Full-service UK law firm IBB Law has selected Intapp Documents (formerly Repstor), a Microsoft 365-based document and email management solution that connects content across SharePoint, Outlook and Teams, we can reveal. The circa 150-lawyer firm is an iManage on premises customer and was looking to move its DMS to the cloud. It selected Intapp Documents after what we’re told was a lengthy selection process and proof of concept led by IT director Sam Luxford-Watts.
“Our legacy document management system was one of our last on-premises applications, and when exploring our options to move it into the cloud, we were keen to take the time to look at the bigger picture and consider all options,” said Luxford-Watts, who has held IT director roles at firms including Watson Farley & Williams and Charles Russell Speechlys, where he was interim head.
“We needed a DMS that fit nicely with our Microsoft strategy — one that would allow our documents to be managed natively using our existing Microsoft security policies in Microsoft Purview and allow us to leverage some of the new Microsoft cognitive services like OpenAI and eventually Microsoft 365 Copilot. We chose Intapp Documents because it is the only solution that fully aligns with this vision and our entire Microsoft strategy.”
IBB Law will work with Intapp partner Transform Data International (TDI) to deploy Intapp Documents along with TDI’s own product Workhub, which is a Teams integration app.
Speaking to Legal IT Insider, Roger Pickett, who joined TDI as UK director at the start of 2022, said: “Every law firm is interested in a Microsoft strategy and how they can leverage 365 in the future. They realise that having their documents in SharePoint would make it far more native and easier to move forward. The resistance has been that traditional document management systems have had more nuanced fee-earner features, but we have been working with five or six firms over the past year to improve the user interface and add the features they need to the front end.”
The debate has long rumbled on as to whether SharePoint is suitable as a law firm document management system, particularly for large firms, given its lack of matter-centricity and email management capabilities. Repstor (acquired by Intapp in 2021) delivered matter-centric email and document capability but Pickett said: “We have worked with law firms so they can now run in Teams or Outlook from any device with all the features, which has been critical to get over that last hurdle.”
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