency fee plaintiff firms, is how to handle documents. Most small to midsize law firms use a local server to host all of their documents and then the lawyers, paralegals and rest of the staff know how to navigate to the folder from their computer to save documents.
The legal world is 10 years behind the rest of the industries when it comes to technology in the law firm. As a result, legal technology specialists will recommend programs and applications for managing documents that are difficult to set up and manage. For example, the AmericanBar recommends netdocuments as a document management solution.
The best document management solutions for law firms are the same document management solutions that have evolved in other industries: GoogleDrive, Box.com and Dropbox. All three of these document management solutions allow law firms to continue to manage documents as it always has, without requiring attorneys to learn how to use complex document management systems. The syncing technology allows law firms to download a single folder onto a local server which everything is saved in. This folder syncs up to the cloud automatically.
Sharing using GoogleDocs, Dropbox and Box is also way more robust than applications like netdocuments. Staff in law firms can easily make certain documents public or share documents with clients. Law firms can create shared folders and then whenever a document is added to the folder the client is automatically notified of the update in the case or the document can automatically be embeded into the law firms website through the use of a widget. This is all very easy to set up and implement, as our employment law firm has implemented these systems without the help of any coders or programmers.
