UK top 200 London law firm Anthony Gold has selected SharePoint/Office 365 document and email management system Repstor custodian for Legal. “The O365-based software, which benefits from the familiarity of Outlook, will restore order to email filing, enhance remote collaboration and provide more granular content security,” a release out today (19 February) tells us.
Anthony Gold employs around 170 people across three locations in London, and at least half of its fee-earners and partners work flexibly from home at least some of the time. The firm has turned to custodian for Legal from Repstor to make remote collaboration easier, and to reduce the time being lost daily to email filing.
“Filing and email management are a huge consumer of time, because of the sheer volumes of messages transmitted each day in relation to client matters,” said managing partner David Marshall. “They have to be stored in the correct client spaces, but this was taking longer each day.”
Custodian for Legal appealed because it reflects the way people naturally work within Outlook, while ensuring that emails and their attachments are stored in the right locations. “It’s very intuitive, so correct email filing is something users will be able to do almost without thinking,” Marshall says. “As a non-techie, I was particularly impressed with how easy to use the software is without special training. This will make a huge difference in ensuring everyone uses it routinely.
“Better still, the software makes fuller use of our existing Outlook 365 investment – cloud space we have already paid for – which makes custodian for Legal a very economical option,” he adds.
Anthony Gold will roll out the new software in stages over the next six months so it can build on each practice group’s experiences. “It’s a pragmatic installation plan, which we liked,” Marshall says.
In due course, the firm wants to make use of shared workplaces with clients, so legal teams can collaborate and share documents with clients securely online. “The discrete security options with custodian for Legal are very useful,” David notes. “It means we can lock down individual matters or practice groups, so only certain people can access the content.” Other plans include linking the software to document production and work with documents.
This is another big win for Repstor, which counts Eversheds Sutherland among its clients. Despite a great number of law firms having struggled to mold SharePoint into a workable DMS, the likes of Repstor and Epona are adamant that the platform is now more stable and firms are taking advantage of capabilities that didn’t exist two years ago. Not to mention the security of the Microsoft cloud is compelling to firms ready to take the plunge. Keep an eye out for our interview in the Orange Rag out next week with Epona’s US VP Keith Valley, talking about their win of Ketsal Consulting.