Lawyers at RTR, a criminal defense firm in Miami, Florida, had been using faxes, couriers, and an unreliable server—which impeded productivity. Then one of its lawyers introduced Microsoft Office 365, mobile devices, and smartphones. Now documents are stored online, lawyers access case files in court and at home, on any device, and they use simultaneous coauthoring to create briefs. Productivity is up by an estimated 25 percent.
During the last hurricane season in South Florida, a lightning strike destroyed the server that stored every electronic document ever created at the office of RTR, one of the largest criminal law firms in the southeastern United States. While this IT crisis caused some anxiety and embarrassment for the firm’s seven attorneys, it also served as an unexpected stroke of good fortune for one of them.
“Since joining RTR in 2008, I’ve been trying to bring the firm into the twenty-first century, technologically speaking,” says Joe Nascimento, the newest member of the firm. “Our senior partners are highly respected and have successfully argued cases in front of the US Supreme Court, but their understanding of business technology was a little behind the times. I wanted to improve mobility and productivity at the firm by introducing better business tools for the workplace.”
None of the attorneys used laptops or smartphones to access emails and documents while working on cases in courts across the country. They carried paper files and waited for faxes to be sent to hotel rooms. “We had already gone through three servers when the lightning struck,” says Nascimento. “We realized that something had to be done to safeguard our documents. I jumped on the opportunity to introduce cloud computing and the idea of mobility to the firm. It’s made a huge difference to productivity and efficiency at RTR.”
Nascimento chose Microsoft Office 365 for the firm’s cloud-based business productivity tools. Office 365 unites familiar Microsoft Office applications with the power of Microsoft Exchange Online, SharePoint Online, and Lync Online. No on-premises server is required. RTR worked with ConQuest Technology Services to deploy the solution. “The transition to Microsoft Office 365 would not have been so smooth without the training and around-the-clock support of its IT service provider, ConQuest,” says Nascimento.
“Office 365 kick started our adoption of twenty-first century IT,” says Nascimento. “I’ve introduced my colleagues to laptops, mobile devices, and smartphones. I’d estimate that we are at least 25 percent more productive when working inside and outside of the office.”
Anywhere Access to Files
Today, RTR has a better disaster recovery solution: all electronic documents have been uploaded to SharePoint Online for more reliable storage at a Microsoft data center. No one is worrying about the safety of their case files when the next lightning strike hits. Lawyers and staff can search for and access files they need on any PC, laptop, mobile device, or smartphone, anywhere they are connected to Internet. This flexibility benefits RTR lawyers who must comply with different courthouse policies: some courts allow the use of phones during proceedings, while others allow tablets or laptops.
“While my partner is questioning the witness, I can use my phone or my tablet to retrieve a required document, edit it, and email it to my assistant in the office with instructions to file it electronically,” says Nascimento. “Five minutes later, the judge’s assistant receives the file, prints it, and brings it up to the bench. Before, I would have left the courthouse to find a lawyer I knew in the area and borrow a computer. With all our information at our fingertips, we’re providing more efficient and effective services for our clients.”
Round-the-Clock Productivity
Criminal law does not follow a nine-to-five routine. Nascimento often gets a phone call following an arrest in the middle of the night. Instead of having to go to the office to prepare the Notice of Appearance for his client and file it in court the next morning, he can access the relevant documentation from home, prepare the paperwork, and file it right away.
The tight deadlines of criminal appellate work mean that Nascimento’s colleague, Criminal Appellate Specialist and RTR partner, Benjamin Waxman, often emailed files to himself to work at home. Then he would email the latest version back to himself to resume work at the office the next morning.
“Sometimes, Benji opened the wrong document and begin reworking an older version,” says Nascimento. “Now he’s saving five hours a week because he saves his documents on his personal site and uses Office Online to edit the document from home. When he saves the document back to OneDrive for Business and starts work the next morning, he’s always using the latest version. With Office 365, Benji can take on a larger caseload, and spend more time with his family.
Search Saves Time
Previously, RTR lawyers relied on their memory of past cases and manually searched files to find particulars of existing appellate work that could be reused when starting similar appeals. Today, they are saving 10 hours of work every week by using search to look through old emails and files in SharePoint Online and quickly retrieve case law, statutes, and prior successful arguments that have relevance for a new appeal.
Seamless Collaboration
Waxman’s new work habits have a positive effect on productivity and teamwork at the office. His assistant, Elizabeth Hernandez, is relieved that when RTR lawyers work from home, they access and edit documents online instead of on paper. She no longer faces 50-page documents covered in handwritten notes waiting for retyping in the morning. She’s saving several hours of copy editing every week and working on more important projects.
RTR lawyers collaborate on the hundreds of pages of briefs that are necessary to appeal a case through state, federal, and supreme courts. Previously, coauthoring was an iterative process fraught with versioning issues.
“Collaborating on briefs is so much easier thanks to the simultaneous editing that we can do using the Microsoft Word app in Office Online,” says Nascimento. “I am in my office, Benji is in his, and Elizabeth is in hers, and the three of us can edit a single draft at the same time. This was an amazing eye-opener for everyone. Office 365 has completely transformed how we work at RTR.”
Other related posts:
Read customer success stories to learn how Managed Solution helps businesses implement technology productivity solutions.
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Boost law firm productivity with Matter Center for Office 365
We are pleased to unveil a preview version of Matter Center for Microsoft Office 365 at the International Legal Technology Association (ILTA) annual conference in Nashville, Tennessee. Matter Center for Office 365 is a powerful documentation management and collaboration solution specifically catered toward law firms and law departments.
Working seamlessly with Office 365, Matter Center offers those in the legal profession a way to intuitively find and organize files without leaving the familiar productivity tools they use the most—namely Microsoft Outlook and Word. Matter Center for Office 365 enables professionals to quickly locate and collaborate on legal matters from virtually anywhere, anytime—from any device. In essence, a one stop shop for all your document collaboration and management needs.
Matter Center is the product of months of collaboration between our Legal and Corporate Affairs (LCA) group, outside law firms, and Office 365 product engineering teams. We are excited to have built the solution by using the cloud app model for Office 365, enabling Matter Center to expose rich document management, search and collaboration features directly through Word and Outlook. For external sharing and collaboration scenarios, Matter Center integrates with OneDrive for Business to maintain the ‘legal briefcase’ lawyers are familiar with.
The Matter Center experience
We made Matter Center easy to navigate, delivering a consistent experience across your productivity tools. For example, you can search and find matters and related documents directly within Outlook, and track or pin frequently used ones as well.
Search and find matters or documents inline, or pin them for quick access directly from an email in Outlook
You can also file email or email attachments to a matter directly from the Matter Center app within Outlook.
File email or email attachments directly to matters from Outlook
Matter Center is also accessible directly from Office 365.
Matter Center landing page in Office 365
Matter Center delivers numerous benefits for legal professionals
Legal briefcase in the cloud. Matter Center integrates with OneDrive for Business. That means you get 1 TB of individual storage and a personal briefcase that automatically synchronizes your documents across all of your devices, and can be accessed online or offline.
Get more work done together. Gone are the days of emailing multiple versions of the same document. Securely share your files with others, both within and outside of your firm. With Matter Center, you can work simultaneously on your documents with other attorneys, using the automatic version control to quickly and easily track changes.
Robust matter and document search. The powerful integration between Outlook, Word, and Office 365 enables you to easily search and find matters or related documents directly in the familiar interfaces of Word or Outlook. You can effortlessly track or pin frequently used documents or matters, as well as track just the most recent documents or matters.
Secure access and permission control. With Matter Center for Office 365, you can grant or exclude your user’s access to a matter. All of the subsequent documents associated with the matter will inherit the same permissions, thereby reducing concerns about ethical walls and data leakage.
Reduced overhead and increased billable time. With Matter Center’s seamless experience, you reduce the amount of administrative resources needed to support a document management system, enabling you to spend more time working directly with clients, building lasting client relationships, and most importantly, providing a positive customer experience for your clients.
Matter Center also caters to the needs of IT professionals
Confidently move to the cloud. Matter Center offers a way to begin your journey to the cloud at a lower cost and reduced risk, enabling you to maximize the ROI on your existing infrastructure with enterprise-grade security, management, and administrative controls.
Deploy based on your terms. Matter Center can be deployed in the cloud, in a hybrid scenario, or as a part of an on-premises Microsoft SharePoint environment based upon a firm’s needs and existing infrastructures.
Maximize ROI on existing IT investments. Adding Matter Center to an existing on-premises solution such as SharePoint and Exchange will help you to realize greater value as a unified productivity platform.
Built on an industrial strength platform. Matter Center includes enterprise-grade security, management, and administrative controls, and is compliant with multiple industry standards. Permission control and taxonomy are centrally managed and applied automatically; legal professionals don’t interact with the back-end settings.
Always up to date. Deploying Matter Center in the cloud, reduces the cost and time of upgrades and migrations as Office 365 is always up to date. No patches or software upgrades are necessary, and Microsoft adds new value and capabilities on a monthly basis.
Higher-adoption rates. Matter Center has an intuitive interface, simplifies processes, and can be accessed directly from Microsoft Office products that are used every day. This tool satisfies the most important needs of users, while reducing training and support efforts.
We are excited to bring Matter Center for Office 365 to market in the near future, and look forward to helping legal professionals change the way they work.
Matter Center is currently available in a limited preview, and interested customers should visit http://microsoft.com/MatterCenter to learn more about signing up for our beta program.
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Cloud Computing Brings Innovation to the Legal Profession – Work Smarter
Cloud computing is innovating the way many industries conduct business. The legal industry is no different and is taking advantage of powerful new technology to change and improve the way it brings legal services to its clients. Cloud computing helps firms connect legal professionals, improve communication and collaboration, and reduce IT expenses while improving scalability and security.
How is the legal industry benefiting from cloud computing innovations? Let’s take a look at some specific ways legal professionals are leveraging powerful new enhancements in information technology.
Secure access and strict data controls
Naturally, the first concern with storing data in “the cloud” will be with security and privacy. Cloud computing basically takes data, financial records, legal documents and other information and stores it offsite on a remote server. Some debate has risen around this subject which questions the ethics of storing data remotely. A recent article in the American Bar Association Journal concluded that there is no specific ethical concern or prohibition against legal practices using cloud computing. Fortunately, security is one of the strengths of the cloud. All data and documents are automatically protected by attributes, permissions and version control. Additionally, access can be tightly controlled by access that can be either granted or denied to internal and external individuals by system administrators.
Increased productivity for your firm and team
Your team has secure access to all information anywhere, anytime and from any device. Working the cloud reduces the amount of administrative resources needed to manage matters and documents, allowing your team of professionals to spend more time on cases and less on pushing paper. Internal team members can securely share and edit documents with colleagues or clients – with all changes tracked through automatic version control. Productivity is the name of the game when your firm is working in the cloud.
Finding, researching and managing documentation
Robust search capabilities allow maters and documents to be found quickly. Less time searching means more time working. Frequently used matters or documents can be marked or pinned for easy access later. Legal professionals deal with massive amounts of information; the cloud makes finding that information routine and as easy as using a search engine on the Internet. Not only that, transporting documents is as easy as moving them into the cloud for instant access in or out of the office from a laptop, tablet or even mobile phone.
Today’s powerful cloud computing tools are enabling companies to innovate just about every facet of their business. Innovation can take the form of simple improvements on existing processes and workflows, or they can be as significant as inventing entirely new ways of getting work done. What is clear is that the power is now in the hands of your entire legal team and can help you transform the way your firm does business instantly.
At Managed Solution, we know exactly what your firm needs to automate previously manual and disparate tasks to increase efficiency and productivity of your firm. We provide a secure file sharing, mobile productivity and collaboration technology solution specific to your firm’s needs. Learn More >>
Office 365 is the Ideal Cloud Solution for the Legal Industry
The power of working ‘in the cloud’ is changing how business runs by increasing productivity, reducing costs and resource expenditure, and enhancing collaboration and teamwork. Legal firms are looking to reduce overhead, increase the billable hours, increase efficiency so that its team can spend more time meeting their clients’ needs, maximizing revenue and securing client referrals.
This is where Office 365 becomes the ideal technology partner for any firm. Cloud-powered Office 365 not only has the standard office applications everyone knows such as Word and Excel, it includes enterprise-grade services such as online storage, secure document sharing, real-time co-authoring and collaboration, along with content, search and social communication tools.
Why Office 365 for your firm?
Secured Enterprise-Grade Cloud Platform
Office 365 is compliant with all industry standards with built-in capabilities such as permissions, version control, eDiscovery and records management. Learn more about reducing costs and challenges with Office 365 eDiscovery.>>>
Ultimate Mobility – Work from Anywhere, Anytime
There is virtually no need for new hardware to maximize productivity and collaboration in your office. Get to your applications and files from anywhere on just about any device, whether Mac, PC, iPad, tablet, iPhone or Android smartphone. Better still, collaboration can take place between teammates, clients and lawyers from other firms. Criminal defense firm RTR in Miami, Florida switched from a dated workflow of fax machines, couriers and a suspect in-house server to Office 365’s powerful cloud platform – read the case study and see how their productivity jumped by 25%!
Store, Access and Share Securely from Anywhere
With 1TB of cloud storage, OneDrive becomes your online briefcase. You can store and access your matter documents online or offline with the ability share them securely with internal or external team members. Be more productive by reducing the time it takes to find documents and reduce expense by cutting back on paper needed to print version after version. Learn more about OneDrive’s capabilities.>>>
Simple Administration and Rock-Solid Security
Protect your data and control access – everything is done from a single admin portal. The built-in security of Office 365 deflects malware, spam, phishing attacks, and any other threats your team might come in contact with.
Scale at Your Own Pace
Whether you’re a large firm, a small practice or a solo practitioner, your journey into the cloud can happen at your own pace. You can choose from a full-scale deployment, hybrid system or a la carte services as needed.
Microsoft’s In-house Legal Software, Matter Center For Office 365 Now Available For Public
Over the past two years, Microsoft’s legal department set out to create an internal tool that didn’t exist—a way to organize its legal matters and collaborate on documents within the familiar Office 365 tools attorneys use most. So last year our Legal & Corporate Affairs Group (LCA) shared its vision for an Office 365 Add-in that would do just that. Since then, LCA has worked to turn this concept into Matter Center for Office 365, an Office 365 Add-in currently in use internally at Microsoft, and is becoming available to legal professionals at law firms and in-house departments of all sizes.
In fact, we have already shipped Matter Center to IT solutions providers who specialize in serving the legal community. These Microsoft partners are now offering Matter Center on a limited basis, and will begin offering it broadly in the coming weeks. Microsoft Services will also offer for-fee consulting and support services for Matter Center beginning in September. And finally, we’ll be making Matter Center available broadly through GitHub this calendar year.
Once installed, Matter Center allows people to create or view legal matters right from Outlook; tie Word, Excel, OneNote and other files to those matters; and securely collaborate with other legal professionals inside or outside their organizations. There are a few benefits that make Matter Center stand out:
•Access anytime, anywhere—Like Office 365, Matter Center is available across PCs, tablets and phones, across Windows, Apple and Android devices, and allows you to access matters and documents either online or offline using OneDrive for Business.
•Real-time collaboration—Using the automatic version control feature of Office 365, you can simultaneously edit documents with multiple people inside or outside your organization.
•Intuitive search and data visualization—You can easily search, preview and find matters and related documents across all cases directly within Outlook and Word. Power BI can be configured to visualize your matter data.
•Pinning and tagging—You can track or pin frequently used matters and documents and connect to Delve to provide personalized experiences about who on your team is working on them.
•Compliance with security standards—Matter Center allows you to control who can access, review or edit a document and provides all the same enterprise-grade security, management and administrative controls as Office 365.
•Better flexibility and control—By offering Matter Center through an open GitHub repository, customers and partners can build or extend the solution to meet specific customer needs faster.
As part of developing Matter Center, LCA conducted a preview program with nearly 200 law firms, partners and others in the legal industry, as well as our in-house counsel. As a result of the feedback we received during the preview, we have improved the solution over the last year. And LCA currently has early pilot customers including Olswang; Orrick, Herrington & Sutcliffe; Ragen Swan; and Shook, Hardy & Bacon.
LCA is committed to continued investments in this modern, world-class collaboration solution. And as we make Matter Center available to our customers and partners, we are also rolling out the latest version to more than 1,200 Microsoft legal professionals globally. This is only the beginning. You can expect additional capabilities and features to be delivered over time.
Visit the Matter Center website for more information on the solution and how you or your organization can start using Matter Center.
Running Matter Center in the cloud will require Office 365 and Azure subscriptions. Matter Center has been designed to support multiple deployment configurations as well, whether on-premises or hybrid cloud. You can find additional information on Matter Center capabilities, case studies from partner law firms, and a complete list of partners making Matter Center available here.
Today's technology makes it simple to use mobile devices and tablets to access data quickly. This explains why a vast majority of attorneys are using mobile devices and tablets to develop a paperless law office. Utilizing the right applications (apps) and tools can enable lawyers to work remotely in between client meetings and court. Some experts envision a future in which attorneys routinely scan documents with their smartphones and tablets and store data on cloud systems. Below is a number of applications (apps) that have emerged for lawyers.
8 Apps That Lawyers Are Using When Working Remotely
dLaw - provides offline state and federal laws
Able2Doc — convert PDF documents to MS Word documents for mobile use
CamCard – scan business cards and add them to your contacts
Fastcase - provides free legal research capabilities for a tablet or smartphone
Dropbox — online (cloud) file storing for syncing files between multiple devices or computers
Microsoft Remote Desktop — easy to use/manage remote desktop manager; great for in-office (same network) remote desktop protocol (RDP), not so easy for outside network use
Mint Personal Finance — great for managing personal finances; similar to Quicken or Quickbooks mobile accounting
SignMyPad - electronically sign documents from your tablet or smartphone; send documents to others for signature
For more information on industry specific workflow solutions that will catapult your firm to the next level of productivity and efficiency, contact Managed Solution at 800-550-3795 or fill out the form below and a legal industry solution expert will be in contact shortly.
Legal firms and professionals should familiarize themselves with the latest technology trends and resources emerging in the industry. If a firm is aware of the best technologies, they could have an impact on assisting clients in saving money, which in turn could help them cut costs. Law firms that have already replaced basic tools with current technology are efficiently utilizing the digital world to cut costs. As they turn to new software and more powerful electronic devices, firms are streamlining workflow and utilizing tools to their full potential.
Global Communication
Webinars have addressed how lawyers can use technology to save clients, and themselves, money. Some experts envision a future in which attorneys routinely scan documents with their smartphones and utilize their tablets and laptops for data storing and sharing. If a legal firm is well-managed, technology should be saving the firm money, rather than increasing costs. Many legal agencies have switched to cloud-based development and application scaling or infrastructure management for deploying and managing apps in the cloud. Benefits of switching to the cloud include paying for resources used on a variable, pay-as-you-go basis to effectively drive revenue and growth, while reducing overall IT costs. The cloud also makes it easy to reach users in all regions of the world, which makes global travel and business easier. Utilizing technology to make business more efficient can save legal professionals time, which in turn can cut costs and save clients money.
BYOD
With legal professionals working remotely and traveling to court dates, law firms are implementing “bring your own device” (BYOD) policies. Staying connected with clients and colleagues while working remotely is important. Managed services and solutions are available to assist the growing number of professionals who are out of the office more often than not. Many legal agencies are implementing Microsoft Office 365, which offers productivity solutions that are all available online. Microsoft 365 is powered by the cloud, so you can access your applications and files from virtually anywhere on any device – at any time. This has been proven to be effective when legal professionals are using their own device (BYOD).
Data Management
While utilizing effective communication systems to cut costs, firms should also have a comprehensive data management solution that provides easy access to case files while protecting critical data. This will reduce paper costs and the hassle of manually storing files. Digital data management systems, such as Microsoft SharePoint offers powerful capabilities in document management, data management, search, security, access, forms, project management and workflow to create solutions, increase productivity and help reduce costs. With a Microsoft SharePoint deployment, users get automated collaboration portals, intranet, and extra net. This enables organizations to easily deploy a cost-effective, highly secure, turn-key solution for sharing content and increasing collaboration.
Professionals are constantly being challenged to address major market, globalization, and technology trends that will drastically change the way an organization’s infrastructure is deployed and operated over the next decade. By using the best technologies and services, legal professionals could save time and replace basic tools with current innovative solutions. Small improvements in office procedures or work processes could have a noticeable impact on the long term productivity of the firm and assist in overcoming challenges.
For more information on legal industry solutions that will catapult your firm to the next level of productivity and efficiency, contact Managed Solution at 800-550-3795 or fill out the form below and a legal industry solution expert will be in contact shortly.
The future of the legal system comes down to one word: Mobility. Change is a scary topic for many that have learned their industry inside and out based on traditional operating models. “Mobility” is the buzz word in the business world, and it’s here to stay.
It doesn’t apply to just lawyers either. Courthouses will begin adopting their own equivalents of mobility - online banking and bill paying, paperless litigation, and virtual hearings via video to name just a few.
Why?
It’s simple. Technology can be leveraged to do more for less – the main driving force for this change is pure economics. With recent changes in the ABA Model Rules of Ethics to include a new requirement that lawyers be technologically competent and up-to-date with the latest technologies, it’s even more imperative that lawyers begin learning new and current technologies. More and more documents are in digital format, stored online, and include links to cited cases and other pertinent information that are used in many court cases. Lawyers must be able to successfully access and manage these documents and files to be used in their cases.
Technology has crept into all aspects of law – everything from speeding tickets being issued instantaneously to a smart phone of the driver from a traffic camera, to expert witnesses being allowed to appear virtually to trial. Soon, the trial itself may even be viewed online, with rooms in the courthouse used only to watch a trial via live video.
While these changes may be seen as far-fetched to some, the future of this new technology is not far off – with many elements already being implemented in the legal system today. Scary, but the benefits include cost cutting and in reducing our carbon footprint to virtually nothing.
Our advice?
Familiarize yourself with the latest technologies emerging in the industry.
Find the most up-to-date legal software that provides legal workflow solutions that will automate previously disparate and manual tasks.
Then when the day comes that the legal industry has become completely virtual, you’ll not only be educated, but prepared and ready to operate efficiently in this new environment.
For more information, please fill out the contact form to the right and a legal industry solution expert will be in contact shortly.
Today's technology makes it simple to use mobile devices and tablets to access data quickly. This explains why a vast majority of attorneys are using mobile devices and tablets to develop a paperless law office. Utilizing the right applications (apps) and tools can enable lawyers to work remotely in between client meetings and court. Some experts envision a future in which attorneys routinely scan documents with their smartphones and tablets and store data on cloud systems. Below is a number of applications (apps) that have emerged for lawyers.
