Law firms considering using SharePoint for legal document management often ask whether they can use a Client / Matter-centric approach. They want to be easily able to see and retrieve documents that have been stored for a particular Client or for a particular Matter for a Client. When saving a document, email or other file legal users want to choose the relevant Client and Matter rather than having to navigate the document store.

Retrieving and saving on the basis of the client-matter profile is a key feature that is available with ‘traditional’ DM systems that have been popular in legal environments, such as Open Text Hummingbird DM and Interwoven Worksite.

MacroView DMF provides Client-Matter-centric ‘Open from SharePoint’ and ‘Save to SharePoint’ features that allow you to interact with a SharePoint-based document store in much the same way as you would in a traditional DM system. Rather than having to navigate the SharePoint site / library tree you simply select the Client from a drop down list and then pick the relevant Matter for the selected Client. MacroView DMF Professional then automatically determines the correct site and library location in SharePoint. See MacroView DMF Professional Legal Pack for more details.

Smart templates for Clients & Matters

MacroView DMF Professional also enables a Client /Matter-centric approach to the creation of storage areas for new Clients and Matters. The resulting storage areas have automatic meta-data for Client and Matter, which minimises user profiling effort when saving a document, file or email message. See MacroView DMF Professional Legal Pack for more details.

The MacroView Client-Matter web service and Business Data Catalog definitions provide an excellent starting point for integration with existing Practice Management and CRM systems. Also included is a prototype SharePoint-based Client Management application, which enables rapid deployment and testing.

MacroView also lets you search for documents on the basis of Client and / or Matter.