Collaboration, Document Management and the Cloud

The growth of online collaboration tools presents a conundrum for law firms: both an opportunity and a problem.  First, the structure of the problem. 

The leader of online collaboration is probably Google Docs. Google has also released a plugin to Microsoft Word that lets you sync your Word documents with Google Docs. You can give other people rights to view/edit specified documents. However, you have to manually upload selected documents to Google.

Alternatively, using one of a variety of products – DropBox, Smartsync, Sugarsync, SpiderOak, etc. (and new products are popping up at a rapid rate) – you define a directory on your local hard drive and synchronize it with the directory in the cloud. So if you make a change to a file on your hard drive, it is changed in the cloud and vice versa. You can also share the cloud location with other people, so that multiple users can make edits to the same file. The features and functionality of these programs is expanding rapidly to meet competition. Dropbox is probably the leading program, but has been plagued with security issues that have made many people leery of it.

So if you want to create a “extranet” where you can park selected documents for a given client, you could easily use one of these programs or Box.Net (which I use for sharing files with clients).  Similarly, a “war room” for litigation could be created so that various parties to the litigation would have access.  The advantages of sharing files across platforms (PC, phones, Mac, etc.) are obvious.

From a document management point of view, what’s wrong with this picture?  Just about everything. First, it is based on a single individual.  The files reside on your local PC (not a network). So if you wanted somebody else in your firm to work on them, you would have to give them rights to the cloud-based repository. Second, everything about the system is manual. There is no automated save, no indexing, no searching, no “management” features at all. Josh’s trip to Africa is not an adequate model for law firms.

Some more business-oriented programs, such as KnowledgeTree, at adding more “document management” type features, including searching, adding “smart tags” that are searchable to a document, and so on. These will no doubt evolve rapidly (as did NetDocuments a few years ago), but right not they don’t measure up as full-fledged document management systems.

The key aspect of document management from a legal point of view, is the ability to lock down the systems so that use is mandatory: no manually uploading documents. The problem is that once the “synchronized” repository is in the cloud it is outside the reach of the document management system. There is no way to produce an audit trail, track usage, etc. Many of the DropBox-type programs do maintain an audit trail of what happens to documents in the cloud. So in theory, it should be possible to write an API link (as many practice management programs have done) that links the information about what happens in the cloud to the DMS. This has not happened as yet.

So a major challenge facing document management systems will be to develop the ability to establish a link between the DMS system and the “synchronized folders” in a cloud-based repository that otherwise resides outside the purview of the DMS.  Right know, the only way I know of to do this is a multi-step manual process (see my blog on Integrating Worldox with DropBox. 

Whatever company comes up with a solution to this problem will have a major step up on the competition.

Comments

[Christopher Cardinal]

John,

Would it not be a relatively simple conceptual leap to make the cloud repository and DM front-end/back-end one and the same? That is to say, a DMS whose tentacles reach into the Cloud (where the actual documents are stored) and exposes a desktop (or web) UI to users. A simple Explorer extension, similar to DropBox or Credenza's WebDocs, would provide the UI to get/set these documents.

You're right that a DMS is really a document police state where everything must be controlled and accounted for. Where the documents are stored is orthogonal to that regime.

[John Heckman]

Chris,
The “leap” is not conceptual, it is practical. A local, server-based DMS like Worldox intercepts every file I/O command when storing or retrieving documents and brings up Worldox instead. Programs that use the Windows explorer extensions do not do this. NetDocuments is an exception, but even there, there is an initial save locally, and then it uploads to the web, although the process is transparent to the user. Neither DropBox nor Credenza can do that. In addition, most people think just in terms of Microsoft Office and maybe Acrobat. A central issue that remains to be addressed is Outlook integration. And there are many many other programs out there that law firms use. In your scenario, I don’t believe you can answer affirmatively to the following types of issues (note that if you substitute “Worldox” for “web repository” the answer to all the following is “yes”):

1. In addition to MS Office, can you save documents directly to the web (without going through Windows Explorer) from programs such as Outlook, Open Office, WordPerfect, etc.?
2. I download a file from the web using IE, Firefox or Chrome. Does the DMS interpose and save it directly to the web repository?
3. I use one of many law-firm specific programs. Say West’s e-transcript binder. When you save or retrieve an e-transcript binder file does it go to/download directly from the web repository?
4. If I want to run a document comparison using Workshare, CompareDocs or a similar program, or want to have a metadata scanner such as Metadata Assistant, will it integrate directly with the web repository?
5. If I have to upload a file to a proprietary site (say, the US Patent Office), will it open the web repository and let you select the file?
6. I have my repository. I want to burn a CD using Roxio (probably the most common CD burning program). If I open Roxio, will it take the files directly from the web repository?

There are dozens of examples. The devil is in the details. The problem is not conceptual, but practical.