Document Management for the Small Firm

 

For just organizing and finding your documents in a solo or small firm, however, most document management systems are complete overkill.  The result is, I have seen very few solo and small firms use full-blown document management systems.  Rather the sorts of systems I have seen them use have run as simple as organizing alphabetical client file folders in Windows (or your operating system of choice) to using the document management built into more comprehensive file management programs like Amicus, TimeMatters, or Abacus, to name the currently most popular.  I haven't seen their system, but I suspect RocketMatter has something similar as a web-based system.

 

Personally, I'm still a big fan, at least for a smaller firm, of just using your operating system.  Have a Docs folder and under it folders A-Z, and under that a folder for each client in alphabetical order, and then any additional folders that would be helpful (correspondence, notes, pleadings).  So, to find the retainer for Joe Smith, I'd just look under c:/docs/s/smith-joe/retainer.doc and if I wanted to see all the pleadings I've created in the case, I'd just go to c:/docs/s/smith-joe/pleadings.

 

Rather than a document management system, I would recommend that a small firm consider investing in a document creation program like HotDocs (a NexisLexis product like NetDocuments).  You have to spend some time up front creating the documents and there is a little learning curve using it, but if your practice involves a lot of forms, it is invaluable.  If you want something that gathers information about a case together in one "place," I'd recommend looking at a more comprehensive file management program like Amicus or TimeMatters (which is a LexisNexis product now).  Newer on the block in that space is Rocket Matter which gives the on-line "in the cloud" capability that NetDocuments seems to be talking about.

 

You might look at WorldDox - http://www.worldox.com/ - that is the one document management program I have seen some small to medium sized firms using.  It's ~$400 per concurrent user - they have a mobile version too.

 

NetDocuments looks like a good product.  Again, however, it looks like it's targeted at big law firms.  Their sales documents talk about law firms of all sizes, but the benefits - access between different offices, collaboration, central repository for document (version?) management - sound more like the big firm with huge cases, many attorneys, and many offices.  In their "What Our Customers Say" they very specifically label their clients as among the biggest firms:  http://law.lexisnexis.com/literature/LO16578-0i.pdf  It may be that they have a pricing structure that would make all this affordable to a solo or small firm and there are certainly solo and small firms doing complex practices where they would see the benefits of what I see being described.

 

- Peter H. Berge