Legal practices and other organizations are increasingly depending on data and litigation document management services. As you know, data management deals with all kinds of procedures and policies involved in the management of the information needs of an organization. Managing legal documents can be a major challenge. Law practices need to have proper measures in place for storing, tracking and managing their electronic documents. In the digital era, storage and management of data needs to get high tech as well and involve innovative procedures plus software systems.
What Data and Document Management Involves
Law offices are faced with the massive task of storing their data and digital documents. While storing paper documents was always a challenge, digital storage is critical too. Having all their legal documents securely but within easy reach is critical for success in litigation.
- File Naming Conventions: Following file naming conventions is an easy way to remember where the files are. Network drives and folders would also help the cause. Staff should create a standard naming convention that must be followed for file names, folders and subfolders. People using the system must be given clear guidance on the convention. Documents must also be saved in a shared network folder. The efficiency of this can be boosted with a full text search tool that can index network drives and help track documents easily. Outsourcing firms provide litigation coding services to help lawyers ensure that their documents are sorted, indexed and stored securely in addition to being easily accessible when they are required.
- Saving Email Correspondence: Email correspondence is also important, and it serves as a record in itself. Emails can be shared through group folders in Microsoft Outlook. Mails that need to be shared can be dragged or dropped into a folder. Individual emails can also be saved as HTML or .msg in an appropriate folder on the network. With Adobe Acrobat, emails can be saved as PDFs as well. In case of attachment problems, internal email recipients can be sent a file path rather than an attachment. The file path would lead the recipient to the document in the server directly.
- Document Management System: Legal documents need to be stored in a searchable electronic database for quick retrieval. This would ensure that all documents and email are available at a central storage location on the server. While some documents can be marked ‘private’ by users, all documents need to be saved to the system. While saving the document, the user is requested information such as client number, folder structure, keywords, etc. This helps organize and categorize documents for searching. Relying on a provider of litigation document management services is a feasible option. A professional BPO company would be able to provide an efficient electronic storage solution to help legal professionals easily access, share, digitally sign, track, and archive all their legal documents.
Outsourcing data management saves time and resources for law firms, leaving them with more time for their core activities. Established companies provide comprehensive litigation document management services that cover everything from document scanning and conversion and forms processing to legal coding.
