Why the iManage and Microsoft partnership matters more than ever at Ignite 2026

I spend most of my time at the intersection of iManage and Microsoft, and the conversations that stick with me right now in legal and professional services technology aren’t about which AI model is fastest. They’re about trust — whether an organization’s knowledge work platform and its Microsoft estate can move together, under one set of controls, as AI becomes part of daily work. I’ll be having that conversation at Microsoft Ignite, running November 17–20, 2026 at the Moscone Center in San Francisco, where iManage will be exhibiting. Find us in the Hub at booth 1728.

The problem IT and compliance leaders keep raising

Every IT and compliance leader I talk with is wrestling with some version of the same problem, whether they sit inside a law firm, a financial services firm, or another professional services organization handling sensitive, regulated content. Microsoft 365 Copilot and the wider agent ecosystem are moving fast, and the business wants the productivity gains now. Client and matter content isn’t ordinary content, though. It carries ethical walls, information barriers, retention obligations, and audit requirements that go well beyond general-purpose governance. Microsoft’s security and compliance stack gives organizations a strong baseline, but the matter-level, need-to-know controls that law firms, financial services firms, and other regulated organizations rely on every day usually call for a purpose-built layer on top of it.

Roll out Copilot broadly and you risk AI touching content it shouldn’t. Hold it back and the organization loses the productivity case leadership was promised, while competitors who’ve solved the governance question pull ahead.

Why “better together” isn’t a slogan

This is where the iManage and Microsoft relationship actually delivers, and it’s why I wanted to anchor this piece around Ignite. iManage is the knowledge work platform for financial services, professional services, and corporate legal teams across any regulated industry managing their most sensitive content in Microsoft 365. Built natively into Outlook, Teams, Office, and Purview, and running exclusively on Azure, iManage keeps client and matter work governed with ethical walls, information barriers, and full audit. It now gives Copilot and Microsoft 365 Copilot Cowork secure access to that content through the iManage MCP Server, so the same controls apply whether the work happens in iManage, in Microsoft 365, or through Copilot itself.

For IT and innovation leaders, that distinction matters. The goal isn’t AI potential — it’s AI you can actually deploy at scale without a security exception process standing in the way. iManage supports more than 4,500 customers and over one million users across more than 80 countries, including 86 percent of the Global 100 law firms and 133 of the Fortune 500. Most of those organizations run on Microsoft 365 already, which is exactly the overlap we’re here to talk about at Ignite.

What’s new, and why it matters now

Our recent launch of the next-generation iManage platform is the clearest expression yet of what “better together” looks like in practice. Now generally available, the next-gen platform brings AI natively into the flow of work instead of asking people to leave it. Context-aware capabilities let teams query a single document or an entire matter, build chronologies, and run review against approved playbooks without switching tools.

Underpinning it is iManage Context Fabric™, the governed intelligence layer that connects documents, communications, parties, and relationships into the complete story of a matter, and extends into connected business systems too. It lets AI reason with real institutional context instead of guessing. Agent-optimized MCP means any MCP-connected AI tool, Copilot included, returns more relevant answers using fewer tokens, while every permission, ethical wall, and information barrier configured for that matter still applies to every AI action.

None of this requires migrating content or ripping out what’s already working. Administrators switch it on and apply the governance model they already run in iManage to how Microsoft 365 and Copilot interact with that content. Across a large share of the legal and professional services market, that’s a straightforward extension of infrastructure already in place.

What I want to talk about at Ignite

Ignite draws the people actually responsible for making enterprise AI work day to day: architects, IT decision-makers, and partners trying to move past pilots into scaled, governed deployment. That’s the audience iManage and Microsoft built this platform for, and the conversation I want to have with you in San Francisco.

If you’re an IT or innovation leader at a law firm, a financial services firm, or any other regulated organization, and you’re trying to work out how to give people the benefits of Copilot and agentic AI without losing control of your most sensitive content, come find me. I want to hear about the governance questions that are still open for you, and about the Copilot pilot that stalled because legal said no — that’s usually where the real conversation starts.

Find us at Ignite

iManage will be in the Hub at Microsoft Ignite 2026, November 17–20 in San Francisco. Find the team at booth 1728 to see the next-gen iManage platform running on Azure and connected into Microsoft 365 Copilot, or just to talk through what governed AI adoption looks like for your organization.

Register for Microsoft Ignite if you haven’t already, and read more on the next-gen iManage platform before you come find us. See you in San Francisco.