It takes an orchestra: Building trust in a dynamic regulatory landscape

In today’s rapidly evolving regulatory environment, trust is essential for law firms and legal departments. Protecting reputation requires more than just securing sensitive information—it demands rigorous due diligence around conflicts and intake, and seamless collaboration among all stakeholders. 

At iManage, our priority is to deliver best-in-class products that help organizations build and maintain trust. As a former practicing attorney and in-house conflicts and intake specialist, I’ve seen firsthand how iManage solutions empower teams to tackle daily challenges and mitigate risks. 

Intake and onboarding: challenges and opportunities 

As George Washington sagely advised, “Associate yourself with men of good quality if you esteem your own reputation.” For law firms, a thorough client and matter intake process is the first line of defense. It’s where firms assess potential business for reputational risks—such as deciding whether to take on a cannabis matter or represent a politically exposed person—and ensure new matters don’t violate existing duties of care, loyalty, or confidentiality. 

This process is complicated by regulations like anti-money laundering (AML), anti-terrorism, know your client (KYC), and industry-specific mandates. With so many variables, tasks, and roles in play, how are all stakeholders supposed to remember every rule? The answer: they often can’t. Reliance on lengthy procedure binders, policy emails, and sticky notes, while unfortunately common, is not only unsustainable but also dangerous. 

The costs of inefficient processes 

When data is siloed and teams aren’t aligned, onboarding slows and becomes unreliable. Essential information may be delayed or incomplete, leading to costly mistakes and missed opportunities—such as renegotiating rates after work has begun. 

Collaboration and cohesion 

Effective onboarding requires close collaboration between conflicts, finance, intake, and other teams. Each role has a unique perspective and needs access to different information at different times. Only by working together can firms achieve the speed and accuracy needed to stay ahead. 

The right solution for trust 

We developed iManage Conflicts & Intake to help firms foster trust throughout this crucial process. Acting like a conductor in an orchestra, the solution brings cohesion to the intake and onboarding process, pulling data from multiple sources, applying business rules, and surfacing the right information to the right decision maker at the right time. When rules are clear, the system automates decisions; when exceptions arise, it prompts human judgment, keeping everyone aligned and expediting the process. 

Accuracy is further enhanced by surfacing answers to common questions during conflicts checks, such as whether an entity has been a client before or if confidential information exists. 

Integrated tools for seamless collaboration 

Integration with iManage Work allows teams to securely store and associate relevant documents throughout onboarding. They can also take documents that already exist in Work that might be relevant to a complex team or an intake team performing an assessment and associate the two objects within the database without removing them from where they belong. 

Ask iManage, our AI-powered legal assistant, enables rapid, accurate retrieval of key information for the conflicts or intake team from documents by asking questions and getting rapid, cited answers. 

Conflicts & Intake also integrates with partners like World-Check One, Capital IQ, and Dun & Bradstreet, enabling tasks such as tracking corporate structure changes and conducting comprehensive conflict searches. 

Your business, working in concert 

By unifying intake-related steps and maintaining clear records, firms save time, reduce risk, and foster trust. Investing in unified platforms transforms compliance from a burden into a competitive advantage. 

Explore iManage Conflicts & Intake to see how iManage can help your firm thrive in today’s dynamic landscape.