Legal IndustryDocument Management Needs
Every business requires an effective mechanism for the storage and retrieval of documents, regardless of the size of the business or the industry, but the benefits of effective document management for the legal industry seem to surpass many others. The legal profession is one in which enormous volumes of documentation are generated and need to be appropriately and strategically stored since Document Retention and Retrieval is an Ethical Obligation.
Perhaps one of the most important requirements is for various documents to be associated to a particular client or matter. With an appropriate system, each and every document can effectively be stored, not just once, but tagged multiple times. If categories and tags are managed correctly, you will have no issues whatsoever in retrieving what you need, when you need it.
ExecQDocs takes this management of documents to another level by incorporating a powerful Workflow element within the product providing full audit trails and tracability to all documents.
History of DMS
Before computers became mainstream, physical files were stored and appropriately labelled. Documents were stored in a similar fashion to a library system so that they could be easily located and retrieved.
As businesses began to shift to a more computer driven way of working, the benefits of online storage of documents far outweighed physical storage. That’s not to say that physical storage became obsolete, but it was far more efficient to store and retrieve documents online.
Unfortunately, with computer systems, the internet and cloud technology advancing rapidly, so has online criminal activity and the need for security has become more and more in demand.
Few businesses today can operate without a Document Management System (DMS) of some sort. These systems allow you to store, organise, categorise, annotate and retrieve documents quickly and easily. With electronic processes added to this, the ability to escalate, arrange and manage meetings around the information being stored is endless.
Benefits of DMS in legal firms
For legal professionals, the ability to tag documents related to a client and/or matter makes it even more powerful and valuable.
All too often, organisations are broken down into departments (or silos) and as a result, documents are either copied multiple times or stored in different databases across the organisation.
With a document management system, those issues become totally redundant. What’s more, you don’t need to worry about the wrong people having access to sensitive information because the system is so secure.
In addition to the obvious benefits of being more efficient, and being so much kinder to the environment by moving ever closer to the desired ‘paperless’ office, ExecQDocs will bring the following benefits to your legal firm:
- ExecQDocs is a cloud based system which means that you get a system that is always on, anytime, from anywhere and on any device. You don’t have to outlay capital to set up and manage an IT infrastructure.
- ExecQDocs can integrate with any other system, including your email. No matter what systems you use for Accounting, Billing, Time management, the system is able to seamlessly integrate with these systems.
- Physical documents can be easily scanned in directly.
- You’ll be able to tag each and every bit of information in a multitude of ways, including relating to a particular matter. The powerful and fast search functionality saves valuable time and frustration.
- Any time a document is updated or edited, a new version is saved so that you have a full audit trail of change history as and when needed.
- In some instances, electronic workflows allowing approvals before going on to the next step allow for effective control of processes.
- Entire legal cases can be handled electronically – with video and audio clips included in the electronic document library supported by processes.
