Fasken improves collaboration across the globe with seamless cloud adoption

Global law firm Fasken needed to swap their on-premises document management system (DMS) for a cloud-enabled platform to simplify collaboration, improve efficiency, augment security, and reduce the maintenance burden on its IT team. Modernizing its legacy iManage environment while implementing a personalized change management program, the firm embarked on a three-phase project over the course of 18 months. The secure, feature-rich platform empowers Fasken lawyers to work together more seamlessly.

The firm’s adoption of the iManage Cloud has already reduced its operational expenditures while laying the groundwork to leverage additional functionality and platform integrations in the future. The planned additions will improve collaboration between clients and lawyers, enforce advanced threat protection, and enable them to better synchronize workspaces and documents.

Fasken is a leading international law firm with more than 950 lawyers and ten offices on three continents, offering a full range of expertise across 26 practice areas. Clients rely on Fasken for practical and innovative legal services that employ results-driven strategies to solve the most complex business and litigation challenges.

The business challenge

Simplifying remote work on an international scale

With legal teams across the globe, it can be complicated to make sure everyone has fast access to the latest documents. Fasken lawyers working on the same case in different offices were accessing an on-premises DMS via a virtual private network, or VPN. But with increasing demand for remote working the firm saw the opportunity to move document management into the cloud and better support staff.

Ben Di Marco, the Chief Technology Officer at Fasken, highlights the inherent inflexibility of on-premises technology. He explains that ensuring systems are highly available, secure, well-maintained, and up-to-date demands considerable time and effort.

This challenge is compounded by the need to scale these systems in response to the firm’s continuous growth. Di Marco notes that his team was tasked with managing nearly 50 servers dedicated solely to document management.

The firm also wanted to enhance security by outsourcing system management and to take advantage of advancements in workplace technologies that are specifically designed to help lawyers be more efficient.

The solution

Moving a winner into the cloud

Fasken lawyers have been working in iManage for almost 15 years — and as Di Marco observes, “iManage has everything we want to offer our team. It’s the best solution on the market.”

The move to iManage Work 10 in the Cloud was done in three phases, starting with the move to iManage Work 10 (on-prem). The team then updated the folder structure to be more intuitive and to take advantage of core and flex folder functionality and applied governance to documents using iManage Records Manager. The final step was the move to iManage Work 10 in the Cloud.

“iManage Work 10 in the Cloud provides lawyers and business professionals with new functionality that makes their day-to-day work more efficient, such as the journaling feature that enables users to access an earlier copy of a saved document, or the document preview which allows you to easily copy text from a document without the risk of a manual editing error,” comments Andrea Alliston, Partner, Knowledge and Practice Innovation at Fasken.

Shortly after the move to iManage Work 10 in the Cloud, the firm integrated the platform with two of its other iManage applications — iManage Closing Folders and iManage Insight. Integration with iManage Closing Folders is an important part of Fasken’s implementation, as an award-winning mergers and acquisitions firm. The legal transaction management application makes it easier for lawyers and paralegals to move documents and automatically populates the necessary paperwork when a deal is closed — a time-consuming, error-prone task that was previously handled manually.

iManage Insight acts as a central repository for knowledge, collecting and categorizing resources to make them easy to find. “We work closely with individual practice groups on an ongoing basis to identify and collect the best documents to preserve in our knowledge bank for easy search and retrieval,” says Alliston.

Tailoring change management to the individual

Migrating to the iManage Cloud went smoothly, but not without a lot of planning and change management behind the scenes. The IT team spent a year preparing and running tests to make sure there would be zero impact on users when the new platform went live — and succeeded without a hitch, achieving the goal of business as usual.

For change management, Fasken mapped out the user journey carefully. “We took an individual approach to change management to help our lawyers and business professionals adapt to the new user experience with iManage Work 10,” explains Alliston.

An automated form prompted users to choose the best time and day to migrate. Users could choose between a live session and a recording, or they could even go it alone if they preferred. So they selected how they undertook the initial training — which was tailored for their role — on their own terms.

“The day after the migration, every member of staff was assigned an individual to contact if they needed support. Knowing help was available greatly improved user satisfaction and confidence, even though only 25 percent of our staff actually needed to reach out,” says Di Marco.

Another key to success was the use of WalkMe, a cloud-based digital adoption platform, embedded directly into the iManage environment to give lawyers and business professionals fast access to support when they needed it.

Business outcomes

Boosting productivity for lawyers and IT staff

Today, whether a Fasken lawyer is working as part of an international team or locally, they have seamless access to all the documents and emails they need to serve clients quickly and efficiently. This helps lawyers be more responsive and gives clients a better experience.

“iManage makes collaboration much easier. For our lawyers, they can easily access documents from any Fasken library, and the new folder structures make it faster to pinpoint the document’s location. For our clients, we can invite them into a closing room in iManage Closing Folders to give them controlled access to relevant documents while keeping company data secure,” says Alliston.

Moving to the cloud has freed up the IT team from mundane tasks to focus on more valuable activities. The support documentation and guided change management program Fasken conducted reduced the number of tickets being raised at the help desk.

But when someone does need support, agents know that everyone is using the same version on the same platform, and that makes resolving issues faster and easier.

“Updating to iManage Work 10 in the Cloud has reduced operational expenditure and delivered all the benefits of a managed service. The environment is secure, backed up, and we know we’re always on the latest version,” says Di Marco. “The advantages for the IT team are enormous, and the opportunity to quickly roll out the latest and best functionality for lawyers is brilliant. I sleep better at night knowing the system is always available and well supported.”

Looking ahead

Fasken already has plans to integrate more solutions with iManage and to move more processes onto the platform. IT is working on setting up the integration with Microsoft Teams, for one thing, which will allow lawyers to work more securely with client files within the safety of the iManage Cloud platform.

“In the future, we plan to explore the capabilities of iManage Threat Manager to enhance our advanced threat protection. Additionally, we are looking at using iManage Share to foster better collaboration between clients and lawyers, while also considering the benefits of iManage Drive for synchronizing workspaces and documents. Ultimately, our goal is to tailor iManage solutions to accommodate our lawyers’ preferred working methods,” concludes Di Marco.