Next Gen DMS Solves Vexing Problem

Search giants such as Google and Bing have figured out how to collect and retrieve mountains of information. So why not build on their success to deploy a fully automated document retention and retrieval solution that eliminates the difficulties of systems past?

Attorneys and staff today work in a highly mobile and rapidly evolving world, use email extensively to interact with colleagues and clients and often employ PC, smartphone and tablet in the same day to work on the same matter, storing documents on their PCs, on firm networks and even in cloud storage systems. Firms know that their document management system needs to be able to support these fluid and mobile legal practices. In fact, for those firms considering a new system, here are three things to consider:

  1. Collection: Since documents and emails can reside virtually anywhere from local PC to ethereal cloud storage, look for a solution that reaches out and finds all work product rather than assumes that information will find its way into the DMS. Products like MetaJure automatically ‘see’ and collect 100% of the firm’s information – every email and stored document—that is associated with a lawyer’s PC, Mac, smartphone or tablet, regardless of where it was located or what application was used to create it. Attorneys should not need to lift a finger; their DMS should do this all invisibly in the background.
  2. Indexing: Here is where using 21st century computer power makes all the difference. Rather than having attorneys or staff spend hours classifying and tagging every document and email, the selected DMS should automatically scan each collected document, indexing the documents plus metadata indicating other information such as original storage device, user name, and directory or email folder of the original document. And even if the document is a “flat” scanned image, the DMS offering should utilize its built-in optical character recognition (OCR) feature to extract the actual text, attach it to the document as metadata, and index on that as well, greatly increasing the ability to find and make use of images when needed.
  3. Retrieval is as critical as capture, and so firms should insist their DMS utilize another 21st century approach by creating a Google- or Bing-like search interface that completely simplifies the retrieval and access of documents and emails no matter where – or by whom – they were created. Attorneys should also be able to use filters, or for more complex queries the same logic you would when constructing a web search including Boolean operators and quoted text.

All of these benefits, from automatic collection and indexing of documents, email and attachments to simplified search-engine like retrieval are embodied by MetaJure, the latest in DMS technology.

Interested in learning more? Visit the white paper by technology and marketing veteran Michael Krieger, “Finally Solving Document Management” at http://tinyurl.com/naw2scj.