Law firms generate a vast amount of paperwork. A typical day in a law firm involves the manual creation and review of documents. Unfortunately, this is not sustainable, especially for hybrid law firms.

The solution to this is the Document Management System (DMS). In this article, we’ll explain everything you need to know about legal DMSs and why they’re an excellent fit for your law firm.

What is a Legal Document Management System?

A legal Document Management System (DMS) helps your firm create, review, assign and organise documents digitally. It eliminates the manual creation and storage of documents in a firm.

Law firms can leverage the power of a legal DMS to configure workflows, and manage, retrieve, store, and secure document data. 

Benefits of a Legal Document Management System

Here are some benefits to enjoy when you adopt a legal DMS.

Optimum Security

No firm is infallible, and documents are highly prone to misplacement and theft. An excellent legal DMS secures your documents by providing cloud backup. With this feature, you don't have to worry about losing your documents.

Easy Organisation

A legal document management system helps you organise legal documents by practice area, client, document type, date created, matter, and any other categorisation you wish. 

Legal DMSs can index stored data, making it easy to remember the content or title of a digital document for future retrieval. Also, a good DMS can scan and convert documents received (outside the firm) into electronic formats like PDF.

Easy Access

Cloud-based DMS solutions allow you to create, store and share documents remotely. This gives you easy access to information and helps you stay abreast of a client case—no matter where you are. 

How to Implement a Legal Document Management System

To begin using a DMS, you’ll first need to adopt legal software like LawMaster’s that has a document management feature. Other key features include matter management, document management, practice management and financial management. 

For firms considering LawMaster, the first step is to book a Needs Based Analysis (NBA) to determine your firm's specific requirements. This is a complimentary process which consists of a series of interviews with your team. We'll usually speak to about 30% of your staff across various departments and levels to establish your firm's needs. 

The NBA allows us to understand how your firm can get the most out of LawMaster's DMS. 

It’s often a good idea to inform your clients about this change and explain how it will serve them better.

Once you have everyone's vote of confidence, you can now proceed to implement a legal DMS that fits your firm's needs.

How a Document Management System Can Help Your Hybrid Law Firm

Streamlined Workflows

Workflows are an integral component of your law firm. The success of a law firm is based on how seamless its workflows are. A good legal DMS has workflows that allow clients and associates to approve, assign, review, and sign documents. 

These workflows allow your firm to maximise potential and have seamless matter management.

Client Satisfaction 

Adopting a legal document management system helps you serve clients better. A legal DMS reduces the need to sift through piles of paper documents before attending to clients. Also, a legal DMS keeps you informed about all documents related to a client's case or matter.

Increased Collaboration Among Teams

Working as a team helps to maximise the success of your law firm. However, collaboration would be complex if your firm has associates in different locations and documents are centralised in a physical location.

Integrating your firm's documents into a DMS makes collaboration easier among team members. Associates can share relevant information at the office and remotely. In the long run, this dramatically increases the firm's productivity.

Final Thoughts

Documents are vital to law firms. Using a Document Management System to organise, manage and distribute documents puts your firm steps ahead.

LawMaster's Document Management System is highly functional. With benefits like electronic mailroom, automation, high-end security and integrated workflows, you can easily digitise the documenting needs of your firm. 

Book your Needs Based Analysis today or contact us to learn more.