Huff, Powell & Bailey saves hours every week with iManage

Huff, Powell & Bailey is the leading law firm for medical malpractice, long-term care, and insurance defense in Georgia and the Carolinas. With only limited content search capabilities, the growing legal teams were unable to make the best use of knowledge gained in previous cases. Deployed in the iManage Cloud, iManage Work allows legal teams to save and rapidly uncover contextually relevant content, expertise, best practices, and insights. They both save time and ensure knowledge is easily accessible while the small IT team can focus its limited resources away from managing servers to more innovative tasks.

Civil litigation firm Huff, Powell & Bailey helps people who help people. When hospitals, doctors, nurses, or other care providers are served with a medical malpractice lawsuit, they engage their malpractice insurance company. Huff, Powell & Bailey then represent the insurance company.

The business challenge

Helping the people that help, efficiently and securely

Huff, Powell & Bailey has grown from 25 people a decade ago, to 104 today. As the organization grew, it realized that using only Microsoft Outlook and Word to manage vital documents was not a viable way forward. “We had no search capabilities,” said Tricia Boughter, Executive Director at Huff, Powell & Bailey. “With no comprehensive document search facilities, finding the documents relating to a specific topic or case was very time-consuming and relied primarily on memory.” All too often, attorneys found themselves reinventing the wheel, creating documents that were already available simply because they could not find them.

Whenever attorneys went to trial or to hospitals to take depositions, they needed to be able to access every document in a case if necessary. But all documents were stored locally on an in-house server. Saving documents containing protected health information to an external flash drive to take with them was therefore not an option. Doing so would fall short of the compliance with regulatory requirements that all clients expected. After all, it risked a security breach.

What’s more, the process of filing emails and document attachments into the appropriate case file was cumbersome; attorneys needed to drag and drop documents into the right file. Spending too much time searching for, saving, and creating documents meant the legal teams were not as productive as they could be.

The law firm needed a document and email management solution with a single accurate search capability so legal teams could rapidly uncover contextually relevant content, expertise, best practices, and insights, no matter where it’s stored. This type of solution would mean legal teams could both reduce administrative overhead and also make better use of knowledge previously captured by the firm on previous cases.

The solution

Migrating to next-generation solution in the cloud

Huff, Powell & Bailey has been an iManage document and email management customer for more than ten years. Initially, iManage FileSite enabled a centrally accessible repository for all case-related materials. When the time came to refresh its legacy on-premises hardware, Huff, Powell & Bailey opted to move to iManage in the Cloud. With iManage Work 10 fully supported in the cloud, the firm decided to migrate from FileSite to the next-generation solution at the same time.

Deployed with iManage in the Cloud, iManage Work is seamlessly integrated with Microsoft Office and Outlook. Teams can save documents and attachments directly, with a single click. “Users love iManage Work,” said Boughter. “They love being able to immediately file emails and document attachments directly into the appropriate case file at just a click of a button, in addition to being able to drag and drop and all of that. They also love the green check-box that lets them know somebody else has received that same email or document and already saved it – saving them from reinventing the wheel.”

Additionally, iManage Work integrates with the firm’s Orion billing system. A script runs in the background every hour, searching for new matters. Whenever a new case is opened, the script automatically creates a new workspace in iManage.

Business outcomes

Devoting more time to practicing law

“iManage saves our legal assistants and paralegals several hours a week,” said Boughter, “whether it’s saving documents, or researching other cases and quickly finding the information they need.” The faster they can process incoming documents and access the information they need using iManage Work, the more time they can devote to assisting the attorneys and moving the cases along.

People can work from anywhere, on any device, with a consistent interface. And with all materials backed up in the cloud, attorneys can be confident that any materials they need are safe and reliably available for immediate access. “By providing everyone access to whatever they need, wherever they are, iManage Work helps us to remain at the top of our game,” said Boughter. “It allowed our teams to continue to be productive and collaborate securely from their home offices during the pandemic.”

Boughter describes iManage as “the backbone of Huff, Powell & Bailey’s operation”, keeping everything neat and tidy, so everybody knows exactly where to go to get what they need. If paralegals or legal assistants move from one practice area to another, the uniformity of iManage Work makes that move all the easier. With no retraining needed, they can hit the ground running.

iManage’s intuitive interface makes it easy for new attorneys to use, even those who are not particularly tech-savvy. Its familiar interface is akin to Windows Explorer and consumer applications, making it a tool they don’t even really need to think about. So if the new lawyer comes in and needs to prepare an answer to a complaint, for instance, they can easily find materials relevant to that case. The keyword search returns thousands of relevant documents, making that ability to search using keywords essential for the law firm.

The iManage solution is also benefitting the legal firm’s small IT team. With document and email management now in the cloud, the team no longer needs to spend time managing servers; they can instead devote their time to value-added activities. And with the company growing quickly, the cloud ensures any additional computing resources required – whether storage space or computing power – are available as soon as they’re needed.

Looking ahead

As Huff, Powell & Bailey continue on the path to growth, scalability will continue to be critical. iManage delivers; the ease and speed with which the firm can add additional space and buy new licenses is phenomenal.

“I don’t have to worry about the location, security, or accuracy of my documents because iManage just works,” concludes Boughter. “iManage will continue to be a business-critical tool for us, allowing us to concentrate on helping those who help.”