The sharing of files or email documents, whether internally or externally, requires adherence to compliance and data protection laws. NetDocuments is largely used by legal practitioners and offers a single and integrated solution for files with inherent security, governance, and collaboration features.

While NetDocuments is widely accepted among law practitioners for secure storage of legal documents, SharePoint enables easy file sharing and collaboration internally within the team and also provides remote access. SharePoint also provides faster access to users once the NetDocuments files are copied in SharePoint. SharePoint allows attorneys to streamline the files in specific folders with provision to create several sub-folders to maintain all the documents related to individual cases. It also helps in creating SharePoint sites making each case a unique website for lawyers to manage different cases. It can also contain web parts such as calendars, and task lists among others.

Several legal firms have invested in both these solutions to gain the best of both worlds. However, the challenge remains in the seamless integration of these two solutions, as manually moving files, folders, and documents could be a tedious task requiring the allocation of valuable resources for unproductive man-hours.

Typically, law firms or attorneys spend a considerable amount of time managing and updating case files. According to AIIM (Association for Intelligent Information Management), nearly 81% of organizations report difficulty in accessing information across multiple platforms, including mobile devices. Lawyers face overwhelming challenges, especially when documents are placed in multiple locations, and are required to manually transfer files using insecure platforms. According to industry estimates, law firms lose about 10% of productive hours in managing document challenges such as searching for documents and retrieving/recreating untraceable documents.

Among other complexities faced with storing documents across multiple locations, accessing data from a “single source of truth” has become a top priority for knowledge management teams. Quite often, these teams are grappling with multiple sources of the same data, spending significant time as well as effort to identify the appropriate content relevant for lawyers and attorneys.

A 2015 study from AIIM also indicates that one in four workers fail to conform with document management and retention rules. The legal industry requires an industry-specific Enterprise Content Management (ECM)/Business Process Management (BPM) software that meets the twin criteria of optimal man-hours that are profitable for lawyers and cost-efficient for clients. Law firms are looking to strengthen their intranet systems with an intuitive interface that allows easy access to an internal team with security features. Without a proper solution in place, it becomes difficult to manage each case for search, sort, and web portal interface.

The industry requires a strong value proposition that would allow the seamless experience of working across both these solutions without having to move the files from their primary location.

Tracks user activity and shows up to last 40 recent documents with options to search categorically with ‘most recently searched’, ‘most recently opened’, and ‘most recently edited’.

Provides a standard view of the content with the ability to access documents using point and click. The WebPart also enables the user to view saved search and filters in a folder or sub-folder.

Displays documents from multiple sources of cabinets, folders, and workspaces. It functions as a file manager application and provides an intuitive interface to access folders and sub-folders in a tree structure.