April 21, 2004

A software package to document and retrieve cases quickly is giving law firm Colin Ng & Partners an edge in a business where time is money

Time and intellectual experience are all that lawyers have to offer clients, says lawyer Young Chee Foong.

Developed by ECM provider, Interwoven, iManage is a document management and collaboration tool. And 47 of the top 100 law firms in the United States count on it.

Mr Young's firm, Colin Ng & Partners, has used the system for two years now. And it has done away with needless time loss and sundry woes that lawyers face daily in having to capture, store and manage the tons of information that form the backbone of their trade.

"Earlier, if we wanted to get hold of a particular piece of opinion or wanted to inquire whether there was any precedent to a particular case we were dealing with, we had to send multiple e-mails to colleagues and depend on them to reply," said Mr Young, a partner at the firm. "The process could take weeks."

Now, all the legal opinions prepared are stored in a central repository and can be retrieved by any lawyer with a few clicks of the mouse. Ditto for case histories and precedents or cases on the same legal issue. The system already has close to 100,000 documents, with about 500 more added every month.

The system also stores templates of routine documents that lawyers can easily pull out and consult.

"Suppose a lawyer has to draw up a joint venture contract for a client who is setting up a business in China, we can easily consult iManage to check if any templates exist for that kind of document," said Mr Young. "There is no need to start from scratch."

Added Mr Young: "If Client A goes to Lawyer X and Client B approaches Lawyer Y on the same legal issue, the firm must ensure that the opinion is consistent in both cases."

Lawyers can also simultaneously work on the same document, and the system updates changes in each individual copy.

"Earlier we had to e-mail each other every time changes were made or a new version introduced."

The firm's system engineer, Mr Ron Chang, said that Interwoven was chosen because it had a track record with other legal firms.

He said: "The project cost us close to $100,000 and we were not prepared to be guinea pigs."

iManage is also linked with back-end accounting systems, added Mr Chang.

"That is particularly useful for cost recovery, when lawyers need to claim reimbursements for money spent on clients."

There is also a long-term advantage. "Earlier, we had no way of capturing institutional knowledge," said Mr Young. "So if a lawyer left he took most of his intellectual know-how with him."

Now that knowledge stays inside.