May 1999

Three Law Firms Bring Documents to Order

Document solutions are essential to any law practice. Here's how three firms took technology to the next level.

Confidential internal test results and memos are pulled out of corporate records from the ı50s and ı60s. Soon, state attorneys general from all over the country are sharing evidence and joining forces in a landmark tobacco suit . . .

Copies of emails traded between top executives at two high-tech firms reveal that discounts were extended soon after one party agreed to drop a rivalıs software . . .

Not every legal case reaches the epic dimensions of the impeachment hearings or the Microsoft anti-trust case, but you can bet that document technologies played a role in gathering, ferreting out and/or distributing the evidence. Document technology helps attorneys cull significant facts, meet client turnaround expectations, tap knowledge assets, enhance staff productivity and provide high quality work at reasonable costs. Providing the right tools can help a firm attract and retain top-notch lawyers.

Ask New York law firm Kelley, Drye and Warren. The partners implemented imaging to keep sensitive documents and small batches in house, but the speed and flexibility of the system has convinced them to digitize corporate merger and acquisitions paperwork. An upgrade to 32-bit technology at California firm Sheppard Mullin brought Web accessability in the bargain. Trademark specialists Pattishall, McAuliffe, Newbury, Hilliard & Geraldson were stuck on word processing. Doc man tamed the chaos and added specialized billing and indexing features.

In-house Solution Provides Imaging on Demand

Litigation support is a process of finding grains of helpful evidence within mountains of documents. In product liability, for example, litigators may have to examine hundreds of thousands of documents, most of which remain in paper form.

Marshalling the facts and retrieving the source documents containing them, poses several challenges. Capture must be reliable and fast as the trial date looms. Indexing must be granular at the document page level -- not the folder level as is possible for other application types. Display capabilities must include windowing and highlighting to show the jury examples of contradictory statements side by side. You have to be able to redact documents to block privileged information from being revealed in court.

The need to read, code, index and easily retrieve documents is all too familiar at Kelley, Drye and Warren, a 160-year-old, 300-attorney firm headquartered in New York. Tom Morrissey, manager of litigation support services, originally joined the firm to handle Union Carbideıs deadly chemical plant accident in Bhopal, India -- a case that involved 4.5 million documents.

Until 1997, Kelley Drye typically sent boxes of documents to a service bureau for scanning and coding. This presented problems. Some lawyers declared documents too confidential for outside eyes. The law firm also had offshore coding operations available to it, but these, too, were not always secure. Another problem was that service bureaus would sometimes refuse smaller jobs to concentrate on larger revenue streams from big cases.

To cope with these problems, Morrissey implemented Doculex (Winter Haven, FL) Capture and View-It software in conjunction with the law firmıs litigation support database software, called Summation. Paralegals and others now review incoming documents, record pertinent data in Summation and then select document indexing fields on pre-printed mark sense cover sheets. A scanning station captures document images while Doculex Capture reads the mark sense codes, enabling automatic indexing. Doculex stores the image index tables, making it possible for users to search Summation and then display document images.

With Doculex View It, any of the firmıs 25 users can display, print, redact and annotate scanned images. View-It contains all necessary tools for courtroom presentation, and you can permanently brand redactions onto the document image. When opposing counsel requests documents, the firm uses Doculex to print images or write them to CD for delivery. Doculexıs free viewer, called ıEddie,ı can be incorporated on the CD, allowing access to the images without other software. Doculex can also automatically print a Bates number on each document page.

Using the software has saved the firm nearly 20% on scanning costs, according to Morrissey. Turnaround time is faster for documents scanned in-house, and quality assurance is better. Sensitive or historic documents can be kept in house, eliminating the cost and risk of transporting documents and reducing wear and tear. Though documents are scanned in New York, the firmıs Stamford, CT, Chicago and Los Angeles offices have access to the images using Summation with image viewers. If opposing counsel provides document images on CD-ROM, the Doculex viewer can open them as well.

Using a laptop PC with Doculex Viewing software and a video projector, attorneys can show mediators key document images with pertinent contract verbiage highlighted. In one case, this helped the firm settle a dispute in favor of their client in less than one day.

Kelley Dryeıs initial investment in imaging with Doculex was about $10,000, a cost that was recouped within six months, according to Morrissey. Implementation took less than one month, including training time, even though the Litigation Support unit previously had only minimal direct experience with imaging. Morrissey says the next step will be to tackle trademark documents and closing documents associated with corporate mergers and acquisitions.

32-bit Upgrade Paves The Way to the Web

The need to upgrade systems affects law firms just as it does other industry segments. The American Bar Associationıs 1998 survey of technology used by law firms shows that advances in performance, declining prices, the systems requirements of advanced software programs and the World Wide Web are driving law firms to migrate to high-end capabilities.

At Sheppard, Mullin, Richter and Hampton, the need to migrate to 32-bit products such as WordPerfect 8.0 and MS Word 97 also meant replacing an older document management system. A network upgrade meant that the companyıs 16-bit SoftSolutions application would no longer be supported.

Justifying a sizable expenditure in technology hinged on several factors. First, the firm realized that its clients were demanding the fastest possible service, something that well-applied technology can deliver. Second, the choice to upgrade was strongly advocated by Eric Goldreich, the firmıs 10-year-veteran director of technology.

ıThe partners realized the danger in becoming archaic,ı Goldreich says. ıThe alternative was to continue using WordPerfect 6.1 forever.ı

Goldreich began the search for a successor product in late 1997. With 190 attorneys in four locations in California, the firmıs main requirements were scalability and client/server architecture. Goldreich chose iManage from NetRight (San Mateo, CA). He says the main selling point for the NetRight product was its three-tier architecture, flexibility, reliability and strong references from customers.

ıA migration strategy from SoftSolutions was icing on the cake,ı says Goldreich. ıI was impressed with the quality of NetRight people. They were bright, committed and accessible.ı

iManage 4.0 offers thin client access and extensive software for Windows NT servers. At its core, NRT DMS server provides document management functionality with features such as check-in, check out, version control, document search and security. Other programs include Indexing Server to provide document indexing in multiple DMS libraries, Database Management to configure multiple databases across the network and Service Manager to monitor and configure document management services across the network. Client workstations connect to the DMS Server and through it to database servers and other boxes.

Sheppard Mullinıs six-figure purchase included network user licenses for more than 500 employees, primarily attorneys and their assistants. Implementation began in the Costa Mesa office, where 80 users gained access to about two million documents. All the firmıs documents -- letters, briefs, pleadings, etc., -- are profiled at creation. Access to word processing is granted only after the author completes the document profile screen. Sheppard Mullinıs suite of in-house developed macros remained intact with iManage; document templates and macros open automatically based on profiling information.

The firm also has licenses for iManage Internet, which brings document management features to Java-compatible browsers. iManage Internet features encrypted communication and is scalable from small workgroups to thousands of seats. At present, gaining web-based access to documents is a longer-term strategy for Sheppard Mullin.

One of the greatest benefits the firm has realized to date is the absence of crashing and freezing that used to occur regularly. Should a glitch occur, iManage is inherently fault-tolerant; if a file server crashes, work is transparently saved to hard drives. When the system comes back up, saved work gets relinked to the document management database.

Goldreichıs staff did the iManage installation without the aid of integrators. They deliberately took a phased approach so they could provide high levels of service and support as implementation progressed throughout all four locations. Goldreich says the transition to iManage has been easy for end users, and now theyıre able to perform even complex searches within less than ten seconds.

Versioning Fix Extends Billing Functionality

As recently as April 1998, Pattishall, McAuliffe, Newbury, Hilliard & Geraldsonıs 30 attorneys had limited means of sharing documents. Said to be the nationıs oldest law firm specializing in trademark work, Pattishall grappled with multiple document versions. Two word processing shifts faced problems when one shift overrode or changed documents created or updated by the other shift. Document naming standards existed but were not adhered to. When turnover occurred, documents could not be found. New employees questioned why better tools to share information werenıt available.

It didnıt take elaborate cost-benefit analysis to show that document management was needed. According to Michael Helfenbein, director of information systems, the firm considered it a cost of doing business, much like buying pencils or stationery. Staying competitive meant giving people the methods they needed to find their own documents and to tap the expertise evident in knowledge repositories.

ıThe value of a law firm resides in the documents it produces,ı says Helfenbein. ıWe needed a way to maintain that knowledge and make it accessible.ı

Helfenbein identified three potential supplier candidates. One of the three products being considered was eliminated when a demo could not be made to work. Another lost out because it could not address ODMA issues inherent in Word 97 and WordPerfect 8.0 at the time.

Pattishall chose Docs Esquire 3.71 from PC Docs/Fulcrum (Toronto, Ontario), which was recently acquired by Hummingbird Communications of Toronto. Specifically designed for use in small and mid-sized law firms, the product works with WordPerfect 8.0 Legal Edition. The SQL Server/NT-based solution is already serving 70 users in the firmıs Chicago headquarters, and roll out to attorneys in Washington DC is scheduled for later this year. A RAID system is used for document storage.

Docs Esquire offers many of the features found in the vendorıs Docs Open product, including version control, full text search, multi library support, eight levels of configurable security and full audit trail on all document activity. Docs Esquire tracks time spent preparing documents for use in client billing. Esquireıs profile screen is a subset of DOCS Openıs that has been specialized to capture data important to law firms.

Pattishallıs ongoing implementation is being handled without an integrator. Helfenbein first attended a weeklong training seminar offered by PC Docs. With only one other IS employee at his disposal, Helfenbein made good use of internal resources by organizing a secretaryıs committee that met once a week to work on naming standards, document types and other procedural issues inherent in implementation. When roll out occurred, the committee members functioned as resident experts on the new system.

All documents -- briefs, correspondence, faxes, check requests, etc. -- are kept within the Docs repository and profiled according to document number, document type, client/matter, document name and author name. Users have full text search capabilities for the 10,000 documents currently online.

Attorneys use full text search to find documents that support new briefs. On the administrative side, secretaries use version control and audit trail functions to track document history, easily answering requests for earlier versions. Security is at the network operating system level and is easily user applied by clicking a box on the profile screen.

The firm also purchased Docs Imaging, used with an HP ScanJet 5 to capture document images as a prelude to OCR processes. With an intranet already in place, Pattishall wants to give attorneys the ability to check documents in and out of the document management repository. A problem remains in that CyberDocs requires a dial up account for everyone, while the firmıs current T1 line does not permit dial up accounts.

In addition to eliminating the old rendition problems and offering a path to Web enablement, Helfenbein credits the document management system with one unexpected benefit: ıTurnover is less since we implemented. Summer associates stay on.ı

Julie Gable, CDIA, is an independent consultant based in Philadelphia. Contact her at juliegable@aol.com.

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