Does It Compute?

Why Document Management - Technolawyer Articles

Last December I released a major White Paper on Document Management. The Technolawyer listserve – a primary source of reviews and information about software for lawfirms – asked me to condense the 25+ pages into two shorter summaries. 

Those have now been published as  “Document Management Systems: Why Bother and How to Shop for One,” published on March 17 and 24.  These two articles, as well as my original White Paper, are available on the “Document Management Issues” page of my web site.

Document Management and eDiscovery

Although I am not particularly knowledgeable about the details of eDiscovery, it has always seemed to me that a well-implemented Document Management system such as Worldox would give a firm a considerable leg up when it came to eDiscovery issues. I was therefore extremely interested in well-known technologist and eDiscovery expert Brett Burney's review of version of ISYS:Desktop 9 in Technolawyer. Brett noted:

    Since my career swirls around eDiscovery, I kept thinking of ISYS:desktop in that framework. While ISYS:desktop is amazing for everyday searching, I got excited about the possibilities of using the software to quickly review emails and documents for privilege and eventual production.

ISYS:desktop is no match for full-featured litigation databases like CT Summation, Concordance, or the online eDiscovery powerhouses. Those applications provide a platform for reviewers to enter information about each document, "tagging" relevant files and creating production logs, for example.

But ISYS:desktop absolutely has a place in the litigation support tool belt. Many times, litigation teams simply want a quick, easy tool to just get an idea of what documents they have, a sort of "lay of the land" if you will. You may not always need the full power of CT Summation or Concordance until you get a better handle on what kind of documents you have.

In this scenario, ISYS:desktop is an incredible tool for initiating a "quick peek" at documents. And in version 9, ISYS:desktop has improved indexing tools that does not disturb the metadata of files, so you can rest assured that your data is preserved.

ISYS is the search engine that Worldox licenses for indexing. Using Worldox, you can do a wide variety of searches with a full range of boolean operators, etc. Worldox lets you build a mark-up table for use in the comments field, so you could use the little-known feature to mark up search results for privilege and other criteria.

While it is certainly not a replacement for full eDiscovery (it will not deal with secured files, non-searchable PDFs, images, etc.), using a Document Management system such as Worldox could well provide a firm with an extremely valuable "first pass" and streamline the eDiscovery process.

Autonomy Acquires Interwoven - More

The Orange Rag recently had a post on Automony’s acquisition of Interwoven. In addition to speculation on possible reasons for the acquisition and the future/changes to Interwoven (including possibly renaming it back to iManage), one of the most interesting points it makes concerns the role of a Document Management System in the e-discovery process.

To the extent that a DMS can claim to be organizing ALL your documents, and has mechanisms for organizing them and performing complex searches, it can serve as a significant step up in the EDD process. This seems to me an important point which has been neglected.

Document management Issues

I have been reviewing my articles and posts on document management issues. Even I was surprised that my earliest newsletter on the subject, Number 4, “Why Document Management” is dated March 1998.

I have assembled the main references to a central location on my web site, at
http://www.heckmanco.com/dmissues.html

They include my recent 27-page white paper: “Why Document Management: A White Paper” as well as previous newsletters and blog posts that are precursors to the white paper and/or cover specific issues.

In addition, there are links to my Worldox “Cheat Sheet” and Worldox “Frequently Asked Questions” about how to do specific things in Worldox.

Document Management Overview

The January 2009 issue of Law Practice Today has published a really useful article by Debbie Foster and Steve Best outlining the history and characteristics of Document Management systems. Their definition of types of Document Management Systems (from manual to full-fledged DMS, including hybrid systems offered by many case management systems) and list of things to look for in a DMS is particularly useful.

One issue they don’t address is the question of workflow – routing documents for approval, etc. Not all systems have this feature, and many of those that do tend to be of the “hybrid” variety. So choosing this option may mean not being able to have other functionality that may be equally or more important. This can be a difficult choice.

A separate issue – especially important in a disastrous economy – is how much time (and thus money) implementing one of these systems can save a firm by increased efficiency and rapid retrieval of documents.

I have also dealt with this topic in my “Why Document Management: A White Paper,” available on my web site.

Why Document Management: A White Paper

I have just finished a major White Paper entitled “Why Document Management: A White Paper,” which is available on my web site on the CheatSheet page (or at the top of the left bar on the home page).

The paper is an effort to do three things:

1.  Explain why even smaller firms should implement document management.

2.  Examine what functionality a good document management system should provide, especially when managing all electronic data, including emails and scanned documents is critical.

3.  Provide some tips and “best practices” in the process of implementing document management.

A hyperlinked list of document management vendors and related software is appended to the document.

Any comments and feedback would be welcome.

Document Management -- Information Management?

When programs such as Amicus Attorney or Time Matters first appeared some 15 or so years ago, they were known as “case management” programs.  Then, this was felt to be too limited: they did after all manage more than individual cases, they managed the firm’s entire practice, so they were rebaptized “practice management” programs.

Similarly with document management systems. As the flood of electronic information expanded to include emails, electronically delivered faxes, scanned documents, pages saved from a Web site, and so on, the more grandiose term “knowledge management” was coined. However, this has always been somewhat abortive and never really caught on.

Programs such as Interwoven’s Worksite have been pushing a “Universal Search” – a federated search engine that combines various types of searches into a single query and single list of results, a sort of Internet mashup on a grand scale. 

There is a core truth among all the overblown grandiloquence here: the avalanche of electronic information needs to be managed somehow. The problem with overblown claims is that much of a firm’s knowledge resides in the experience of various attorneys and is not written down anywhere: hence the failure of “knowledge management” to make much headway as a category. Secondly, what a firm needs to manage is primarily its “own” information: attempts to federate Google-type searches with their 2 million hits with a document management system, with various databases, etc., and call it “Universal Search” are bound to produce more chaos than useful results.

Whatever it’s called, a document management system acts to direct, control and organize the flow of electronic information through the firm. Perhaps “information management” would be a better term, but that is unlikely to catch on. The bottom line is that true Artificial Intelligence is not on the horizon yet when a key ingredient of the equation is the knowledge and experience of attorneys or other specialists.

Toward a Document Management White Paper

Over the past several years I have written extensively about document management issues.  The following list represents a kind of table of contents on the way to a more extensive document management white paper. The hyperlinks point to the source of that particular post or article.

Introduction

    Why Document Management?  (Newsletter 25, June 2003)
    DIY Document Management - NOT (9/2/08)
    Considerations on Document Management (2/11/08)
    What Functionality Do You Need?  (5/24/07)
    Tips on Implementing Document Management (Newsletter 31, 2006)
    Every Installation a Snowflake? (1/18/2008)

Basic Functionality
    Searching (5/16/07)
    DM as a Centralizing Force (1/24/08)
    Security  (4/24/08)
    “Taking it with You” (5/28/08)

Email
    Managing Email Attachments (7/21/08)
    Getting Archived emails into Worldox (7/31/08)

Scanning
    Planning for Scanning (2/22/08)
    Moving Toward Paperless (1/14/08)

Workflow
    Workflow Issues – Email (8/30/07)
    Workflow Issues When Scaning (7/25/07; 8/31/07)

Other
    Brief Banks – Why Aren’t They More Common?  (11/26/07)
    Document Assembly (8/8/2008)
    Document Assembly - Productivity Enhancer (12/03/07)

DIY Docuement Management? NOT

Every so often you come across programs or people suggesting that file naming conventions and a structure can function as a “free” version of document management.  Frequently these systems propose a structure that does indeed mimic what a document management system would offer, name organizing files by client, matter, document type and with a naming convention starting with date: “YYYY-MM-DD name of file.doc” or some such. This is sometimes combined with a desktop search engine for indexing.

Is a DIY Document Management system realistic? The problem with these systems is that they are (a) manual; (b) depend on accurate input from end users; and (c) offer very limited capabilities in comparison with a true document management system.  So the question is, what features and functionality do you want from “document management?” The basic items can be broken down as follows, in my opinion:

(1)    You want usage to be enforced. You do not want to have people have to think about whether or not they will follow a voluntary convention. The firm needs to control and track all its documents. This is doubly true with the new electronic discovery rules, where it might be argued that someone who stored a file not in the proper place was trying to hide something. This has actually happened for deletion of emails and penalties have run into the millions of dollars.
(2)    You want the naming to be automated. Why should you type in “YYYY-MM-DD” for every single file you save when you can get the computer to store that information for you? Why should you have to scroll through a bunch of directories when the document management program can search an index qualitatively faster?
(3)    You want it to integrate your email, so that all documents, scanned items and email are available with a single search.
(4)    You want full boolean search capabilities that combines full-text searching with a matter-centric approach.  Examples:
    – Find all documents with “tax*” in the title (i.e., tax, taxes, taxing, taxed) and that contain “2004" in the document.
    – Find all pleadings that contain “malptractice” within 10 words of “negligence” that were done in the last 6 months.
    – Find all the emails from John Smith relating to the Haversack matter.
(5)    You want full version control without having to have a separate file for each version. You want to be able to find them all at once and if necessary compare different versions.
(6)    You want to be able to create security groups for specific files and/or departments (e.g., Human Resources, Management Committee).
(7)    You want an audit trail of who worked on a document, printed it, copied it, etc.

A DIY “document management” system will do none of these things. Trying to create one will simply be very time-consuming, and the minute-here, minute-there adds up very rapidly.

Document Assembly

The June issue of the ABA’s GPSolo magazine is devoted to a variety of technology issues, from planning and purchase of new computers and software to disaster recovery.  This can serve as a companion to the recently released book “The 2008 Solo and Small Firm Legal Technology Guide” also published by the ABA.

For my money, one of the most important articles is the one on Document Assembly by Seth and Rose Rowland. If only a third or so of small firms implement a case management or document management program, certainly not more than a third of those firms use any significant document assembly routines (and that’s being generous).

Yet a document assembly program can provide the biggest return on investment of any technology you use.  I once had a client who invested in customizing his Trust and Estates practice using HotDocs linked to Amicus Attorney.  By having the information available in Amicus, and answering some questions, he could assemble a complete set of documents - a basic Will, Trust Agreement, Living Wills, Health Care Agent, Power of Attorney, Guardian, and Conservator for both the client and the spouse. Typical of document assembly routines, you begin by being asked whether the client is Male of Female. Based on that answer, the gender all the pronouns and references to “Client” and “Spouse” are adjusted accordingly. Of course, not all of these documents might have been relevant to the particular case, and he still had to customize them for the client’s particular needs, but instead of taking several hours to assemble and edit the relevant document, he was ready to proceed to detailed customization in a matter of minutes.

HotDocs document assembly provides the user with considerable “intelligence.” That is, you answer questions in an interview, and based on the answers, it assembles the document and makes a variety of changes (gender being one of the most obvious).

There is another set of document assembly programs that are “clause based.” You create a library of clauses and then pick and choose from the ones you want. Pathagoras is one of this. I recently saw another similar program called “PowerReuse” (the name gives you an idea of what is does. 

To a lesser degree, simple document assembly functionality is also from within Practice Management programs such as Time Matters and Amicus Attorney.

The key here is to figure out exactly what your needs are (and how complex the documents you wish to assemble are), and then choose the appropriate level of document assembly.