Leading Scottish Law Firm Implements Interwoven Collaborative Document Management for Improved Firm-Wide Client Service
Monday April 11, 8:00 am ET
- Brodies Upgrades to Interwoven's Industry-Leading Matter-Centric Collaboration Approach for Increased Productivity through Integrated E-Mail Management and Better Content Control
SUNNYVALE, Calif., April 11 /PRNewswire-FirstCall/ -- Interwoven, Inc. (Nasdaq: IWOV - News), provider of Enterprise Content Management (ECM) solutions for business, today announced that Brodies LLP, one of Scotland's top law firms, has implemented Interwoven Collaborative Document Management for improved firm-wide client service. Brodies' decision to upgrade to the latest version of the Interwoven solution was driven by its desire to move to a matter- centric collaboration (MCC) approach in which all of the documents, e-mails and other types of content pertaining to a given matter or client will be managed together in unified workspaces within the Interwoven Collaborative Document Management system. As the ECM technology leader for the legal industry, Interwoven provides the only Collaborative Document Management solution for law firms with complete MCC support.
A full-service commercial law practice, Brodies provides services to many of Scotland's best-known corporate and financial institutions as well as to a range of government departments, public authorities and private business clients. To support its growing business, Brodies first implemented Interwoven Collaborative Document Management in May 2003, a choice based in part on the offering's comprehensive functionality and Microsoft Outlook® integration.
Currently with around 140 lawyers and 260 employees, Brodies has experienced double-digit growth over the last four years. The firm has also become increasingly active in supporting the international strategies of its clients, including a large increase in cross-border work. As a result of this growth and increased international client service, Brodies was faced with a rapid rise in the volume of content, including e-mail, which drove the firm's need for a way to bring e-mails into the same unified environment as other types of content. Rather than lawyers and staff having to search for e-mails in separate repositories, or not being able to find them due to being stored in local inboxes, the firm sought to ensure that all information on a given matter, including e-mail, could be found quickly and easily. Lawyers would then have more control over their content and work, client service could be improved, and the firm's reputation as a leading-edge organization would be reinforced.
"We see Interwoven as a central part of our matter-centric collaboration strategy moving forward," said Andrew Powell, IT Director at Brodies. "By adopting this next-generation content environment, we will further empower our lawyers to provide more rapid and high-quality service to our clients and maintain effective control over the rising volume of content -- particularly e-mail -- that their work involves."
Interwoven Collaborative Document Management is based on Interwoven WorkSite 8 software, which offers a unique paradigm for managing legal documents known as matter-centric collaboration. MCC represents a user-centric design, which, for the first time, enables lawyers and other professional services practitioners to manage matter-related content in the electronic world the way they have done for more than 100 years in the physical world. MCC creates the true electronic equivalent of a case file by consolidating documents, e-mails, billing, contacts, and all other relevant content for any given matter in a single integrated file that is accessible both internally and externally across departments and locations. The e-mail management capabilities of WorkSite 8 provide automatic and simplified user-controlled methods, which streamline and automate the filing of e-mails and documents into dedicated "matter" folders. As a result, organizations can keep track of hundreds of thousands of e-mails in context with all other relevant matter documents within the WorkSite 8 solution as well as make them quickly available via full-text searching throughout the document management system.
By adopting Interwoven's MCC approach, Brodies can now store content of all types-including documents, memoranda, e-mails, scanned images, PDFs, and faxes-in unified workspaces. As each new client or matter is opened, an automatic feed from the firm's financial system generates a new workspace that is available for lawyers and staff when they begin their work. A unique capability of the Interwoven MCC approach, each workspace is pre-configured and pre-populated with profile information that is then automatically assigned to each content item placed inside the workspace, sparing employees the need to fill out lengthy forms and eliminating the categorization errors that can result from manual entry. A transparent and intuitive folder structure helps users find information much more quickly; in the rare event that a document can't be found, full-text search can reliably find the item in a matter of seconds. As a result, the time and effort saved in every aspect of content storage and retrieval has driven efficiencies that improve the responsiveness and quality of work provided to clients.
Beyond MCC, another key benefit of Brodies' Interwoven implementation has been in the area of risk management. "With matter-centric content management, the task of managing the document lifecycle is simplified enormously: documents of all types are managed together, allowing the consistent application of archiving, retention and destruction policies. This makes the live document repository more manageable, which in turn simplifies backup and disaster recovery.
The firm also uses Interwoven Collaborative Document Management to publish information to an extranet for use by remote workers, as well as to generate self-service extranet sites that permit clients to directly access their own workspaces rather than having to request updates by e-mail or phone. A high- level of granularity provides IT with the access control and security needed to maintain effective control over the firm's content without impeding its productive use.
"As e-mail and other forms of electronic content play an increasing role in law, lawyers need a fast and reliable way to find any document pertaining to a given matter, regardless of its type," said Neil Araujo, vice president for legal and professional services solutions at Interwoven. "By unifying matter-related content in an intuitive, user-friendly environment, matter- centric collaboration provides a foundation for improved productivity and client service for even the largest and most diverse practices." |
