Customer Stories
Ambrose Lazarow achieves large law stature using best-in-class technology with iManage
Boutique M&A law firm prioritizes gold-standard document management to deliver high-value services with professional excellence
When Jonathan Lazarow and his co-founder launched Ambrose Lazarow, a boutique M&A and corporate law firm, they made an unconventional decision: invest in iManage before even implementing a billing system. Having experienced the chaos of document management without proper systems at a previous firm — where finding documents could take forever and version control was nearly impossible — Lazarow knew that to compete for business nationally required world-class technology. Today, the six-person firm partners seamlessly with an AmLaw 50 firm, delivers sophisticated deal room capabilities to clients at minimal cost, and maintains the same rigorous processes used by international law firms. For Lazarow, the impact of having the right foundation goes beyond efficiency gains; it delivers better outcomes. Adopting the iManage platform at its founding enables this boutique firm to operate at a level typically reserved for much larger firms.
The challenge
Experience is the best teacher
Cofounding partner Jonathan Lazarow had seen both sides of the document management divide. At a national law firm early in his legal career, iManage was simply how work got done — the gold standard he barely thought about. Then he joined a boutique firm using Dropbox for document management, and the contrast was stark.
"Version control was really difficult in the Dropbox environment,” remembers Lazarow. He said associates working on deals kept single versions because they weren't comparing documents properly. Each revision required saving a completely new file with a version number in the filename — Asset Purchase Agreement v1, then v2, then v3.
“We were always losing the thread,” he adds. “I couldn’t see when an associate was in a document or what changes they were making. Managing deal documents across work streams was very challenging."
When a firm handles middle-market M&A deals worth tens of millions of dollars, proper systems are needed to mitigate risk. “You can’t have documents stored on people's desktops or files getting into the wrong folders,” says Lazarow.
Lazarow also recalls a trying four months when he and some other attorneys tried to use Microsoft SharePoint for legal work, but says issues with version control and document sharing made the platform "impossible — untenable." He notes that, "Once you've worked on iManage, SharePoint just doesn’t compare.”
As Lazarow and his partner prepared to launch Ambrose Lazarow, the lesson was clear: without proper document management, they couldn't deliver the quality their national clients expected. To put their best foot forward working with sophisticated firms and deal teams, the decision was simple: "I wasn't going to start a law firm without iManage."
Headquarters
Virginia, US
Industry
Legal
Products
Partner:
Livewire Technologies
Benefits
- Intuitive and user-friendly
- Signals professionalism & large law stature
- Facilitates collaboration with partner firm
- Gives a small team a competitive advantage
About partner
Founders Aaron Ambrose and Jonathan Lazarow have a shared sensibility when it comes to practicing the law — a dedication to clients, a mastery of jurisprudence, and a resolve to practice with integrity in everything they do. Ambrose Lazarow prides itself on being a long-term partner to help you in building, sustaining, and growing your business.
Technology doesn't make you a better business. It's a tool that allows you to build business processes. iManage allows us to implement best-in-class international law firm processes at a six-person boutique law firm.
Jonathan M. Lazarow, Partner, Ambrose Lazarow
The solution
Prioritize investment in the strongest foundation
Having prior experience with several different systems, Lazarow says he never seriously considered alternatives to iManage. He and his partners did their due diligence, however, and that included taking a close look at NetDocuments.
“It wasn't a close call for me,” Lazarow recalls. “NetDocuments wasn't the right solution to manage the complexity of our deals and would also have impacted our close collaboration with a specific AmLaw 50 partner firm. iManage was the obvious choice.”
That partnership made iManage even more essential to Ambrose Lazarow. In the firms’ frequent collaborations, everyone works in the same familiar environment using the same processes. “The seamless integration it enables between our firms makes sharing documents and deal flow far more successful for us," Lazarow remarks, explaining that it also made investing in iManage an even more deliberate choice.
"Rather than spending the money on a back-end timekeeping system or billing system, we spent it on iManage," says Lazarow. "iManage was our number one and very first purchase from administrative and technical support, after the computers and the office."
Implementation partner Livewire Technologies handled the migration of approximately 300,000 documents to the iManage platform . Because their previous firm had also used iManage, the transfer was straightforward — requiring mainly file extension updates and adjustments to naming conventions. Livewire performed so well that Ambrose Lazarow retained them as their ongoing IT resource provider.
The firm implemented a full complement of iManage solutions, including iManage Work 10 as the DMS and iManage Share to support deal room collaboration. They also use iManage Drive as a secure way to store, search, and access files from anywhere, even offline. Drive looks and feels like a shared network drive, making it a breeze to use, and the iManage mobile app gives attorneys quick access to their deals on their iPads and iPhones.
These mobile capabilities have proven vital. Lazarow uses the mobile app on his devices extensively while traveling. "iManage Mobility allows me to take my work with me anywhere and interact at any time," he says. "It gives me a lot more freedom.” His partners and associates are fans, as well.
In addition to mobile access, Lazarow says that the iManage platform is so deeply integrated with Microsoft 365 that he doesn’t have to give it a second thought. In Outlook, for example, attorneys browse client matters in iManage without ever leaving their email. "The iManage workspace is literally right there in Outlook. It just makes life so easy," he notes.
The system recognizes patterns, too. “When an email arrives with an attachment,” says Lazarow, “iManage Work automatically identifies the matter it belongs to, and we can quickly save it as a new version of an existing document. It is both intuitive and user-friendly."
Business outcomes
Professional excellence made possible by best-in-class systems and processes
"Technology doesn't make you a better business," Lazarow observes. "It's a tool that allows you to build business processes. iManage allows us to implement best-in-class international law firm processes at a six-person boutique law firm."
Ambrose Lazarow achieved an enviable 100 percent adoption rate from day one. He says everyone uses iManage daily, and when attorneys from larger firms join Ambrose Lazarow, they don't skip a beat. "They don't need to change their processes; they fit right in, because all of our technology is the same," Lazarow says. "No loss in delivery of services, no loss in quality to clients."
For Lazarow, the real value isn't measured in minutes, it's measured by results. "Efficiency isn’t the right metric,'" he explains. "It’s that you get a better outcome." And for Ambrose and Lazarow, the better outcome is professional excellence made possible by proper systems and processes.
He says superior version control is a critical benefit of using iManage. There is never a worry about which document is current or what changes were made. Email attachments save automatically as new versions. The system keeps everything organized and traceable. "You know you're working on the right documents. It's just cleaner to use, fewer mistakes are happening. You know you're going to get the right document every time."
Clients also benefit financially through the firm’s use of iManage Share to host deal rooms. This sophisticated capability minimizes client costs, which they appreciate. "Virtual data room fees are steep,” Lazarow explains, “and it’s the clients that pay them, so our capacity to provide that inexpensively gives us an edge." It’s also an advantage in that the firm maintains full control over who sees what, ensuring all parties — whether internal staff, clients, or external counsel — have the access that’s appropriate to their role.
It might seem like a small detail, but Lazarow says even the document ID numbers in iManage signal professionalism. "The iManage system identifier on documents immediately says that we're serious," Lazarow notes. “It's a subtle but meaningful credibility marker when working with sophisticated counterparties.”
Lazarow says many tech players won't even talk to you if you don't need 100 seats, but that wasn't iManage. “iManage was happy to work with us, and that means a lot to me."
"As a small firm, you have to be choosy about the technology that you invest in,” says Lazarow, “and my advice to businesses like ours is unequivocal: iManage is where you should put your money first."
