Let me describe an all-too-common scenario called “Who has the file?” It depicts an old fashioned law firm that has gone completely topsy-turvy trying to find a physical file. You can picture the scene: The impatient attorney stands in the middle of the scene, surrounded by panicked assistants who are scouring the bookshelves, desks, and heaps of papers piled up everywhere.
The solution to “Who has the file” was supposed to be the paperless office, which was announced with great fanfare about a decade ago. A quick glance around most law offices makes it clear that only a few determined practitioners have switched to saving their documents electronically. Now that scanners are widely available, however, and more of us are working “remotely” from outside of the office, the paperless office is getting closer to reality.
The key to the paperless office is a good document management system. LexisNexis Time Matters is equipped with a powerful document management system that is often underutilized. Included in Time Matters is the capability to run full-text document searching, so that from day one you can search through the contents of all of the documents on your server, even if those documents were not initially created through Time Matters. Think of the ability to search through 50,000 or 200,000 documents in a few seconds, and to pull up a list of the documents that contain a phrase or a name that you are looking for in the text of a document. Such a search can include Microsoft Word, WordPerfect, plain text, and Excel files, as well as searchable PDF (Adobe format) files.
The power of document management as part of a fully functional practice management system is that you can easily associate documents with the client, case or matter record. In Time Matters, clicking the “TM Save” button on the toolbar of a document from Word or WordPerfect brings up a “profile” record from TM, which is then filled in with the client, matter, the document description, author, and the type of document (motion, correspondence, and so on). Time Matters document management allows for the automatic creation of the document’s directory path, based on the client and/or matter. The system can also automatically name or number documents. This feature prevents documents from being misfiled on the server, or being saved to My Documents by mistake (a frequent occurrence).
Besides both Word and WordPerfect documents, Adobe files, Excel spreadsheets and PowerPoint presentations can be saved directly to Time Matters by clicking on the TM Save button from within their respective programs . Any file, including graphics and transcripts, that can be saved to a hard drive can be linked as a document to the Time Matters document management system. The system also includes version control and a check-in/check-out capability. Time Matters also includes a comprehensive “document review” system to garner approvals prior to transmission, but that is a topic for another post.
The main difference between Time Matters document management and a dedicated document management system such as Worldox, is that Worldox automatically enforces saving through its profile system, whereas Time Matters requires you to click on the TM Save button to save the document to a profile. Careful training and the establishing of firm-wide document creation policies can overcome TM’s inability to”force” saving to a document profile. And if you already use Time Matters, there is no additional software licensing cost.
If you are already using Time Matters as a case management program, then you have solved the dilemma of “Who has the file?” by implementing the document management features that are already included within the program. If you are not using this feature to efficiently manage your documents, feel free to give us a call to learn how we can get you started using your software more effectively. Your documents – and your clients – will thank you!
Jack Schaller has been active in the field of law office technology since 1989, and has worked with a variety of commercial accounting, legal billing, practice management, and document management software products during his twenty plus years in the software consulting field. During his tenure as a software consultant he has garnered many sales and service awards for his work with legal software products. Jack is a frequent presenter at legal conferences and seminars, and is a regular contributor to TechnoLawyer and other technology publications.