How Legal IT Leaders Are Revolutionizing the Legal Work Experience
Learn Why Organizations are Switching to NetDocuments.

Innovation You Can Depend On: How Legal IT Leaders Are Revolutionizing the Legal Work Experience

23/8/2021

The last few years have been stress-inducing for all of us. Many legal professionals are burning out, and the technologists like you that support them have jumped through numerous hoops to keep business flowing smoothly in an environment where the only constant is change. According to the results of ALM’s 2021 Mental Health and Substance Abuse Survey, 37% of respondents said they felt depressed, 71% said they had experienced at least some anxiety, and 14% said they had developed a different mental illness in 2021. Each of these data points represents an increase from 2020.

It’s clear that modern lawyering is having a negative impact on those in the practice. But what if the industry could be revolutionized? 

And what if technology leaders like you were the one to do it?

Dependable Innovation is the Key to Success

We’re a bit biased, it’s true, but we believe that legal technology—and by extension the strategic leaders who implement it—are the key to stopping lawyer’s burn out for good. Legal tech has the potential to improve workflows and remove tedious tasks that drain lawyer’s time and energy, freeing them to focus on what they love about the profession.

Forward-thinking legal IT leaders like you have taken their law firms into the future by implementing cutting-edge solutions that allow lawyers to worry less about systems, security, and processes—regardless of the changes throughout the world. Is innovation truly innovative if you cannot depend on it to deliver lasting results?

Last year, we introduced Working Inspired… why we do what we do. It is what drives us. It is our passion. It means rethinking the way we, our customers, and their staff - do things.

This year, the innovations that we have delivered enable a more inspired work experience for lawyers and IT leaders… even in the midst of a pandemic. From a flexible, invisible work experience to seamless security, automated processes, anywhere access, and clearer insights, we’re arming legal and technology professionals with the tools they need to tackle every challenge.

Get an inside look at how CIOs and CINOs are tackling the newest challenges during our ILTACON Keynote, The Quickening Decade, on Wednesday, 25/8that 9am PT.

Intuitive Invisibility Created for Lawyers, by Lawyers

"[NetDocuments is] anything but stagnant and looks to practicing lawyers on how to continually improve and dial-in the service."

- Jay Selanders, Chair, Kutak Rock

Lawyers are typically unhappy with any technology change, in no small part due to their massive workloads. When you are considering any new system, particularly one as critical as a document management system (DMS), it’s imperative that opportunities to streamline lawyer’s current workflows are heavily considered.

The NetDocuments DMS and email management solutions have always operated quietly in the background of Microsoft Office products, providing lawyers the flexibility to work however and wherever is most natural to them.

This year, we’ve placed an increased focus on how lawyers are working—beginning with our new customer advisory panel, Attorney-Inspired Innovation. This panel is mission-critical for us to receive timely feedback on ideas to ensure that our customers are our partners in developing our product roadmap.

This year, utilizing the feedback from our product and design teams, we’ve taken the intuitive invisibility already built into the platform a step further with new updates to the user experience. These include modernized dialog boxes, improved workflows, and a focus on accessibility.

ndSync and ndOffice Activity Center Redesigned

The well-loved ndSync, which has allowed your legal staff to essentially operate on their local computer while utilizing NetDocuments, has been redesigned to allow for access to a greater number of documents, pinned files, and better overall organization. ndSync now runs through ndOffice’s Activity Center to ensure your legal teams always have the documents and updates they need at their fingertips.

Tighter Collaboration with ChatLink and Microsoft Teams

In 2020 we released ChatLink, seamlessly connecting Microsoft Teams with our platform and providing yet another secure entry point for lawyers to work within NetDocuments without the need to access the platform directly. 

Since ChatLink’s release, we have continued to push improvements for intuitive document collaboration. Be the first to learn about these updates by joining us at 10am on 24/8at ILTACON to hear from our Product Manager, Fred Levesque, and our partners at Kraft Kennedy as they highlight these new features and productivity gains. In addition, they will demonstrate how to leverage Microsoft Power Automate to easily build workflows within Teams using NetDocuments and other tools in your portfolio.

Seamless Security to Make the Right Choice the Easy Choice

"We just couldn’t match the level of security that NetDocuments was proposing."

- Curt Montague, Director of Technology Services, Sheppard Mullin

In addition to being flexible and intuitive for users, we find it equally important to ensure our technology is a seamless experience for IT teams like yours. That’s why, this year, we introduced Workspace Security Manager (WSM) to relieve pressure when it comes to managing numerous security policies across the organization.

WSM centralizes and streamlines security policies, making it easier to set ethical walls and add need-to-know sharing restrictions at every level of the platform. Additionally, Effective Rights reporting makes it simple for administrators to easily track how security policies are administered across the platform. 

Thanks to WSM, once security policies are applied and updated by the team, users gain confidence knowing they have appropriate access to applicable documents. Instead of legal professionals having to choose where and how to store documents, WSM policies mean it’s all done for them, with just a few clicks from your team.

Accelerate Your Processes with Broader Access

"My favorite thing about NetDocuments is consistency of use in or out of the office."

- David Roden, Director of Technology & Operations, Goodell, Devries, & Dann LLP

While security policies work to keep the wrong documents out of the wrong hands, NetDocuments has developed new entry points for lawyers to interact with your secured system. This means that while your documents are safe, lawyers never miss productivity or efficiency gains.

  • eSign will be launching in Q42021 and will help users easily send, receive, and track e-signatures for documents as part of their standard workflow. Follow us on LinkedIn to make sure you don’t miss the launch of this exciting product.
  • Delegate Homepage Management is the tool your lawyer’s staff have been waiting for. Lawyers can name homepage delegates throughout the firm, providing various levels of access, to streamline and increase the organization of assistant’s and paralegal’s work.
  • ndKeyboard will make it easy for your legal team to share document links directly from their favorite mobile applications including WhatsApp, Messages, and more once launched—certainly increasing the ability to work from anywhere, on any device, seamlessly without ever leaving the app.
  • ndMail for Gmail provides Gmail users with the same email productivity features our global customers enjoy within theGmail interface. ndMail for Gmail increases accessibility to our award-winning platform and ensures lawyers across the profession can effectively manage their email.

Want a better look at what we have in store for late 2021and early 2022? Check out our latest news and join us for our ILTACON Company Update on Tuesday, 24/8at 12:30pm PT.

More Transparency, More Insights

"NetDocuments has taken us into the modern world where our legal department can really shine."

- Sr. Corporate Counsel for Contracts, Leading Biotech Corporation

For lawyers, law firms, and legal teams to truly work inspired, users and administrators need transparency and insights into how the technology is performing and impacting the business.

Analytics was launched earlier this year to give both end-users and administrators new ways to find insights and information about how NetDocuments is being utilized across the company – from adoption rates, most commonly accessed documents, and more.

Administrators have access to performance insights and usage to help strategically boost platform adoption and compliance; meanwhile, end-users can get at-a-glance views of their most important workspaces to uncover key information and identify contributors quickly.

Work Inspired With Innovation You Can Depend On

"It was a big mountain to climb, but it worked out and the results are worth it!"

- Wallace Saunders, Swift Currie McGhee & Hiers LLP

The legal industry is changing. Demands on lawyers and technology leaders—as well as cybersecurity threats—are increasing, leading to unprecedented levels of client scrutiny. And as a technology leader your every decision is laying the groundwork for whether your firm will continue to succeed in this new paradigm.

Our customers already know that they can depend on us and have chosen time and again to select NetDocuments as their innovation partner. Over the last year our Work Inspired Solutions have experienced incredible growth including, PROTECT (226% growth), DELIVER (140% growth), and PLAN (75% growth), underscoring just how essential customers view these new technologies. Each of the solution tools support and extend the cybersecurity, efficiency, and client relationship efforts our customers are making, giving them the edge they need to stay ahead of client expectations.

Innovation requires two main ingredients: experience and expertise. We have over 20 years of experience building cloud-based solutions, and only cloud-based solutions. You and your legal staff have the expertise to ensure those products support both your technical and workflow needs effectively. At NetDocuments, your work is our source of inspiration. That inspiration has led, and will continue to lead, to innovations you can depend on today, tomorrow, and decades from now.

Don’t miss our sessions at ILTACON where we’ll be discussing the latest innovations, top trends, and hidden insights.

"Great company, great products, great leadership, great people, great culture!"
"I love my team and peers. We are family, and we respect each other."
"NetDocuments encourages a good work/family balance."
"I feel respected and valued by leadership and my team."
"We work together and support/encourage each other to do our best work every day."
"From start to finish, my leaders are willing to guide me and let me try new things. This keeps work fresh, exciting, and fun so I don't burn out or get bored."
"I have clear direction in my work tasks and priorities. I also feel encouraged to put my family first and maintain a healthy work life balance."
"I work with highly motivated individuals who are smart and allow me to learn from them!"
"NetDocuments is committed to exceeding customer expectations by building leading products hosted in rock-solid environments."
"I'm empowered to try new things and think through processes and campaigns strategically. I can lean on my boss for support, but I'm not micromanaged, which is appreciated."
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