Second Opinions

A California Lawyer Asks: How Can I Best Organize and Leverage My Legal Research?

Eric H. Steele and Thomas Scharbach

REUSING LEGAL work product is one of the most important business issues in the practice of law.

How well a law firm or law department manages its prior work product -- its most important tangible intellectual asset -- is critical to its efficiency, its ability to manage its knowledge resources effectively, and ultimately its ability to compete.

The results of legal research consist of two types of documents:

1. Final documents: The pleadings, briefs, memoranda created to handle a case. These final documents are important parts of the case file but they are also precedents for future cases and matters; and

2. Interim materials: Search queries, search results, case, statute, or article text. These materials all can be treated as documents -- search queries and search results can be copied into word processing documents for saving and reuse. Part or all of the text of cases and other materials can be copied into one or separate documents if you have them in electronic form, and images of paper documents (or file locations of documents you want to keep on paper) can be saved or inserted into word processing documents.

The keys to efficient work product retrieval are:

* A document management system that provides the capabilities you need and no more -- an easy-to-use system is far better than a really fancy, sophisticated system that is not widely used.

* Intuitively clear categories to organize the documents, ones that fit your practice and your needs. Precedent banks use "issue" and "topic" categories with lots of key words and phrases. Current working documents and case/matter files use "client" and "case/matter" categories.

An effective document management system designed to meet both sets of needs should include both types of categories.

* Consistent use of the precedent bank categories to classify every document that is judged to be valuable work product, so that it can be retrieved for reuse. Ditto for client and case/matter categories where documents are pertinent to particular clients and cases or matters. Interim search results and case text will often be coded by issue and topic, but not by client/matter. Negotiating or transmittal documents may be coded as part of a client/matter file but not as precedent. The best document management system will be useless if users do not fill information in fields and describe documents for retrieval and reuse.

Options

There is no one-size-fits-all solution for managing documents, available tools range from increasingly powerful features included in office suites, to very powerful but complex specialized document management software. Specialized electronic document management systems impose a significant cost in resources, time and complexity, but less complex processes and tools options may not fit the bill. So how do you decide what tools you need?

Choices include:

* Office Suites (MS Office or Corel WordPerfect Office): Managing documents using a carefully designed, logical hierarchical directory structure, and consistent directory, matter and document naming conventions.

* Office Suite Document Management Features: Managing documents using the office suite's document profiling or summaries, and indexed searching with a carefully designed, logical hierarchical directory structure, and consistent directory, matter and document naming conventions.

* Specialized Document Management Systems: Managing documents using specialized document management software (e.g. iManage, PC Docs, Worldox) and dedicated hardware that provides specialized features and capabilities.

What system is right for you? Build your precedent bank to manage research results using the same software system your firm uses to manage other documents, unless there is a good reason not to. You can add profile fields and document categories to tailor the system to support your brief bank.

So how do you know whether you need a specialized document management to support your brief bank? Specialized document management systems excel in fast-indexed full-text searching of huge document sets across multiple locations.

They offer the ability to configure and change custom document-by-document access; modify security on the fly (on an individual, work group or departmental basis); and have "check out/check in" of documents. But in light of what most lawyers do, absolute search speed and highly flexible security may be less important than the simplicity and ease of use and administration offered by Office Suite management tools.

Law practice rarely requires a needle- in-the-haystack search for a document where neither client, matter, author, date, issue or topic are known. Most current document usage is within the context of a particular matter or client, where fairly delimited searching is the rule. Precedent searching typically makes use of topic, issue and key word/phrase fields allowing it to be found by profile information without full text searching.

Specialized document management can add tremendous efficiency to the practice of law when the needs justify the investment. But if your law firm or law department does not regularly need the functions of a specialized electronic document management system, then do not to invest in the software, hardware, training, administration and support it requires. If the tools available in the firm's Office Suite will suffice, stick with them -- not only to save money, time and staff resources, but also to reduce ongoing user frustration and distraction from the productive practice of law.

When considering how best to manage documents, the analysis and decision process can be complex. But keep one fundamental premise in mind: a law firm or law department should not invest in or use technology for its own sake.

In other words, don't buy more system than you need -- your business is practicing law and the only justification for a document management system or any other technology is that it allows you to practice law more effectively, be more productive, and serve your clients better.

Thomas Scharbach and Eric H. Steele are principals of Steele Scharbach Associates L.L.C. a legal technology consulting firm.