Midsize Portuguese law firm revolutionizes its litigation using the iManage Cloud platform

With the iManage Cloud and new ways of working, Rogério Alves & Associados has revolutionized its approach to litigation. The firm wanted a better way to collaborate than just passing files back and forth. It needed access to documents while lawyers were in court with no WiFi, and a search function powerful enough to surface historical insights from decades of data. With iManage Work 10, lawyers can co-author documents, access them from anywhere, on any device, and download case files to iManage Drive before court begins for access during trial. The firm is more client-centric than ever and honing
its competitive edge.

Rogério Alves & Associados was founded in 2013. The midsize Portuguese law firm is dedicated to defending the interests of its clients. Its mission is to provide competent, long-term support to clients. Its lawyers are skilled in providing consultancy to resolve cases without the need for litigation.

The business challenge

Harness the power of people

Rogério Alves & Associados employs talented lawyers with a range of specialist knowledge. They need to collaborate effectively to give clients the best legal advice as quickly as possible. They may even need to tap into the firm’s historical documents to draw insights from similar cases or seek out past precedents. Without a purpose-built document management platform, that can be difficult.

“If I’m working on a domestic violence case and need to protect a child, I’ll work with an expert from family law,” explains Bárbara Marinho e Pinto, a Partner at the firm. “When we had a file share on a Windows server, one of us would prepare a document and email it to the other to make notes or ask for revisions.”

This was time-consuming and frustrating, and Rogério Alves & Associados realized a co-authoring tool would make collaborating on cases much easier. They also knew they needed to move to the cloud, while preserving offline capabilities. Like many Portuguese firms, their lawyers often work from courthouses with no WiFi, which means printing reams of documents or bringing handwritten notes, or both.

With decades of data locked away on a file server, access to the accumulated historical knowledge of the firm was quite limited. “Our managing partner has 30 years’ experience in the field. He can’t be involved in every case, but we can all learn a lot from his case files,” Pinto adds. Finding relevant information quickly, however, requires a technological solution.

The solution

Make knowledge work, any time, any place

Rogério Alves & Associados have worked with iManage partner ROOX since the firm was founded. ROOX used its in-depth knowledge of how the firm works and listened to lawyers’ pain points to suggest a solution — modernizing the workplace with a comprehensive cloud-native document management system.

ROOX presented two options to consider: iManage Work 10 in the Cloud and an InTapp solution. Another option considered by Rogério Alves & Associados consisted of a system built by a small local company.

“iManage has a great reputation among other firms, and ROOX has extensive experience with the platform,” says Pinto. “We liked the technical capabilities compared to InTapp, and we felt safer with iManage than with the lesser-known local company. Data security is one of the most important considerations for a criminal defense lawyer.”

The firm was pleasantly surprised by the ease of implementation. ROOX set up the integrations with Microsoft Office apps, including Copilot, and worked with Pinto as the dedicated iManage champion. Together, they tailored the implementation to suit the firm’s objectives.

They jettisoned a plan to cap the data allowance per user, for example, to ensure that historical documents would be migrated into iManage. “At first, we were worried about overloading the system,” Pinto explains. ”But we’ve got 10 years of cases under our belts, and iManage Cloud scales so easily, it only made sense to use that to our advantage.”

With the migration complete, everyone at Rogério Alves & Associados now uses iManage Work. Lawyers love the co-authoring feature, which means they can work with others collaboratively on a document in real time. This is particularly useful for training interns, who can learn and receive support from their more experienced colleagues while correcting live documents.

iManage Drive has also been a game changer. Lawyers can access all documents relating to the case they’re working on while they’re in court. “iManage Drive is a huge advantage for any firm in Portugal dealing with areas of low connectivity, such as our law courts,” Pinto comments.

In fact, mobility in general has increased significantly. Lawyers can securely access iManage from any computer, whether they’re at home, in the office, or traveling.