What I really want from a document management system

If you look at any client file these days, you are likely to see that documents form a small proportion of the file compared to the high volume of emails. Is document management (DM) in its traditional form still relevant?

Most of the current DM systems were developed in the mid-1990s and before the exponential growth of email, so they were primarily designed to hold traditional word-processing documents. This was a time when you might produce a few letters and documents a day, so working through the list of documents in a DM system was not a problem. Even after a month or two, the DM system might only contain a few hundred documents for a particular client or matter. Quite simply, long lists of documents worked and it was sufficient for the needs of a lawyer at that time.

Moving forward almost 20 years, how things have changed. It is not unusual for a fee-earner to receive 100 or more emails a day. With teams of lawyers working on a matter, you could easily be filing a hundred or more emails into a single electronic matter file each day, swamping the handful of documents that you might create in the same time period. After a month or two, you would likely be looking at thousands of emails, and the long list of documents and emails in your DM matter file will not offer the same appeal as it did in the 1990s.

Document management is no longer about documents. It is primarily email-centric, with some scanned papers, traditional documents and correspondence thrown into the huge e-file mixing pot I have termed file management. Of course, with these huge e-files, part of the answer is to use the search function. This certainly narrows the results, assuming you have enough information to narrow the search to the point at which you see only a handful of results.

If you are fortunate enough to reduce those thousands of emails and documents down to half a dozen items, then you will probably be quite happy to open them to find what you are looking for. In my experience, however, this rarely happens. What I am left with is a search that returns dozens of results that I then have to work through, opening each item before disregarding it and moving onto the next one. If I am lucky, I find what I am looking for quickly; other times, it is the last item in the list – such is the law of sod.

Surely, it is not just me who thinks this an inefficient and cumbersome way of working? The behemoth document management systems are being left behind and they will increasingly find it difficult to maintain their credibility as smaller, more agile software packages enter the market.

One of our partners recently introduced me to a great app called iAnnotate (available on Apple and Android), which allows me to open multiple documents which I can then quickly review, highlight and, as the name suggests, annotate. The interface is user friendly and it is incredibly quick and easy to review multiple documents.

DM providers need to learn from these apps and provide an experience that makes their systems simpler and more user friendly, especially when working with significant numbers of emails and documents.

Document management is changing and the supplier who understands the need for a fundamental change in the user interface and user experience will be the first to embrace a 21st-century file management system.