Getting DMS Buy-In for Your Small and Midsize Legal Organization
ALM Media
Updated
There are a few document management system (DMS) options for legal out there one look around the ILTACON exhibit hall sees names like iManage, NetDocuments, Worldox, OpenText and so many others. But especially for small and midsize law firms and corporate legal departments, actually choosing one, figuring out how to use it most effectively, or deciding whether you need one in the first place is a confusing proposition.
The quick answer? Yes, you do need a document management system, pretty much no matter the size of the firm or the legal department, as an ILTACON panel titled "Is Document Management 'in the Cards' for Your Law Firm or Legal Department?" noted. But how that DMS actually works within a legal organization varies by size and need, and it can be a challenge to actually encourage management and user adoption.
The Benefits of the DMS
How does the modern DMS work currently? In one example, 150-attorney law firm Kirton McConkie uses a pessimistic security model, where nobody has rights to any particular documents until they're given them. In many corporate or firm environments without DMS systems, it's IT that controls access to those documents. But a document management system can allow individual users to set those permissions as needed, David Clark, director of IT at Kirton McConkie, explained.
"If you were to ask a couple of departments in my law firm, they wouldn't do it any other way. There's so much sensitive information out there that they want to lock down until it's time to open it up to others."
Denney Fifield, director of IS at 61-attorney law firm Strong & Hanni, agreed, saying that his firm's DMS has completely changed the IT structure and the amount of IT headaches in his organization.
"I call it the Wild Wild West. With file shares, perhaps everything can happen, and did," Fifield said. "I'd get calls asking, 'When did this go missing?' And I'd ask if anything changed, and they'd say, 'I don't know.'" Now, Fifield said, he doesn't have to worry about users changing file names and losing where the document would be in the system.
And this change shifted how attorneys viewed simple tasks like sharing file attachments, he explained. "If you're in a file share environment, you're not in an email share environment. They still sit on your desktop, or you forward them out to everybody. In a DMS system, you put the file in the system once, and it's done."
Legal technology consultant Ann Gorr added, "That's what attorneys like now, that they can find the whole matter file in one place. We can really move towards the paperless file process."
Getting the Necessary Buy-In
Not everybody has been on board, historically. In fact, a quick poll of the assembled ILTACON room revealed a mix of relationships with document management systems, from those who only use internal file-sharing systems to those that use major DMS systems, but are unhappy with them. For all groups, the panel noted that receiving buy-in for the system is crucial to actually being happy with your system. But this is perhaps easier said than done.
"It's a journey. You need to do your requirements first, then you need to pull together that elevator pitch that are all the pain points," Gorr said. "It's the pain points that are going to improve efficiency, improve attitude, and improve those client relationships."
Clark noted that security and regulatory controls are key to helping get that buy-in making the case that document management systems are key to advancing core firm or department priorities.
"I start giving them [Model Rule] 1.1s, and 1.8s," Gorr added. "They know what those sanctions mean. Put a few of those slides up, and they start moving."
Legal applications consultant Joe Davis noted that having core retention and deletion policies in addition to the DMS can help with these security concerns. He's heard horror stories about firms that simply never close matters, holding more than a century of old documents and data that will never be looked at again.
"The more information you have, the more information that just got breached," he explained. "If you don't need it anymore, it's best not to have it anymore."
But in order to get true buy-in, it's not all doom and gloom. Gorr said that she has found buy-in occurs by showing the positive aspects of DMS systems and how they can work for attorneys.
"As IT people, we tend to want to lock everything down. We're the negative people. And if we can be that positive force and say, 'We're giving you these positive things, and here's how you can leverage that with your clients,' then that's a positive," Gorr said. "Then they won't run off and do their own thing."
That's all well and good, Fifield added, but ultimately, those words need to have muscle if the attorneys will actually stay in line.
"You have to use your heavy clubs," he said. "If you have key partners, equity shareholders that have respect, that buys off on this and helps you, that makes the whole process much easier."
Gorr added, "I want the crankiest secretary, I want the happiest paralegal, I want the person you think that knows nothing I want buy-in from the beginning. Everybody brings something to the journey. If they don't think something works, we need to know why."
