With the wide range of technology options available to firms, it’s a challenge for firms to know what’s right for your law firm. One such suggestion is having both a case management system and document management system acts as the core foundation for your legal practice.
Advanced has recently announced that it has worked alongside document management experts NetDocuments and integration specialists Xperate in creating an integration between NetDocuments and Advanced’s P4W practice and case management solution.
We know there are a number of myths around document management as part of a law firm’s tech stack, and this blog will debunk some of these so that you can have the facts when looking at what is best for your firm’s tech stack and why document management should be included in your considerations.
Myth 1: Document management is not essential for mid-size firms
It is often said that document management is more of a ‘nice thing to have’. But the benefits of document management are powerful enough to be considered essential in its own right aside from case management including:
- finding documents with ease and saving up to 20% of billable time searching for documents;
- governance tools to ensure data security and secure collaboration;
- predictive email filing and de-duplication to ensure nothing is misfiled or missed; and
- version histories so the most up-to-date document is used every time.
Myth 2: The document management tools built into case management systems are good enough
While document management tools within a case management system provide some management, these often do not go far enough to bring within them the benefits that a standalone document management solution can.
By combining a DMS with your case management system, you are ensuring that your documents are best managed both in and out of your CMS. This means that filing is fast and simple, and everything can be found within your case management system.
Myth 3: Document management is too expensive; we can’t fit both a CMS and DMS into the budget
From a purely ‘upfront’ financial perspective, cloud-based document management solutions such as NetDocuments tend to be more budget friendly than some solutions that you may be familiar with in the market - thanks to lower cost of ownership, including lower up-front investment, reduced IT and hardware costs, as well as predictable monthly costs compared to on-premises solutions.
Looking at return on investment over time, document management prevents loss of revenue in several ways including recovering loss of billable time searching for files and preventing compliance issues from utilising incorrect or previous file versions which combined can retain thousands in revenue.
