Your Ultimate Guide to Legal Document Management Systems

Less paper equals greater efficiency. The right document management solution enables any law firm or legal organization to reduce its dependence on paper while optimizing its employees' efficiency and productivity.

In this comprehensive guide to legal DMS, we've compiled everything you need to know about legal document management, the benefits of DMS, your DMS options, and how to select and implement the perfect DMS for your legal organization. Here you'll find answers to all your questions related to:

Document Storage vs. Document Management

Storing all of your documents in folders—no matter how carefully organized—is not enough. Here's why:

Storing your documents is passive. Document storage is a place to save documents to retrieve later, and potentially share with others. It’s a virtual filing cabinet —nothing more, nothing less. Your computer’s hard drive, a shared server drive at your office, even cloud-based storage such as Dropbox and Google Drive: nothing happens to these documents while they’re in storage, and the users can’t do anything with the documents apart from viewing and editing them.

Managing your documents is active. A DMS provides the user with tools to manage, organize and otherwise make the documents useful for the firm. A DMS will do what document storage cannot. You can see and recall each iteration of a document with view, restore or compare capabilities. You can check documents in/out, keeping others from making changes simultaneously and creating conflicting versions of the same document. A robust DMS will index every document and email stored within it, making all content immediately searchable. A powerful DMS can convert scanned documents or image-based PDF files to text-enabled documents.

A DMS is more than document storage, it provides tools to help you be more efficient and helps you keep your information secure. The right DMS can improve your organization's workflow processes, give you added flexibility, and improve operational efficiency.

Find out why a DMS makes more sense more than ever.

What Makes a Legal DMS Unique?

With a DMS, you can capture, store, search, and track digital documents. Most DMS tend to be designed for the masses, and they miss the mark on the legal-specific functionality and security that are vital to your industry. But legal DMS are designed to meet the specific needs that are central to your business.

A legal DMS offers your firm:

Matter-centricity: A matter-centric DMS allows users to create a matter, which is the virtual file cabinet to store (and manage) documents, email, and notes for that matter.
Email management: In law, an email is a document like any other. A legal DMS can store, index, and manage email just as it does documents. It's ideal to get a legal-centric DMS that integrates with MS Outlook so users can save emails directly to a matter. 
Document types and tagging: Law firms work with all kinds of documents: motions, orders, pleadings, complaints, contracts and so on. By tagging documents, you can identify the exact type in your DMS. By categorizing in this way, users can quickly assess the type or nature of a document at a glance.

Does your Firm Need a Legal DMS?

Not sure whether DMS is something your firm really needs? Consider the following questions:

  • Do you need matter-centric organization of your firm’s documents?
  • Does your firm struggle to keep document organization consistent?
  • Do you need the ability to manage versions of documents as they evolve?
  • Do you need a process to check documents out, keeping them from being edited?
  • Would you like scanned images to automatically be OCR’d (vs. leaving this to individual employees)?
  • Do you need to streamline workflow by having scanners (or faxes) imported directly to your system?
  • Is your firm outgrowing your drive or the simple cloud storage of a DropBox or Google Drive?
  • Does your law firm want to decrease the amount and reduce the mass of paper and paper files?

If you answered "yes" to any of these questions, your firm should take a serious look at implementing a DMS.

Want to see how other firms have approached their DMS selection and implementation processes? Check out our case studies for Foulston Siefkin and Swift Currie.

What are the Benefits of a Legal DMS for Your Firm?

With the quantity of files that even small firms must manage, it is clear that DMS are central to legal work. Not only does a DMS allow firms to securely store and manage documents and data, it enables legal teams to be more productive and efficient. From increasing flexibility to improving the firm’s bottom line, there is so much your DMS can do for you.

A legal DMS provides two fundamental capabilities. It is a central repository to store documents, email and other types of content. It also provides tools for your firm to effectively manage documents and data (contracts, motions, emails, manage versions, etc.).

A legal DMS makes your firm scalable. As your firm grows, your client and case list grow, and the mass of content you are managing becomes larger and more unwieldy. A robust DMS ensures your firm can handle these increased demands as you grow.

A legal DMS also handles your compliance and security needs because it’s designed to monitor and conform to industry regulations and standards. It also will adapt as these regulations change over time.

Discover how legal DMS can help you protect your data.

Know you need DMS, but not sure how to get started? Check out this great video on finding the right DMS provider for your firm. 

Two Types of Legal DMS: On-Premises vs. Cloud

There are two types of legal DMS: on-premises solutions and cloud software. Ultimately, the biggest difference is where the software lives. On-premises software is installed locally, on your firm's computers and servers, whereas cloud software is hosted on a vendor's server and accessed via web browsers or applications.

Still not sure about moving to the cloud? Find out why not having a cloud strategy is no longer an option.

How Do You Choose the Right DMS?

Selecting the right DMS provider is no small process. You want to make an informed decision that you won’t have to revisit five to 10 years down the line. Make sure any DMS you consider offers the productivity tools essential to lawyers, management tools for quick information, security for documents, and collaboration and communication features. You’ll need to ask questions about the both DMS and the DMS provider.

Questions about the product should include:

  • What tools does the DMS integrate with?
  • What security features does the platform provide? Will it meet compliance standards?
  • How much mobility will this product provide?
  • How well does the platform organize and search files?
  • Does the platform support collaboration with internal and external stakeholders?
  • What additional services can I add on?

Questions for the provider should include:

  • How will you handle the migration process?
  • Can we review your cloud services agreement?
  • How many of your customers have left to your main competitor?
  • Can you connect me with 5 customers actively using the same solution that we are looking at buying?

Check out these four simple steps to get you started with your DMS search.

Implementing your DMS

After you’ve selected the right DMS for your firm, you can help implementation go smoothly by getting buy-in from key decision-makers and users. Target the departments and individuals who will use the system the most and be most affected by the system change. Take note of how you currently organize, share, or collaborate on documents, and identify key problems to be fixed or optimized. Set reasonable deadlines to ensure the project remains on track. After your DMS is implemented, it’s time to train your team. Find the people who will interact with it most often – these are your superusers. And continue to optimize your system with continued training.

Throughout the planning, implementation, and training phases, communicate early and often—by setting weekly meetings, sending emails, hosting trainings online, and conducting webinars. And remember to stay positive. Changing habits isn't easy, but with the right system, the benefits far outweigh the growing pains.

Ready to take your first step toward a DMS implementation? Contact us today to request your no-cost consultation with one of our DMS specialists.


Michelle Willete

Written by Michelle Willete

Michelle acts as a strategic advisor to provide insights and applicable services to law firms to develop document management migration strategies that meet specific customer goals. She also supports project post-implementation success. Michelle’s career began in marketing, where she remained until recently. Her previous professional focus was digital marketing and content creation, including copywriting, digital campaigns, and inbound and outbound marketing strategies. Recently, she shifted focus towards project management for document management implementation and migration strategies inclusive of onboarding initiatives, facilitating solutions for any technical and business concerns, and developing customized training curriculums.

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