Customer Stories
Brazilian legal specialists deliver dynamic, modern litigation and arbitration on iManage Cloud
Forbes, Kozan, and Gasparetti Advogados empower staff with fast, secure, future-forward productivity from day one
The dispute resolution specialists who formed Forbes, Kozan, and Gasparetti Advogados are digital natives with a modern, dynamic approach to litigation and arbitration. They knew from the outset that they needed the right knowledge work platform to succeed.
By partnering with TOTVS, they were able to implement a tailored solution that integrated iManage Work 10 in the Cloud and iManage Threat Manager with the firm’s other essential systems. Today, FKG lawyers work efficiently and manage large volumes of data with ease in the iManage Cloud — which allows them to focus on delivering legal excellence and building stronger client relationships.
The business challenge
Launching a specialist firm with the right foundations
Forbes, Kozan, and Gasparetti Advogados (FKG) is a specialist law firm completely focused on dispute resolution in all its forms and for clients in many industry sectors. From the negotiation of contracts to the representation of clients in lawsuits and arbitrations, this highly specialized team of lawyers applies winning strategies to solve client problems with commitment, creativity, and technical precision.
“Our decades-long relationships are a key component to our success,” shares Marco Gasparetti, Partner at FKG. “By staying close to their businesses, we can offer the best legal advice and manage matters knowledgeably on their behalf.”
Litigation and arbitration are complex processes. That, and the longevity of many client relationships, results in an unusually high volume of documents per lawyer. FKG had 1,350,000 files to migrate, including 421,000 documents and 929,000 emails. Their data is also growing at a rate of about 160 GB per year, all of which must be stored and organized properly to find relevant insights quickly.
“When it comes to document management, we need to balance security and practicality. We don’t want to make saving documents complicated for staff, but we do need to assure clients their data is safe,” notes Raphael Burleigh, Partner at FKG.
Many of FKG’s attorneys are also digital natives; they want to move fast, and they want technology that helps them act quickly, whether they are filing documents or performing a search for relevant insights
Headquarters
São Paulo, Brazil
Industry
Legal
Products
Benefits
- Sets best practices from day one
- Supports speed and productivity
- Secures client and in-house data
- Simplifies complexity and compliance
About partner
TOTVS is a leading Brazilian software, services, and technology company. It serves more than 70,000 customers across 12 sectors and has three focus areas: enhancing business performance, implementing management systems, and providing fintech solutions.
We have regular meetings to share tips on how to be more productive. Finding the right information can be the difference between winning or losing a case, and with iManage we can search decades of documents to quickly find what we need.
Raphael Burleigh, Partner, Forbes Kozan, and Gasparetti Advogados
The solution
Building a custom knowledge work platform with TOTVS
FKG worked with Brazilian IT services and consulting partner, TOTVS, to set up their iManage implementation. As they evaluated solutions on the market, they looked for reliability, security, and the ability to integrate document management with billing, invoicing, timesheet, and practice asset management systems.
“We’ve been working with TOTVS for many years and are very happy with the support,” says Gasparetti. “When we went to market it was a no-brainer to continue our partnership with TOTVS and use iManage. The iManage platform integrates well with our systems and has great functionality.”
TOTVS built a custom platform to FKG’s exacting requirements, including iManage Work 10 in the Cloud for document management and iManage Threat Manager to monitor user behavior. The system also integrates with Microsoft Outlook and OneDrive. TOTVS automated the firm’s email workflows to ensure that they are automatically saved with the right case or matter and adhere to FKG’s data governance policies.
FKG lawyers rely on iManage Work 10 for research, using its powerful search capabilities to quickly locate historical documents and access the information they contain. The centralized iManage Cloud platform keeps information readily available so that clients can be informed as their cases evolve. When collaborating, lawyers send a link directly from iManage to securely share the appropriate documents with the client.
The team follows a standard process for maintaining version control, creating, reviewing, approving, and sharing draft petitions in iManage, where every change is tracked and versions can be compared. This establishes an audit trail for every amendment.
Partners track how people interact with documents using the email notifications and reports that iManage Threat Manager generates, so they can say with confidence that the firm has a highly engaged team of lawyers and support staff.
“iManage Threat Manager gives us an understanding of how our lawyers are using the platform,” remarks Burleigh. “If someone is acting outside the norm — saving significantly fewer documents than a colleague, for example — we can intervene to make sure they’re not saving any files locally.”
Business outcomes
Empowering attorneys to work at speed
FKG lawyers asked for a lightning-fast system with great functionality, and iManage more than meets their needs. While the platform enforces standard processes and consistency around document management, it also allows legal professionals flexibility in how they work. For example, some prefer to use the search tool to find insights within documents, while others know exactly which files they are looking for and can search for them by name.
“We have regular meetings to share tips on how to be more productive,” says Burleigh. “Finding the right information can be the difference between winning or losing a case, and with iManage we can search through decades of documents to quickly find what we need.”
Clients also trust FKG to keep their data secure and well-organized, knowing that the firm has a complete history of all their legal matters. “Clients don’t have to worry about keeping their data in order, they trust us to do it for them,” Gasparetti explains. “We also offer complete business continuity. When someone on the legal team moves on, another lawyer can seamlessly pick up the case because everything they need is in iManage.”
The firm can also pull reports to demonstrate compliance with data security requirements, which helped reassure clients during a high-profile media storm when a Brazilian company was targeted by cybercriminals.
“The beauty of iManage is that we can ensure security without overcomplicating matters,” adds Gasparetti. “We’ve invested in the most sophisticated knowledge work platform there is, and that gives us the competitive edge.”
Looking ahead
FKG has been giving clients exceptional service from day one with a fast, reliable platform, and they’re confident they can continue meeting client expectations in the years ahead.
“iManage is a platform for the future, and we know TOTVS will keep us up to date with the latest versions,” concludes Burleigh. “We’ve got everything we need to succeed for the foreseeable future.”
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