Written by:
Grant Yuill
Head of Marketing & Customer Engagement
Legal professionals must find excellent document management solutions, including legal document automation, even in the most organised law firm. With digital copies, paper copies, and different document versions floating around, it might be difficult to find documents when you need them. When you’re copying and pasting client information across many forms, things become much more difficult; instead, use a guide to legal document management to streamline the process.
Sadly, document generation is not going anywhere. It may be time-consuming and exhausting, but it is a necessary step in winning cases, keeping clients satisfied, and efficiently communicating across the firm.
Fortunately, simplifying the handling of legal documents doesn’t have to be a hassle anymore. With the correct tools and legal document management systems, you may improve your law firm’s productivity and speed up your whole process by going paperless and sharing documents efficiently.
Before and after implementing the legal document management system
The legal document management system makes a major impact. Real-time access and management of documents allow legal professionals to perform their duties more efficiently.
What exactly is legal document management software?
Manually drafting contracts, motions, letters, and other documents may quickly consume a significant portion of a legal firm’s billable hours. Automation technologies combined with legal document management software provide plug-and-play possibilities.
Lawyers may use legal document management software to automatically generate the necessary documents based on client data. In its simplest form, document management software uses templates and data fields to quickly generate customised legal documents that match each client’s specific requirements.
A step-by-step approach for enhancing your legal document management systems
Follow these steps to ensure complete document management for legal firms.
Step #1: Determine what documents are often used by your firm.
Gaining a deeper knowledge of any problem is the first step towards fixing it, especially when it comes to legal document handling. To get the most from your document management system, first determine which document types your firm uses regularly. If you work for a personal injury firm, maybe it’s liability waivers. If you work for a family law firm, you may consider submitting child support cases. Key documents are used by legal practitioners from all practice areas on a daily or monthly basis. Prioritise them.
Get your staff together and ask them to discuss the documents they use most often. Put them into an ordered list, noting their frequency of usage, who completes them, and the processes required.
Step #2: Create a template
Once you’ve identified essential documents, it’s time to create a template. This procedure will save time, minimise mistakes, and enhance version control. With legal document management in case management systems like CaseLoad, you can ensure that document versions are consistently updated.
This is an essential step to make your document creation process more efficient. It will provide your whole legal firm with a consistent starting point when filling out paperwork, eliminating mistakes and saving everyone hundreds of hours.
For every document you listed in step one, create or edit your templates. Check each one with a fine-tooth comb: is your legal firm’s contact information properly listed? Is the language up-to-date? Is the design and layout consistent across all of your templates?
Each template should be validated for accuracy, standard formatting, and metadata compatibility. Keep the templates in a shared folder where they are quickly accessible and ready for usage by the whole firm.
Denovo makes creating document templates easy, thanks to Microsoft Word connections and customisable templates. We’ll assist in assuring your staff keep organised and focused on what’s most important, your clients.
Step #3: Allow your clients to sign documents electronically.
Nowadays, signing documents online is as normal as ordering lunch from your phone. Firms that do not provide secure document signing solutions risk losing clients. Real-time client service is possible thanks to tools like Signable, which eliminates the need for in-person meetings.
Digital document signing is safe and private, allowing lawyers to implement security measures and speed up their document processes without meeting in person. Ensure that your templates are compatible with digital signature solutions, allowing clients to sign documents safely and privately from any device.
Denovo works with Signable to provide seamless document management and digital signatures. You may automatically fill up forms with the necessary case information, evaluate and send them to clients for e-signature, and keep signed documents on our platform.
Step #4: Set up a centralised legal document storage system.
It’s time to organise all of your current case documents once you’ve completed updating your client signing procedures and setting up your digital template folder in your practice management software.
It may seem like a lot of work upfront, but in the long term, the time and effort you save by implementing a guide to legal document management will make it worthwhile.
Create a single storage system to organise all of your existing case files. Sort files into Dropbox or Google Drive. Make a subdirectory for every client, containing sensitive information, contact information, and signed documents.
After you go through all of your documents, check your email. Save all important communications you’ve had with each client so they’re available throughout the case.
Finally, ensure that team members have the necessary rights to view and change files using user-friendly interfaces. That way, they’ll know precisely where to go for information when a client calls. Your team seems brighter, and the client receives the information they want more quickly – it’s a win-win.
Step #5: Use Denovo to keep everything in one location.
Legal document storage, as stated in Step 4, maybe an overwhelming challenge for many legal firms. Denovo can assist by taking the hassle out of storing legal documents.
Denovo’s legal document management software integrates with your existing tools, such as Microsoft Word and Outlook, to help you store and manage documents more effectively. It also ensures that your files meet regulatory requirements, provides data security, and protects against data breaches.
With Denovo, your whole team can access and save documents securely, regardless of their location or device, and it was created especially for small law firms.
Step #6: Establish a Standard legal document management procedure throughout the whole firm.
Plan to get every aspect of your law practice on the same page, whether you’re doing it yourself or hiring Denovo to handle the arrangement of legal documents. Everyone, from the office manager to your senior partners, should adhere to the same legal document management methods. Consistency is key.
Regardless of whether you are using Denovo or organising documents manually, create a document management procedure for the whole firm. Ensure that team members use the same management tools, templates, and reliable document systems.
If you provide your staff with the framework they need to properly produce, manage, and arrange documents, they will be able to assist clients and bring in new business.
Are you ready to automate your legal document management systems?
Legal document handling may be time-consuming, but Denovo’s legal software makes the process easy and improves productivity. Manage and save all legal documents, maintain audit trails, and provide your team with quick access to what they need.
Contact us today and discover how Denovo’s cloud-based legal document management system can improve your practice by providing essential features like scheduling, email management, search capabilities, and case management software.
Discover how Denovo can help legal practice management become more efficient, decrease human error, and devote more time to what matters most: winning cases.
Find out more about using Denovo to automate and manage your legal documents right now!
