THE TOP 10 REASONS YOU NEED DOCUMENT MANAGEMENT SOFTWARE. Ellen Freedman, CLM Law Practice Management Coordinator Pennsylvania Bar Association

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1 Ellen Freedman, CLM Law Practice Management Coordinator Pennsylvania Bar Association I recently had the pleasure of returning to a client s office to be of additional assistance. One of my favorite clients, the firm is a high quality mid-size plaintiff s firm located in a major urban area. I originally performed a technology audit for them, and I ve been helping them from time to time with technology issues ever since. I was contacted this time by the firm s administrator. The firm was ready to take another major step in its technology infrastructure improvement by installing document management software. But when the pricing came in, the firm experienced sticker shock. The firm s administrator recommended that the firm proceed as planned despite the cost. But he was having a problem articulating to the partners the justifications for the large expense. Another technology consultant was brought in a well-known attorney and technologist and his conclusion and recommendation was to install document management as the next step. The management committee decided to continue to shop for opinions, hoping that an opinion would be tendered that supported their desire to avoid the large expenditure. And so, the client contacted me for my opinion. At the time I was contacted I thought that the firm s administrator was merely trying to save money. He tends to be rather tight-fisted with the firm s dollars not an entirely undesirable character trait in a firm administrator. So after reviewing the internal documents between management committee members which set forth a manual system of naming conventions to be employed, I went prepared to convince the administrator that the expenditure was entirely cost justified. It was only after I provided my best effort to convince the administrator he was mistaken that I was informed that I was preaching to the choir. I was then given a glimpse of the other consultant s recommendation. Realizing that my opinion brought the total to three different legal technologists who had chimed in and were in agreement on the issue, I offered this additional sage advice to pass along to the partners with my recommendation (imagine a big Cheshire cat grin on

2 Page 2 of 5 my face): When someone tells you that you re a horse s butt, you ask What s up with that person? When a second person tells you you re a horse s butt, you ask What s up with me that two people have told me this? But when a third person tells you you re a horse s butt, you should go out and buy a bridle and saddle, and yell Giddy up! With well-deserved acknowledgement and thanks to David Letterman for the format, what follows are the top ten reasons why I recommended that the firm proceed with the implementation of document management. 10. Document management software helps to eliminate friction when an attorney departs the firm. It s simple to run a report of documents produced by the attorney, get approval for those which can be provided to the attorney, rip them to a CD, and provide an index of those documents for convenience, and historical reference. 9. Document management software provides productivity statistics and the ability to monitor workflow. At one firm an attorney was consistently falling below billable hours. He claimed that his area of practice required a large investment of non-billable hours to stay on top of legislative changes. In reality, he was churning his documents. A simple one page letter was revised a record 104 times. Other documents regularly averaged upwards of 50 revisions each. With this knowledge in hand, the management committee was able to take corrective action. In another instance I was able to report on and examine the average number of keystrokes per minute on documents, by typist, to provide evidence that a particular secretary s skill levels were far below acceptable standards. 8. Document management software provides version control. All versions are kept together, so that they are always archived or deleted in entirety. One cannot search for a document and miss finding a version, or accidentally work on an older version. 7. Document management software capably and consistently handles the implementation of a records management policy. In order to provide protection to the firm, a records management policy must be consistently applied. Each document type can have its own retention schedule, and the software will track and report on documents which are due to be deleted or archived.

3 Page 3 of 5 6. Document management software will not degrade network performance appreciably. One can utilize a good desktop search engine, such as Copernic or X1, to enable full-text searching on documents and s, but if there are more than two or three users utilizing the desktop search software, the network will slow appreciably as each user s workstation continually updates the index. [For further information on desktop search engines, see my article entitled Desktop Search Engines - An Exciting New Tool, which originally appeared in the April 4, 2005 issue of The Pennsylvania Bar News.] 5. Document management software provides a uniform search platform for virtually all of a law firm s documents, regardless of whether they are s, spreadsheets, documents, PowerPoint slides, or PDFs. Plus, a universal viewer enables one to preview, print, and copy the document without having to actually open it to ensure it is the desired item. 4. Compliance with any manual system of file naming and organization is always going to be an issue. First, constant training is required to ensure everyone is on the same page with a manual system. And that means spending time training temps as well. But the real problem will lie in the fact that there will always be some lawyers (and their secretaries) who think they have a better system, and will choose to follow it, rather than that which has been generally approved. You ve probably heard me discuss the lawyer s drive for autonomy on more than one occasion. It is a personality characteristic which drives lawyers to differentiate themselves from their colleagues, and to refuse to accept rules in general. Whereas the general public scores around 50% on this trait, lawyers are an off-the-charts 90%. The reality is that some lawyers will actually do things which are contrary to their own best interests, just to be different. When you combine the drive for autonomy with the need to constantly train, you can be sure compliance will be lacking. Document management software, on the other hand, ensures compliance. That s because the system will automatically file away documents based on the firm s criteria and schemes. 3. Today s technology is all about leverage. It s about empowering attorneys to work smarter instead of harder. It s about knowledge management reusing

4 Page 4 of 5 existing work product effectively without reinventing the wheel. But using a manual system of file naming and organization doesn t enable the firm to leverage its work product. Because without full text search and retrieval, the only way to effectively reuse old work product requires that one know it exists, who did it, and for what client. Document management software doesn t require that requisite knowledge to find former work product. One can search on a word, phrase, document type, etc. and quickly narrow the universe of possibilities down to a manageable level. 2. Document management software provides a fairly high level of security. It is a simple matter to find out who has touched, altered, copied, deleted or printed a document or group of documents. It provides the ability to lock down forms so that they cannot be modified without first being saved as a new document. Forms for one department can be restricted and visible only for those department members. It simply eliminates worries about dabblers in other practice areas misusing forms in an attempt to hoard work. Document management software has the ability to secure documents for any group the firm wants to create. Documents which are designed to be viewed only by executive committee members, such as a spreadsheet on compensation changes for example, are not even in the universe for those who are not part of that security group. Even if they search on compensation, they don t find it at all. That eliminates any temptation to try to breach the security. Finally, document management software has the ability to create a very effective Ethical Wall when a conflict of interest makes it necessary. 1. All of the foregoing reasons are compelling ones. But in my mind, the number one justification is that document management software will actually improve attorney productivity by decreasing wasted time searching for documents, and wasted time reinventing the wheel. When the ability to locate prior work product is made simple, it enables young attorneys to design quality documents faster. It also helps ensure

5 Page 5 of 5 that components of a complex assemblage of documents do not get overlooked. The ability to save former searches in shortcut buttons means that with a simple click an attorney can instantly call up documents worked on in the immediate past, documents for a particular client, or form documents for a particular practice group. And on a universe which may contain hundreds of thousands of such documents, the search results are assembled in a matter of just a few seconds. So there you have it folks. These are my top ten reasons why most firms need document management software. If you re using or going to use case management software, the document management software will fully integrate with it. If you re going to begin working toward the paper-independent office, you need to have document management implemented first. Why? Because it doesn t help to digitize the entire contents of the client file if you can t later find those contents reliably and effortlessly. It s not cheap. That s for sure. But try to avoid leaping over dollars to pick up pennies. This is an area that will reward your investment. Don t wait for me to offer you a saddle and yell giddy up! Ellen Freedman, CLM is the Law Practice Management Coordinator of the Pennsylvania Bar Association. This article originally appeared in several County Bar newsletters. Ellen Freedman. All rights reserved.