This is the latest article in a series discussing what is possible to achieve by using the Microsoft 365 platform for legal matter management in conjunction with the OnePlace Solutions products. Over the coming weeks the following articles will be published, revisit the blog:
Legal matters require lawyers to have instant access to accurate and comprehensive information. The sheer volume of information often involved in legal matters can make this challenging. Adding context to information through simplified metadata capture can help improve information intelligence and automation of records compliance.
Email remains a convenient and essential form of communication. When documents are attached to emails or important information is conveyed in the body of the email, it raises a problem regarding how to manage and retain that information so that the records remain accurate and discoverable.
It’s important to be able to save email to SharePoint in its original form along with critical email attributes. These attributes, such as sent date, from, to and describing the email, can be promoted to SharePoint columns, facilitating intelligent records and compliance. Capturing email attributes and additional metadata helps ensure content is classified and retained according to policies.
When saving from a file system, documents may still be in situ following a mass migration. When using OnePlace Solutions to save to SharePoint, the solution captures the original file creation date, which is important from a records perspective. Users can optionally apply additional metadata within the same workflow of saving email, attachments, or documents to Microsoft 365.
If an email is classified as highly confidential when it’s initially sent, that information can be captured automatically and associated with the email saved to SharePoint. Metadata helps provide context to information and drive more intelligent and automated records compliance to reduce the manual burden on teams across the business.
e-Discovery
For e-discovery, using metadata and automated workflows can dramatically reduce the amount of manual work involved and the potential for error. Once data is stored in Microsoft 365, managing legal holds becomes simple. Metadata must be in place to do this in Microsoft 365 automatically. OnePlace Solutions facilitates this process. Without a solution that streamlines the capture of this metadata, law firms and corporate legal departments could face expensive, manual work with auditors to put electronically stored information on legal hold.
By simplifying the capture and classification of content, law firms, corporate legal departments, and other areas of the organization can significantly improve how they manage information.
Microsoft 365 is a powerful platform, delivering enterprise-wide consistency for better collaboration, information management and governance; however, it is not an out-of-the-box, dedicated legal matter management solution.
For most law firms and corporate legal departments, the key barrier to using Microsoft 365 as a legal matter management platform is simply a lack of inherent know-how. This blog series will provide information and guidance on how to use Microsoft 365 for modern legal matter management to deliver workflow efficiencies, cost savings, and greater productivity.
OnePlace Solutions enables people in business to do more simply. To learn more about how OnePlace Solutions can help your law firm or legal department work more effectively without investing in expensive bespoke solutions, or help your organization leverage Microsoft 365 as a platform for legal matter management contact the team today.
