Customer Stories
Lydian’s future-first strategy readies the team for the AI revolution
Innovative Belgian law firm delivers a seamless, integrated, secure cloud experience while reducing operating costs with iManage Cloud
Belgian law firm Lydian has innovation in its DNA. As such, it was one of the first firms in the country to migrate document management to the cloud. Moving its document management from iManage on premises to the iManage Cloud went very smoothly for users, who already enjoyed the platform’s easy to use document management and great features. The move transformed life for the IT team, saving them time, money, and freeing up resources for their artificial intelligence (AI) revolution. With the iManage Cloud, everyone at Lydian is more productive, and the right document is always just a few clicks away.
Lydian is a Belgian full-service law firm with offices across three cities. Combining transactional legal expertise with litigation skills, the firm delivers effective and on-point services to its clients. With around 130 employees, including more than 95 lawyers, Lydian regularly wins awards from top legal directories such as Legal 500, Chambers & Partners, ILFR, Trends Legal Awards, and WTR1000.
The business challenge
Free the firm from on-premises infrastructure
Lydian takes pride in following the motto “carpe diem” (or “seize the day”) and was one of the first firms in Belgium to take the leap to cloud as soon as the opportunity presented itself. While Lydian’s legal team had been using iManage successfully on premises for many years, the IT department wanted to spend less time and money maintaining servers and performing manual security updates and backups.
Those maintenance windows meant downtime for lawyers, as well as the IT team, but this could be resolved by moving their documents to the secure iManage Cloud platform.
“When we mapped out our data center exit strategy to plan how to migrate all of our apps and servers to the cloud, we decided to exchange our virtual desktop infrastructure for laptops to give staff the freedom to work from anywhere,” explains Dimitri Duwaerts, Senior ICT officer at Lydian. “Our cloud strategy aimed to increase availability and flexibility for staff while lowering IT support and maintenance costs — with minimal disruption to the business.”
Headquarters
Brussels, Belgium
Industry
Accounting
Products
Benefits
- Reduced IT operating and maintenance costs
- Improved accessibility and security
- Enhanced productivity and efficiency
- Trusted foundation for future innovation
About partner
IRIS Nederland enables professionals to work more efficiently through better management of their documents, emails, data, and information. It provides specialist knowledge honed over many years of experience to deliver innovative digital solutions.
The native iManage integrations with Microsoft 365 make it seamless to file emails and documents without switching between apps. Our staff like using iManage, and we saw no advantage in moving to any other DMS tool.
Dimitri Duwaerts, Senior ICT Officer, Lydian
The solution
Seamlessly migrate to a secure cloud platform
After an in-depth comparison of iManage Cloud versus other DMS tools, Lydian determined that moving to iManage would deliver unmatched capabilities and value.
As a Microsoft shop, the partnership between iManage and Microsoft strongly benefits Lydian. “We use Microsoft 365 all the time,” says Duwaerts. “The native integrations with iManage make it seamless to file emails and documents without switching between apps. Our staff like using iManage, and we saw no advantage in moving to any other DMS tool.”
Lydian worked with long-time partner, IRIS Nederland, throughout the change. They tailored the platform with Lydian-branded templates and integrated everyday apps. IRIS Nederland also provided virtual training to complement the small group sessions Lydian ran for its employees in-house. And by carefully planning the migration to minimize disruption to users, the switch from on-premises to iManage Cloud was flawless. Almost everyone at the firm uses iManage — Lydian enjoys a 93 percent adoption rate — migrating data from HR, finance, project management, IT, and marketing to the platform in addition to the legal documents. This is great from an accessibility perspective, but it also enables Lydian to apply firm-wide data governance and security with zero hassle.
Lawyers use iManage Work 10 in the Cloud as the central document repository, tracking changes and managing version control to ensure there is one source of truth.
“We love the simplicity of iManage. Being able to check out a document and lock it for other users while we work on it makes version control a breeze,” says Duwaerts.
When someone needs to share a document, they make a secure virtual data room in iManage Share. This enables lawyers to exchange documents and packaged files with clients in a single click. Collaborating on documents with clients in real time has a consistent look and feel thanks to the branded templates IRIS Nederland created.
To further secure its data, Lydian rolled out iManage Threat Manager, which detects malicious behavior, intervenes to prevent data loss, and delivers usage analytics to address regulatory compliance and information governance needs. This adds another layer of protection against security breaches.
Business outcomes
Save time and make documents accessible from anywhere
With iManage Cloud, Lydian streamlined the transition from on- premises infrastructure, meeting its goal of minimal disruption to users. The staff continues to work in a familiar interface but can also access their documents from anywhere via their laptops.
The suite of iManage solutions simplifies finding, securing, and sharing documents. This frees the legal team to focus on moving cases forward, while the IT team can prioritize innovation over maintenance tasks.
“We’ve saved so much time and money by passing maintenance over to iManage. No more spending hours maintaining servers, storage, or manually applying security updates,” explains Duwaerts. “Our IT budget also goes further because we consolidated systems when we moved to the cloud.”
“OIA is one of the best certified iManage implementation partners in this region,” confides Peters. “They were a key collaborator in the move to Work 10 and iManage Cloud, where their hard work and support were invaluable.”
Following the migration, Lydian emerged with a secure, reliable, and highly available, cloud-native knowledge work platform — delivering improved security and reduced operating costs. The firm’s employees have a seamless experience using a digital workspace with integrated apps, and the IT team has the time and foundation to keep innovating as requirements change and new technologies become available.
Lydian is keen to explore AI in the coming months, and by combining higher levels of data hygiene with iManage version control they have total confidence in their single source of truth, which is exactly what Duwaerts needed to move forward.
It’s clear that Lydian values the long-term partnership with IRIS Nederland, as well as with iManage. “Thanks to IRIS Nederland — who were phenomenal — everything went smoothly,” reflects Duwaerts. “They’re proactive about asking what we could do better and then making a plan to help us get there.”
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