Second Opinions

Our Big Firm Wants to Go Paper-less

By John L. Mellitz

LITIGATORS ARE different. No matter how large the firm, each litigator is, at heart, a solo practitioner. Administration, rules, procedures, record keeping ­ all are wasteful activities with respect to "the case."

I am not at all surprised to hear that the litigation department wants something familiar when it comes to its working environment. It means they don't have to waste precious time dealing with administrative trivia, such as document summaries or profiles.

Solo and small firm practitioners wouldn't think of using a document management system for two reasons:

1. They have neither the time nor the need to keep track of and record all the information called for in a document summary.

2. The way they must interact with the document management system is foreign to them, and they want to continue to use the organizational skills and operational methods they have developed over a long period of time.

It is difficult for large firm administrators to think in terms of non-mainstream systems for their organizations. Accordingly, document management is synonymous with Hummingbird International's DOCSOpen, (formerly PC DOCS), and iManage, from iManage Inc.

Worldox, from World Software Corp., sometimes makes the cut when cost is an issue, or when a client/server environment is absent. (A client/server system divides computer work among large, main servers and individual workstations so as to optimize the management of much large amounts of information. It is also much more expensive than traditional PC-based local area networks). From the litigators perspective such thinking is akin to choosing among elephant guns for a squirrel hunt.

Nevertheless, document management is a subset of practice management, and it is in the practice management arena where you'll find appropriate answers.

The developers of practice management systems include DMS as an integrated component of their systems. However, when addressing the needs of the large firm, they cannot ignore the expensive, entrenched, 800 pound gorilla represented by the firm's existing DMS.

Accordingly, the PM developers have begun to develop links between their systems and the in-place systems that are considered "best of breed." Worldox was the first such in-place system that they tackled because the link was fairly easy to develop. Accordingly, you see that Software Technology Inc.'s Case Master 10, Gavel & Gown Inc.'s Amicus Attorney V, and DATA.TXT's Time Matters 4 all can work hand-in-hand with Worldox.

DOCSOpen and iManage present greater programming challenges, partly because of the difficulty in getting information from their publishers, and partly because of the underlying technology.

As of now, I know that ProLaw (from Provolution Corp.) has addressed this challenge with a certain degree of success. However, implementing ProLaw, with its comprehensive back office, front office, whole office approach, represents a very sizeable investment in a lot of sophisticated and proprietary technology that may not be used.

The only other company appearing on the horizon is DATA.TXT Corp. with its scheduled summer release of an interim upgrade to Time Matters 4.0 that will include what they bill as sophisticated, seamless links with DOCSOpen and iManage. This development appears to be part of a trend to address the needs of large firms, as evidenced by their previous releases of a client/server version of Time Matters, and their recent strategic alliance with Lexis-Nexis.

Tom Rowe, vice president of sales for DATA.TXT, says that from the user's perspective, the link will work the same as their existing link with Worldox. If this is the case, then it would appear that Time Matters will be a viable, economical way of reconciling the DMS needs of the litigation department with the existing DOCSOpen DMS.

Under this arrangement, (or if they decide to cut themselves off from the DOCSOpen system and use one of the other practice management systems), the litigators will see a familiar, hierarchical filing system, replete with folders for clients and cases, and tabs on sliver files for pleadings, correspondence, memoranda, etc. However, when they click on the "Save" icon, the document will morph into a DOCSOpen document with a proprietary naming and filing system "under the hood."

For purposes of this article I am going to assume the litigation department is looking for an "interface" that emulates the way they file their documents manually. That means that they don't care what happens to the documents "under the hood." This is an important distinction, because it profoundly affects the solutions that are or may become available.

It goes without saying that the DOCSOpen document management system is going to determine where and how documents are filed on the firm's servers. This means that computer savvy lawyers won't be able to bring up Windows Explorer and use it's search capabilities to locate a document. DOCSOpen will continue to use its proprietary technology to place the bits and bytes on the hard disk, and to assign names to files that are meaningless to most humans.

However, the litigators want to see a graphical representation of their traditional manual filing system, and DOCSOpen does not offer this. If the litigation department could be isolated from the rest of the firm and allowed to go their own way, there are any number of case management systems and filing schemes that they can use. Of course, this would severely compromise the office computer system and produce both organizational and administrative nightmares. Hence, the need for a system to "supplement" the DOCSOpen system.

Large firms are, by necessity, departmentalized. In many, if not most, cases the departments have their own, practice-specific software systems. Given this tendency to accommodate their departments, large firms may well be receptive to the idea of a separate, supplementary document management system if it improves the productivity of the department without seriously compromising the integrity of the overall practices of the firm. For most large firms, the practice of law takes precedence over administrative convenience unless the latter is essential to the firm's mission.

The Balkanization, or arbitrary classification of software systems by large firm information services departments as suitable for large, medium or small firms has been the rule for many years. Only when they measure the utility of software systems objectively against the actual needs of their in-house clients do imaginative answers rise to the surface.

John L. Mellitz is the principal of Mellitz & Associates, based in Tiburon, Calif., and St. Louis, Mo. He is a Time Matters authorized independent consultant, and Timeslips certified consultant.