It may not be sexy, or even much thought about and appreciated, but document management systems (DMS) are one of the central vertebra in the corporate backbone. Like an old friend, document management has been used to track and file electronic documents throughout much of the enterprise for decades. Despite this longstanding familiarity with DM, however, experts say that legal departments have lagged in adopting DM tools, and are still searching for the most effective ways to use them.
Part of the problem is that many legal departments have never had the option of choosing their own DM solution. Companies frequently impose the enterprisewide DMS, or a specific vendor, upon the legal team, which can be problematic because lawyers’ needs typically differ from those of other departments. In those cases, counsel simply have to make do with what they’re given. But when given a choice, a host of new, legal-specific DM technologies are currently available.
