Barnes & Thornburg prioritizes people and value in the iManage Cloud

Business outcomes

More productive. More secure.

It’s hard to attach a specific dollar amount to the return on investment of using iManage, but Holman says the value is clear in terms of efficiency and effectiveness. “Everything is organized in iManage. You can find it. You can put your hands on it. We can effectively manage it. It’s not squirreled away on a file share, a local hard drive, or on some other platform,” she explains. “That makes life a lot easier.”

Holman says the most significant benefit of using iManage is the foundation it provides. All sensitive client content is stored in one place and protected with tools like iManage Threat Manager and iManage Security Policy Manager.

In the current environment, remarks Holman, it’s hard to find a company, regardless of industry, for whom security and data security are not a priority. “Our clients trust us with their crown jewels, their data,” she adds, “and I treat that trust with the highest level of diligence and protection. Security is a hard line. If a tool doesn’t pass our security requirements, we stop right there. It’s non-negotiable.”

With Threat Manager, the IT team can see activity that’s outside the firm’s normal parameters and initiate a conversation to understand why. “Maybe we’ve got a big deal that’s closing, with a lot of documents to pull together and package up — that makes perfect sense,” says Holman. “But it’s important for us to follow up and have that conversation to be sure everything is operating the way it needs to be.”

Without iManage, Holman says everything would be more difficult. Data would be hard to find. Adhering to outside counsel guidelines and responding to things like legal holds and ethical walls would be a chore without Security Policy Manager.

“This is rare, but if someone left the firm, and the documents weren’t all safely tucked away in iManage, it would take a crazy amount of time to rebuild a complete client file,” muses Holman. “But with everybody working consistently in iManage, it’s efficient, it’s effective, and everything is in one place.” They can continue to provide services to their clients without a hitch.

Confidence: We can take iManage for granted

Holman says iManage works for a firm of any size because it’s scalable. And there’s continuing innovation happening, so the organization continues to be responsive to what firms need, what their clients need, and what their attorneys need.

Yes, she admits, there’s work to get that foundation in place. You need to be thoughtful about any kind of implementation in how you set it up and configure it. You need to put a lot of thought into how people work. Mind the details. But once it’s in place, she says, you don’t have to focus on the plumbing. It came with the house, and it just works. 

“It would be harder for teams to work together without iManage,” says Holman. ”If someone needed expertise from another area, everybody would be emailing documents back and forth, like the old days. But if you’ve got that foundation in place, you can be focused on more important things.”

“The integrated iManage Cloud platform allows our attorneys to think about what matters: the work they do for our clients,” says Holman.

“I’m proud that we can take iManage for granted. It’s core to our processes, how our attorneys work, and how we support them. It’s fundamental to how we work, and we don’t have to think about it. I’m not battling people every day to put their documents in the DMS. iManage is there, and people use it, and I think that’s really great,” concludes Holman.

Looking ahead

As a firm, B&T is actively exploring AI but taking a thoughtful approach. Protecting data is step one in the process. “We know AI is coming. From a software solutions perspective. I am really interested in the iManage options and exploring how we can use them to our best advantage.”