Full-service transatlantic law firm Womble Bond Dickinson (WBD) is in the process of finalising contracts to move to the iManage Cloud with leading iManage partner Tiger Eye as its implementation and support services partner.
WBD, a long term iManage customer, kicked off the DMS selection process in earnest in January led by IT director David Lee and his team. IT applications & development manager Tom Humberstone told Legal IT Insider: “Like most firms we have been talking about this for a long time, but it was really at the beginning of this year that we went out to market and started reviewing who we could work with and what benefits there are to being in the cloud in terms of really leveraging our investment in Microsoft 365.”
Humberstone says one of the big advantages of the iManage Cloud is the partnership between Microsoft and iManage, and he observed: “The partnership they have committed to is important. What’s driving our adoption of the cloud is how we can benefit from the synergies between iManage and Microsoft and how that helps us to get more out of our Microsoft 365 stack.”
So too does the firm expect to benefit from future innovations and Humberstone said: “The expectation is to take advantage of new iManage products and there will be more emphasis on their cloud offerings, so we want to be able to leverage and benefit from that and make our lawyers and support staff more efficient.”
WBD is about to migrate from FileSite to iManage Work 10 as part of its cloud-readiness programme.
Humberstone will be working with Tiger Eye to get WBD’s data ready to move to the cloud as part of a big change management programme, and he told Legal IT Insider: “We have been working with Tiger Eye for a few years now, starting with Send & Sign for iManage, which is their DocuSign integration. We’ve worked closely with them, and we liked and appreciated their approach to the proposal for moving to the cloud.”
The data exercise will see Tiger Eye help WBD to cleanse and clean its data to optimise its cloud migration and Humberstone says: “There’s an opportunity to remove some content and make sure we’re only pushing up what we need. Those things are more of a challenge once you’re in the cloud and we want to make sure we are in the best possible shape.”
Tiger Eye will then manage the cloud transition for WBD, which is based in seven offices across the UK. It will migrate over 82 million documents, which is scheduled to happen in Q2 2023. The 1,000-staff firm has also signed up for iManage Security Policy Manager.
Humberstone said: “This is a big profile project for us, but if we get it right users shouldn’t see too much change, it’s just a change of where the servers are in essence. The real change will be where we take the platform next, with tighter integration into Microsoft 365.”
Tiger Eye will deliver iManage support services once the system is live.
Ranking in the UK’s top 20 law firms, WBD provides legal expertise in eleven sectors across the UK and US. The firm advises over 40 FTSE 350 companies, including many of the largest businesses in the UK, as well as government organisations and private clients.