Document management integration: is it for you?

David Chai | November 7, 2019 | Articles

Imagine that you’re at your desk, setting up a new matter in your matter management system. You remember that you have files stored in the document management system that your company uses, and those files need to be associated with this matter to give your legal team the full picture. You sigh as you click the + button in your browser to open up a new tab, enter the URL to your document management system, login, search for the files, download them, and upload them into your matter management system. Five wasted minutes later, the files are where they should be and you move onto the next matter.

Dealing with multiple standalone systems is time consuming, counter-productive, and a dreadful aspect of the daily grind for many organizations. Considering the large amount of documents that flow in and out of legal, a disparate document management system is a common pain point shared by corporate legal departments.

When these applications become siloed, there are many business challenges that arise that can cripple performance and growth, such as wasted employee productivity and process inefficiencies. But, how can legal teams solve for this? By leveraging integrations that tightly couple document management and matter management systems together to yield tremendous benefits for the legal department.

The Benefits

Below are some of the benefits you can achieve with an integrated approach:

  • Makes Life Easier: Integrating both systems allow you to have all your data in one central location, eliminating the frustration of having to jump from one system to another to locate and use a document or file.
  • Increases Productivity: Having all your data in one central location also reduces the time related to maintaining multiple systems, thus increasing productivity. When you remove the hurdles to complete mundane tasks, you free up bandwidth for your legal team to focus on higher priority legal work.
  • Improves Security: As corporate legal departments deal with sensitive information that requires stringent security, downloading files from one system and then uploading them into another can lead to security lapses. While a hacker may have difficulties compromising enterprise software security, your local drive is another story. By eliminating this step from the process, sensitive information stays secure, limiting unsavory characters from accessing them.
  • Ensures Data Accuracy: Having the same files and documents duplicated in multiple, unconnected systems will inevitably impact data accuracy. When you integrate your document management solution to your matter management system, files and documents are managed in one system, keeping them accurate and consistent. This removes any confusion of whether or not the right version is being used.

There are powerful reasons why you should integrate your document management with your matter management. Luckily, SimpleLegal integrates with popular document management solutions iManage and Box. If you would like more information about these integrations, or want to see them in action, schedule a demo!