Not that many years ago, the title and this article would have been contentious topics. Lawyers, as do other legal professionals like paralegals, actually learn document management at law school, and there are a number of very legal-specific document management solutions that would have been considered better solutions, but technologies evolve, and things change. Explore what modern legal document management has to offer and how SharePoint Online has become an effective solution. 

This is the first article in the five-part SharePoint legal series:

1. SharePoint for Legal Document Management
2. The implications of generative AI in the legal space
3. Advanced Features in SharePoint Premium and Microsoft Purview for Legal Document Management
4. Assemble your Legal Avengers: Microsoft, Atlas, and Colligo for Legal Document Management
5. Why metadata matters for legal document management in SharePoint

Matter management is a broad concept that encompasses the management of all legal matters and cases within a law firm. It involves a holistic approach to handling various legal issues, from routine matters to complex litigation. Matter management focuses on the organization, coordination, and tracking of all legal work. So, in legal work, the matter is the key concept, and we can consider it a legal-specific form of case management. The information captured for each matter is important and might include:

• Client details
• Opposing parties
• Key dates
• Court filings
• Contracts
• Communications & Correspondence

This information is provided in documents, which leads us from matter management to document management. This makes document management a key capability for law firms and corporate legal departments, as so much of lawyers’ output is in the form of advice, agreements, contracts, pleadings, transcripts of interviews and depositions, etc., which take the digital and physical form of documents.

Effective management of legal documents ensures that legal professionals have quick and easy access to the documents they need, which can save time and increase productivity. It also helps to ensure that legal documents are accurate, up-to-date, and consistent, which is important for compliance with legal and regulatory requirements.

Proper management of legal documents also enhances collaboration among team members and reduces the risk of errors or omissions. We can summarize the benefits of document management in a legal context as follows:

• Improved organization and accessibility: A document management system (DMS) provides a centralized location for all legal documents, making it easier to organize and access documents when needed. A DMS can also provide search and retrieval tools that enable users to locate specific documents quickly. 

• Increased productivity: A DMS can streamline document workflows and automate routine tasks, freeing up time for legal professionals to focus on more strategic tasks. 

• Enhanced collaboration: A DMS enables multiple users to work on a document simultaneously, enhancing collaboration among team members and improving the speed and quality of document review and revision. 

• Improved security and compliance: A DMS can provide robust security features, such as access controls, encryption, and audit trails, that protect sensitive information from unauthorized access, alteration, or destruction. A DMS can also help organizations comply with legal and regulatory requirements. 

• Cost savings: A DMS can reduce the cost of document management by eliminating the need for physical document storage and reducing the time and resources required for document retrieval and review. 

So why would the title of this article have been considered contentious? 

Historically, the vendors of legal-specific document management solutions would have rightly pointed out the deficiencies with older versions of SharePoint when it came to required features like metadata management, workflows, complex version control and tracking who has done what work on a matter. However, as Microsoft products have evolved, with SharePoint Online providing the core document capabilities of the Microsoft 365 suite, with deep integration into other capabilities, it is no longer the case that there is a clear demarcation between products designed to be legal document management systems and SharePoint. 

An industry analyst from Gartner Group defines a legal document management system as: 

“Legal Document Management Solutions are used by law firms and law professionals to store and organize legal documents and streamline document workflow, which in turn aid in faster operations. A centralized document management system helps in creating continuity and consistency within an organization. 

This is achieved through integration with other applications such as office suites, emails, and other legal applications. The systems are designed for automated file sorting, storage, and retrieval of electronically stored legal documents with advanced search tools. Additionally, legal document management solutions ensure security and access control of the documents shared for collaboration.” 

That sounds like a description of SharePoint Online, SharePoint Premium, Microsoft Purview, and Power Automate capabilities to me! 

SharePoint Online has evolved to provide the capabilities required by law firms and CLD’s: 

• Matter centricity: With matter number, client name, and other details all captured using metadata via the managed metadata service term store and custom columns, all documents can be linked to and connected with this important information.  

• Metadata: As noted above, legal document management can require lots of metadata, and there are metadata standards for different legal practice areas, so the term store and custom columns become key. The ability to use AI to automatically process documents in SharePoint Premium, create metadata, and allow documents to inherit metadata values from the Library or Folder minimizes the burden on end users. 

• Unique doc ID: This setting, which can be turned on in site settings > site content and structure, generates a unique document identity number for every document.  

• Search: A key element of legal document management systems, Microsoft Search provides capabilities for custom search pages and the ability to surface and filter the metadata associated with each document in the Microsoft 365 index. 

• Content types: With any firm or corporate legal department potentially creating or processing many different types of legal documents with lots of metadata, Content Types come to the fore when designing solutions that split different documents into different libraries etc. The new AI-powered content assembly capabilities of SharePoint Premium bring a new level of capability here. 

• Version control: Lawyers love versioning, but if they have been using File Shares, they are probably used to doing it by adding dates or version numbers to the file name. Helping them understand major and minor versions and SharePoint’s capabilities is key at the solution design stage. The new Version History functionality will be welcomed by lawyers who are used to other document management solutions.  

• Workflows: Levering Power Automate Flows to automate document-centric business processes with multi-stage, serial and parallel flows, and of course, the ability of Power Automate connectors to link documents and metadata to many different applications and systems. 

• Microsoft Teams: The ability to deliver matter-centric collaboration using Teams and channels, the integration of documents via the Files Tab, and all the other capabilities that can be delivered via Teams, including Planner, Viva Engage—which is a great solution for communities of practice—and a whole plethora of other apps, means less context switching and greater efficiency for legal teams. 

Managing documents is crucial for law firms and legal departments to operate efficiently and maintain confidentiality. Although this may not have been a statement I could have made several years ago, I would now contend that SharePoint Online has the capabilities to effectively support legal document management. With its ability to use AI for document processing, create metadata for easy information retrieval, utilize Power Automate to automate manual processes, and integrate with different apps, SharePoint has evolved into an application that can compete well against other legal document management systems. 

In upcoming posts, we will explore the additional features and functionality brought by SharePoint Premium, Purview Information Lifecycle Management (which includes records management), and Microsoft Copilot. We will also explore how partners such as Colligo and ClearPeople enhance the functionality of the Microsoft 365 base and how this will lead to productivity improvements in law firms and corporate law departments.