Four simple steps to start your document management system search

By Bryce Phillips, senior document management consultant at Affinity Consulting Group

Document management solutions are critical to the success of today’s law firm. Legal specific document management eliminates the wild, wild west approach to document storage and security and significantly improves the efficiency and productivity of legal professionals.

 Selecting a document management system (DMS) can be daunting, but here are four simple steps to get you started on the path to selecting the perfect DMS for your firm or legal department.

Identify core features of your DMS

Understand the real needs of your firm before looking at a document management system. Does your firm have issues capturing emails? Are your challenges with finding documents? Are there difficulties with saving documents consistently and naming conventions? Truly recognizing the needs of your firm or department is the first step to understanding and selecting the features needed in a DMS.

Rank feature importance

One document management solution will probably not provide you with EVERYTHING on your list. Ranking your requirements will help. Know what features are critical to your firm or department. Know which ones you’d like to have but could live without and which ones you definitely do not want or need. It may be necessary to trade off some features that mean little to your process in place of ones that cannot be compromised.

Evaluate on premise solutions versus hosted, cloud-based solutions

Understand your choices when selecting the DMS configuration that’s best for your firm. Keep in mind that the number of on-premises vendors diminishes each year. Most investment and development focus on hosted (AKA cloud-based) solutions.

With on-premises solutions, you’ll need to consider whether you have someone with the knowledge to set-up and maintain the system, plus hardware/software costs and specialized manpower for maintenance. You also want a clear sense of the vendor’s long-term strategy for its on-premises product. If you must have an on-premises DMS, perhaps for regulatory reasons, ensure you understand the vendor’s commitment to future support for and investment in their on-premises products.

For hosted solutions, consider recurring costs (usually monthly, quarterly, or annually) to maintain servers and warehouse your documents, understand your data will live elsewhere, and maintain a strong internet connection.

Identify the choice that best meets your needs and budget.

Explore solutions via demo

Document management solutions should enhance the work your firm is doing, not add more steps or additional challenges. By watching an actual demonstration and seeing how a document management system’s features are performed, you’ll see which system will make your teams more productive and efficient.

Also, if a DMS indicates it can perform a critical function, ask the demonstrator to show you how it’s done.

For more resources on opening, building, managing, protecting, and winding down a law practice, visit The Missouri Bar’s Law Practice Management Resource Center.