Last Updated on September 24, 2024 Sarah Gayda
Poll data shows SharePoint Online & Colligo commonly replacing expensive legal document management systems, as email remains primary method for sharing client files & case matter
Microsoft 365 is incredibly scalable and powerful out-of-the-box. Part of Microsoft 365, SharePoint Online is the preferred storage repository for top enterprises and law firms due to its security and dependability.
But as a legal document management system (DMS), Microsoft 365 typically only gets you part way there.
In part that’s because email remains the number one method for sending and receiving client files and case matter. As a result, many legal departments and law firms are opting to augment SharePoint Online with Colligo Email Manager. Combining the two solutions offers a complete legal DMS solution at a fraction of the cost of legacy systems.
You can find a more details about this in our recent webinar: 5 Reasons to Use M365 as your Legal Document Management System.
Below are high-level trends we see in legal document management. In addition, we provide a summary of legal professionals’ and customers’ survey responses and feedback around moving to the Microsoft Cloud for document and email management.
Microsoft 365 continues to gain share as the repository of choice for legal firms and corporate counsel
Microsoft 365 continues to become more dominant as the corporate and legal firm repository of choice. This is especially true as firms move from dedicated legal document management systems and other legacy systems to a more horizontal and modern suite in Microsoft 365.
Almost a third of respondents said they are using Microsoft 365 at their firm or in their department. With the rapid shift to the cloud, accelerated by the pandemic, we anticipate Microsoft 365 will continue to have a greater presence in the document management world for legal professionals.
While SharePoint Online provides tremendous functionality and scalability as a storage solution and content hub, it only gets you halfway to a complete document management system (DMS) and requires further integration.
Essentially a lightweight DMS, Colligo plus SharePoint provide a more complete DMS for legal professionals. Colligo harnesses the power of SharePoint and provides a more intuitive and vertical-specific interface for professionals to get more out of their Microsoft 365 investment.
Case file & case matter predominantly shared through email
Email remains the dominant method for sharing client files and transmitting documents. 59% of survey respondents said that their primary method of sharing client files and transmitting documents and case matter was through email. This comes despite the significant rise of communication applications (i.e., Teams or Slack) in the legal profession.
Case matter and other documents often contain sensitive and confidential content that needs to be tagged and filed, retained, and labelled correctly to protect it. Email remains the best way to do this, while Microsoft Teams is taking up a greater portion of document collaboration over time.
Unfortunately, tagging emails and attachments has historically been a process filled with friction. This accounts for the lower adoption and upkeep by lawyers and legal operations and assistants.
We believe utilizing an email management solution to help capture and tag content and better link with the repository can make a significant difference in the workflows and efficiency of legal professionals.
Time savings with an email capture solution are significant
One-third of all respondents at another recent webinar indicated they take more than three minutes, on average, to file an email without a solution like Colligo. Further, knowledge workers spend too much time searching for content. According to McKinsey, employees spend 1.8 hours a day, nearly 20 percent of their work week, searching for documents.
Fortunately, Colligo Email Manager and Content Manager allow users to capture, tag and file emails and records from within Outlook. Colligo significantly reduces the time users spend filing emails and properly tags emails with metadata and retention labels, ensuring valuable documents end up in the right place.
The legal landscape is changing. Law firms and corporate legal departments are leveraging more technology to improve efficiency and manage costs. Our aim is to move discovering content and properly filing content from a cost centre into a profit centre. This saves legal professionals time managing content and finding documents, while expanding billable time.
Time and effort remain the greatest hurdle
Change management continues to be the largest hurdle to adopting Microsoft 365 and other modern work applications. Time and effort was the most common challenge of modernizing their systems, according to our survey respondents. Resistance to change was a close second.
Fortunately, modern cloud-based applications make deploying new solutions easy. Many applications can be deployed and pushed out in less than 15 minutes. While the migration to a modern system still requires a significant lift, there are many partners and industry experts available in the Microsoft ecosystem who can help make this seamless.
We wake up every day thinking about how to make legal professionals’ daily business processes more efficient and productive. Colligo sees more of the legal profession adopting cloud solutions over the next few years and anticipates Microsoft 365 will continue to gain traction as the content services platform of choice.
However, to create a complete solution, legal firms need third-party solutions like Colligo to round out a lightweight document management system. Get in touch to see how we can get you started.
