SharePoint's Role in the Future of DMS and ECM for Legal

SharePoint’s role in the future of life, the universe and everything

• SharePoint adoption is on of the fastest ever for a Microsoft product• AIIM research says that by 2010 80% of US companies will have SharePoint• It’s cool and fun

What we like about SharePoint DMS/ECM features

• Rich and powerful metadata model– Content types to govern schema (profile), templates, workflow and

policy– Inheritable model

• Built in integration with Office 2007 – and confidence for Office 2010– Open/save– Document information panel– Check in / checkout– Version history– Task pane integration – related documents, tasks, etc– Calendar/task list sync with Outlook– Doc sync in Outlook (one way out-of-box)– Document workspaces

What we like about SharePoint DMS/ECM features

• Alerts• Document Conversion capabilities• Extensibility – programmable workflows and events• One step closer to a cleaner desktop, with a less complicated mix of

vendor products• Outlook Offline Access for libraries

So, with all these great features is SharePoint ready to handle the day to day needs of a law firm or corporate counsel department?

What’s missing from design perspective?

• Corporate concept of DMS != Law Firm/Legal Department concept of DMS– Corporate DMS/ECM = Publishing stuff we need to keep– Legal DMS/ECM = That, plus an authoring system for complex

document creation.• Though improved from STS 1.0, and SPS2003 - SharePoint 2007 DMS still

largely driven from a team site perspective.

What’s missing from Feature Set?

• Strong control over user experience – Require users when connected to save to the DMS, no local save option– Force offline document creation to move to DMS– Enforce Export rules

• Multiple sites and document libraries paradigm – Problematic for Litigation Holds– Assumes user community is saving content to correct libraries

• Security – no deny access to documents based on metadata, i.e. Client/Matter

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What’s missing from Feature Set?

• Files System storage of documents• Inheritable site metadata - Sites aren’t first-class citizens in the metadata

model• Poor integration with Office 2003  - no document integration panel or

display of required metadata• Email management• Acrobat integration• Content publishing across site collections• Versioning model is totally inadequate for use by lawyers• Metadata properties are not relational

– Complex metadata like Clients and Matters are not possible “out of the box”

What’s missing from Feature Set?

And the number 1 deal breaker on the list is no Document Number

The Future – Near Term

SharePoint is used by our clients and is / will be by most of us.

• In the near term most will either – Continue using a traditional DMS for managing the creation of work

product and possibly presenting those documents on SharePoint site pages

– Augmenting SharePoint DMS with 3rd party tools to “fill the gaps”• For other law firm content management needs SharePoint may be used for

problems that more closely fit a publishing model such as:– Repository of items such as client bills, Engagement Letters, Wills – With content types and search it provides interesting possibilities for a

KM repository

The Future – “Long” Term

SharePoint 2010 – Who Knows? Should be fun!

Project Leadership Associates, Inc.200 W. Adams Street, Suite 250

Chicago, IL 60606Phone: (312) 441-0077

www.projectleadership.net