JFK Law simplifies complex legal document management with iManage in the Cloud

Specialist law firm, JFK Law, is on a mission to help Indigenous communities protect their title, rights and way of life. To reduce time spent manually filing thousands of documents, they needed a next-generation document management system, and selected iManage Work 10 in the Cloud, which aligns with their cloud strategy. Today, staff are more productive than ever and can offer clients more cost-effective services by reducing time spent on administrative tasks.

JFK Law is a mid-sized Canadian firm that represents Indigenous communities seeking justice and reconciliation. Its team of more than 40 lawyers and legal support staff provides complex litigation and consultation services, negotiates treaties, and undertakes regulatory work such as environment assessments. It aims to protect the rights of Indigenous people and drive meaningful change in society.

The business challenge

Simplifying management of thousands of documents

Working on complex cases requires huge volumes of documents, and matters can span decades. While the firm had an on-premises document management solution, lawyers needed to manually fill in document cards every time they stored a file. This was time consuming and resulted in low adoption and poor compliance.

“When people were pushed for time, they’d end up storing information in their email, which is bad for collaboration and made it more difficult to search for all the relevant documents relating to a matter,” explained Monique Cotton, Manager, Legal Support Services and Firm Operations, JFK Law. “Inefficient processes were impacting our productivity and we were losing billable time.”

This also risked impacting data security. The firm handles a significant volume of confidential personal data, but the incumbent document management solution lacked advanced security features. This resulted in lawyers password-protecting individual files and manually setting up ethical firewalls to ensure client data was protected.

The firm also wanted to make documents available anytime, anywhere to support a hybrid workplace. The Vancouver and Victoria offices serve clients in every jurisdiction in Canada, and lawyers often travel to remote locations.

The solution

Modern document management makes life easier for lawyers

JFK Law decided to move document management to the cloud. They implemented iManage Work 10 in the Cloud with iManage Threat Manager, and integrations with Microsoft Office and Adobe Pro. “Document management is at the heart of everything we do, so we kicked off our cloud migration with iManage, said Cotton. “We use it across the whole organization, from lawyers to the finance team, and from support staff to higher management. We’re currently operating a hybrid environment as we gradually
move other systems over.”

The firm was impressed by the rich feature set that iManage Work 10 offers to make life easier for lawyers. For example, the powerful search capability enables lawyers to find relevant documents quickly and accurately, with features that deliver personalized search results. Work 10 also enables eDiscovery to find trends across multiple documents to help build cases.

“Tasks such as saving emails are so much easier with iManage. The solution makes recommendations based on my previous actions as to where I should be saving things, and it’s getting smarter the more I use it,” enthused Cotton. Other popular functions include the “Favorites” tool—which helps lawyers personalize their workspace with fast access to the documents and matters that they’re currently working on—and the Work Panel in Microsoft Outlook, which enables drag-and-drop saving.

JFK Law also rolled out the iManage Mobility app to give the team fast access to information on their smartphones.

To streamline user adoption, the firm provides 2.5 hours of training to new starters. The user-friendly interface and consumer-like feel of the platform is all they need to hit the ground running and start working efficiently.

JFK Law can monitor usage with iManage Threat Manager to ensure company-wide compliance with its document management policies. “Compliance reports make it really easy to get an overview of the organization and identify any members of the team who need more training to ensure we’re taking a consistent approach,” Cotton said.

The firm also recently rolled out iManage Security Policy Manager. This enables the organization to quickly implement security protections at scale, including need-to-know security and ethical walls, to manage internal access to sensitive content and meet their clients’ ethical requirements.

Business outcomes

More cost-effective client services

While the iManage rollout is accelerating the firm’s cloud strategy, the efficiency gains of iManage Work 10 have dramatically improved work life for JFK Law’s employees. “Being able to find and store what you need quickly may seem like a small thing, but over the day and across our whole team it adds up to significant time savings for the firm,” said Cotton. “iManage makes our services more cost-effective for clients and means we can spend more time focusing on higher-value tasks.”

The migration has also enhanced data security by establishing a more consistent, enterprise-wide approach to data management and ensuring high levels of buy-in from staff. Meanwhile, being able to create ethical walls quickly and easily with iManage Security Policy Manager saves time and helps the team meet industry-specific compliance regulations.

Looking ahead

As the firm continues its move to a fully cloud-based environment it will integrate more solutions with iManage so staff can work on one platform — without the need to toggle between solutions.

“Our long-term goal is to give employees a seamless cloud-based experience, and — as our most-used platform — iManage was instrumental in paving the way for the rest of the migration,” said Cotton. “Change management can be the most difficult part of any project, but now our employees have seen how transformative great technology can be, and they’re excited for what’s to come.”