Even as downward fee pressure increases, firms tend to resist adopting electronic workflows because of the complexity of folder management. But the traditional workspace design process doesn’t produce ideal results. It’s entirely front-loaded, time-consuming, and difficult to change.
Milan Folder Management uses on-demand foldering, which allows law firms to minimize the upfront business processes and quickly make adjustments as lawyers map out their workspace structures. This approach starts at matter opening with a simple, common core: working drafts, correspondence, and matter administration. These can be modified as standards, practices, and adoption of the electronic matter file evolves.
Applies records standards to electronic files
Sets folder rules that allow professionals to create folders using standard names, standard names with a prefix, standard names with a suffix, or customized names
Simplifies the process of creating root-level folders compared to the native process
Enables firms to create policies for how folder names are used for different types of workspaces, including engagements, practice areas, departments, and personal content
Controls the depth of the folder tree to prevent overly complex folder hierarchies
Allows professionals to create, delete, and edit folders in iManage against firm and practice-area standards
Provides a web-based template editor that allows administrators to set rules for creating folders
Prevents professionals from accidentally deleting folders containing content
The native re-file command in DeskSite and FileSite presents four main challenges:
When moving documents, professionals are prompted in a dialog for whether they want to update the metadata and security of documents. The default operation suggests that re-file not occur, which is the opposite of most firms’ requirements. As a result, documents may have different client-matter than the folder to which documents are moved.
If users do not have full access to documents and invoke the iManage re-file command, iManage changes the profile information but not the security. So while professionals intended to move documents to secure them, they actually remain open to a wider audience.
The use of the native re-file command on folders will update the security of any documents for which professionals have full access to match the security of the folders. The result is that documents that were secured to a limited set of individuals can be unintentionally shared with larger audiences.
When the native re-file command is executed on large quantities of documents and email, DeskSite or FileSite is locked until the process completes. Since FileSite is an extension of Outlook, email is locked too.
Milan Rules-Based Re-filing automatically updates security and metadata whenever documents are touched, allowing firms to turn off or remove the native re-file command in DeskSite and FileSite to avoid device lock-ups and remove the re-file decision. With its server-side process, the program lets firms define rules for different types of content, preventing documents that are more tightly secured from inadvertently becoming potential liabilities.
Replaces the native iManage re-file command with a server-side process that allows firms to determine different re-filing rules depending on the type of content and its destination
Continuously monitors and evaluates all changes for documents stored in iManage to determine whether re-filing rules, ethical walls, or information barriers should be applied
Monitoring occurs without the use of triggers or other changes to the iManage database
Sets up different re-filing rules based on metadata of source and target locations
Provides single interfaces for administrators to monitor activity, including recent activities, frequently changed documents, and errors
When used in conjunction with Milan Confidentiality Management or Milan Matter Teams, Milan Rules-Based Re-filing enforces and heals breaches to ethical walls and confidentiality management, providing a single process for re-filing and ethical wall enforcement
When lawyers and professionals deal with a large number of engagements, the amount of data can quickly become daunting without a method to control and organize the flow of information and documents. Milan Organize My Matters offers this control through the ability to create and manage workspaces – shared electronic storage locations for all content in an engagement.
Since lawyers and professional services work with a variety of engagements, their list of workspace subscriptions can grow unwieldy. They might even lose productivity as they spend time searching for particular workspaces.
Milan Organize My Matters groups workspaces into categories and automatically creates shortcuts. This a powerful organizational tool because it enables related workspaces to be grouped together, such as those for clients, practice areas, patent families, or serial litigations.
Enables professionals to efficiently manipulate their workspace subscriptions, including renaming, rearranging, and deleting
Groups shortcuts by workspace metadata such as clients, engagements, or custom data fields
Renames, rearranges, and deletes shortcuts
Provides administrative interfaces for service desks
When paired with Milan Workspace Provisioning & Management, law firms can decide whether they want to publish new shortcuts based on users’ designated groupings
To prevent accidental or inappropriate deletions, most firms do not allow users to directly delete content from iManage. This can be frustrating when documents intended for deletion will be returned in search results.
Milan Recycle Bin allows professionals to delete documents as needed, but with a multistage process familiar to Windows users. Professionals can restore documents themselves for a defined period of time – administrators can be afforded a longer time – before documents are ultimately deleted, either automatically or manually. Once documents are deleted, Milan Recycle Bin retains the metadata of the document, including the file location, in case a restore from back-up is necessary. When used in conjunction with Milan Legal Hold, documents in the Milan Recycle Bin will not be automatically deleted. This means risk management teams can allow users to delete documents without violating legal information preservation.
Allows users to delete and recover deleted documents for a fixed period of time
Addresses common situations like hard-deleting the last document version when multiple versions exist, deleting all versions of a document, or reverting to a previous version of a document
Allows users to view their deletions
Allows a fixed time period to restore documents before they are automatically deleted
Grants administrators control over who can delete documents and what rights are required
Can prevent deletion of documents while still withholding them from search results
Permanently deletes documents while retaining metadata records