Small firms, big advantage
How to level the playing field by modernizing your document management strategy
The opportunity in numbers
A recent survey exposes the gaps between what corporate clients expect from the law firms they hire and reality.
Smaller firms can shine by offering what big firms lack: clarity on costs and processes, consistent matter updates, and responsive communication.
ACC/Everlaw survey
4%
of in-house legal teams said they were extremely satisfied with law firms' transparency into costs. 42% said they were "somewhat satisfied".
7%
of in-house legal teams were extremely satisfied with transparency in law firms’ processes. 45% said they were only somewhat satisfied.
76%
of in-house legal teams said they were satisfied with the quality and responsiveness of law firms’ communication. 24% said they were not.
70%
of in-house legal teams were satisfied with their collaboration on strategy. 30% said they were not.
72%
of respondents say upgraded tech would provide greater transparency on matter progress and status.
Table of contents
Chapter 1. Why law firms need a modern DMS
Limited tools limit future success
Chapter 2. One control point for better-organized information
Responsiveness is paramount to client satisfaction
Coming Soon:
Chapter 3. Collaborate from anywhere in real time
Chapter 4. Turn knowledge and expertise into collective strength
Chapter 5. Solve digital security and regulatory compliance challenges
Chapter 6. Sharpen your competitive edge and shape your future
Introduction
As clients seek more personalized and cost-effective legal services, smaller, regional, and boutique firms are experiencing an unexpected surge in popularity.Recent research bears it out:
- Legal work continues to move down-market to smaller firms as clients seek greater efficiency and better value-to-cost balance. (Thomson Reuters)
- Partners in smaller firms now practice in areas usually dominated by larger firms, such as commercial litigation and corporate law. (Above the Law/iManage)
- Competitive salaries in small firms are on the rise. (Above the Law/iManage)
How can you make the most of this trend and use it to spur maximum growth and profitability?
Small firms have a big advantage. You can deliver personalized client service with greater agility than larger firms by maximizing your efficiency, responsiveness, and productivity, while you minimize costs. This drives your competitive edge and increases your profit potential.
But the tools and processes matter. Document management tools significantly impact your firm’s responsiveness and cost-effectiveness if they don’t fully support the work your lawyers do — helping them organize, locate, share, and protect documents and emails. Inadequate tools can make it difficult to collaborate on or use past cases to help new clients, for example.
Documents chart your client relationships, from each matter’s intake to its last billable hour and closing. Each document is a snapshot of the attorney-client interaction, recording the lawyer’s analysis and insights, the client’s questions and concerns, and detailing final decisions, actions, and outcomes.
Imagine a world where you collaborate on legal documents in the same space you communicate. Documents, emails, and chats coexist, accessible from anywhere, anytime. There’s no need to download, upload, or switch between programs. And no more desktop jungle of apps that take forever to load and create distractions. Your team works together in real time, without version control headaches and with the complete picture always in easy reach.
A modern document and email management system (DMS) provides a highly secure environment for your data and client information. The DMS opens the door to unimpeded, real-time collaboration and organized information storage with the benefit of sophisticated document search and retrieval.
Your DMS yields access to a virtual library of contextualized legal expertise. This promotes knowledge sharing and collaboration among colleagues as it unlocks the full breadth of your accumulated experience to support future growth and profitability.
Chapter 1: Why law firms need a modern DMS
Why law firms need a modern DMS
Lawyers spend hours chasing down colleagues, searching repositories, and sifting through a maze of folders, emails, and chat logs to find the information they need to complete their daily tasks. They rarely find it fast enough to meet today’s client service standards, and juggling multiple versions of documents while trying to collaborate via email attachments just adds to the challenge. As work mobility expands in nearly every profession, fast, user-friendly remote access to documents has never been more critical. Clunky VPN access to a firm’s servers is a stark reminder of the limitations of outdated technologies when sluggish response times in high-stakes legal environments can lead to unacceptable results.
Limited tools limit future success
Most firms quickly outgrow the document management capabilities in their practice management solution, or PMS, which often lack features people need to excel in a competitive market. Search functions seldom return all the relevant results, leaving key information buried in overflowing inboxes, meeting notes, and misplaced files. This impedes your ability to collaborate effectively and hinders remote work, reducing your firm’s scope. Lawyers also need sophisticated and flexible document controls that ensure adherence to frequent regulation changes and include version control, audit trails, and secure storage to safeguard sensitive information. You can capitalize on your inherent advantage as a small firm by using an enterprise-grade DMS that is built for agility and scales with your growth. Raising the bar on responsiveness and effective collaboration sets your firm up for future success.
Chapter 2: One control point for better-organized information
How important is a fast response?
A slow response time was the top-rated reason for deciding against hiring a particular lawyer or firm. (Martindale Avvo)
47.6% of law firm customers listed responsiveness as a critical factor in choosing an attorney.
32% of respondents saw a red flag if a lawyer appeared too busy or overly stretched – an impression easily left by slow response times.
Responsiveness is paramount to client satisfaction
Firms achieve instant credibility and build trust by responding to a client’s inquiries quickly, with accurate information. And when your documents are centralized in one place, organized by matter, any member on the team can search past correspondence, agreements, and court documents to find the exact documents and emails they need and provide answers promptly. This is just the beginning of the benefits of a modern cloud DMS.
A user-friendly information hub with intuitive organization and information-sharing capabilities greets lawyers and staff. Everyone logs in to the same system, regardless of location or device, and all authorized users can access stored documents in real time.
Find information fast with advanced search options
Lawyers spend way too much of their workday hunting for information. In an outdated file system, searching document titles for a word or phrase is like looking for a needle in a haystack.
A modern DMS lets you build greater value into your documents by storing them with something called “metadata tags” which are a way to record relevant details with the document. You can add multiple metadata tags when you are generating or saving your documents and keep their treasure trove of information close at hand with an easy way to call them back later in a search.
The most modern DMS uses an automated process that can classify documents based on content, type, case, and other criteria, saving you an average of 3.5 minutes per document.
Refine your searches with granular filtering capabilities
Do you need to find all contracts drafted by a specific partner last year? Are you looking for all discovery requests sent to one defendant in a multi-party litigation?
Go straight to the relevant information and:
- Replicate past success. Fine-tune your search and quickly find the specific case and associated documents.
- Unearth hidden expertise. Search by case, matter, knowledge, and document types to identify relevant experts based on prior work.
- Find documents 7 minutes faster. Your filing structure can mirror your work habits for quicker, more intuitive searches. (Forrester Consulting)
Control who views and edits your documents.
With just a few clicks in a modern DMS, you can grant or restrict document access from read-only to full editing capabilities for individuals or groups. You can manage internal and external permissions, set up shared folders, and adjust as needed — all within the DMS.
At last — reliable, built-in version control
We mentioned the problem of juggling different document versions, which can be a real chore. Automated version control keeps an audit trail that tracks and preserves each action and modification and clearly identifies each new version. Nothing is ever lost or overwritten, and everyone can feel confident that they’re working with the most current information.
Accurate document versioning is important for time-sensitive matters and essential for dispute resolution. It is also a time-saver when collaborating.
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