Depending on who you listen to, document management systems (DMS) are either a dull but vital part of a law firm’s ‘plumbing’; an unnecessary, expensive, complicated and distracting piece of software; or the key to the next wave of legal applications. These systems are undoubtedly complicated and there is a great deal of debate as to how best implement and run them in a law firm.
As one of the first law firms to implement DMS, Freshfields Bruckhaus Deringer’s IT director David Hamilton is a seasoned veteran in this area. “I do not understand how some firms can survive without a DMS,” he says. “We have an enormous quantity of documents and many different versions of each. You need to be able to compare these versions against each other… you need excellent storage management.” It appears that firms above a certain size do need a solid DMS platform: all of Hamilton’s magic circle counterparts have long regarded the technology as a vital part of their information infrastructure.
