It is a well-known fact among the legal fraternity that most solicitors, barristers, lawyers, or anything you want to call them, could lose up to 15 minutes a day looking for things that they require but are not able to locate. This is because when we say find we mean it literally and it takes time. It can take hours just to find one file, let alone one page. If you were to use a traditional file folder, you could spend all day looking for that important document. If it was a simple letter of demand, then maybe you could locate it in fifteen minutes or less, but if you were to look for a court case, then that would take days and even weeks.
This is where a good legal document management software comes in handy. The way in which this type of software works is it organises files and documents so that they are easy to find and access. Some types of document management software will allow you to search for specific documents by a particular word or phrase, whilst others will allow you to search by category, case type, and location. So, if you were to look for a letter of demand then you might just locate it in a legal directory. But if you wanted to search for personal records, such as marriage certificates or divorce papers, then you would have to sift through a lot of irrelevant information. In the end, it could end up taking days and even weeks before you found what you were looking for.
Another advantage of using Legal Document Management software is that it will allow you to create workflows. Workflows are simply workflows whereby you create documents in accordance to a certain process. These workflows can be used throughout the whole of your document storage and management system so that everything is linked together and automated.
Workflows can be set up in a number of different ways. Depending on your requirements you may just have one workflow, such as where you create and store all new documents, whilst others may be complex multi-workflow processes that generate new documents as you go along. If you are uncertain as to how to create your new document worksheets, then a good document management software package will come with templates. Templates are simply sample documents that you can use to create your worksheets. You can then modify the template to reflect your requirements.
A good document management tool will also allow you to save all your important documents onto a virtual disc. Virtual discs are similar to the actual discs that your PC uses to store files, only much more convenient. Because cloud-based services will allow you to store your important documents anywhere in the world, you will never be forced to keep a physical backup of any of your most important documents. Therefore you will never be caught out by the unfortunate circumstance of a hard drive crash resulting in your office files being unavailable.
In addition to storing all your documents, a good management software suite will also allow you to manage all the different documents that are attached to a particular application. For example, if you were looking to access your portfolio on your smartphone, you would want a document storage and retrieval system that allow you to do so seamlessly. This is why integrations are so important when it comes to document storage and retrieval. Good document software solutions will integrate seamlessly into your existing systems, therefore saving you time and money by not having to make separate applications for each individual service.
One feature that many legal document management software packages will include is the ability to share documents between various devices. This means that if you have multiple laptops, tablets or even iPhones, you can easily share all your important legal documents from anywhere you are. This is certainly very handy when you are travelling and want to read a briefcase full of documents during a flight. It is even more useful if you want to share those same documents with a colleague on a training course. As long as they both have access to the same online storage space, they can both review the documents at the same time, thus increasing their knowledge and helping to clarify any points you might have overlooked.
Another great advantage of a solid document management software solution is the ability to automatically synchronize all your documents across all your different devices. No matter how many devices you have, as long as you have internet access, you can easily update all your documents with one simple click. Thus you do not have to worry about losing data, or having to re-save information from one device to another. It is highly unlikely that you will ever experience a situation where you will need to share documents between several different devices, but if you work on multiple legal cases at the same time, it could be vital to have a way to do so. Therefore, keeping a good novotempus folder will help you avoid such problems.