NetDocuments DMS: A Game-Changer for Progressive Legal
Progressive Legal found that standard document storage solutions could not meet the demands of their modern legal practice. This case study explores how NetDocuments’ intuitive integration with existing systems and flexible cloud-based model transformed Progressive Legal’s approach to document management, enabling team collaboration from anywhere.
About Progressive Legal
Progressive Legal provides practical, skilled and timely business legal advice and tailored documents to growing Australian businesses. The firm is client-focused, aiming to protect Australian companies, their assets and intellectual property. It provides expert legal advice about corporate structure, intellectual property protection (including trademarks), tailored commercial legal documents and advice, and workplace and dispute resolution.
Progressive Legal believes the current legal model is outdated for the modern, fast-paced digital environment, and its vision is entirely different to the “old school” approach to legal services. It provides online legal services to clients across Australia with fast turnarounds, fixed fees and cost-effective legal advice from experts in each area. Progressive Legal is a law firm designed around what small businesses need, aiming to provide excellent service with no legal jargon and straightforward, practical advice for modern Australian businesses.
Born in the cloud and with many remote lawyers, trademark attorneys and paralegals, Progressive Legal needed an easy-to-use, secure, cloud-based solution.
The Challenge: Outgrowing Local Document Storage
Progressive Legal is always looking to identify the best technology to assist its team and drive results for clients. Until 2017, the firm used a combination of Microsoft SharePoint and local storage to save documents, but this wasn’t a legal-specific solution. Progressive Legal needed a reliable and secure way to find, share and collaborate on documents from anywhere on any device. As a result, Progressive Legal decided it was time to adopt a dedicated cloud-based Document Management System (DMS) that was purpose-built for legal professionals.
Ian Aldridge, Principal Lawyer at Progressive Legal, said: “We needed a central repository of all emails and documents. I wanted to draw a line in the sand and ensure nobody would have to experience losing a document. We also wanted to eliminate possible version control issues or difficulty searching and retrieving documents.”
Why NetDocuments?
“Looking across the market, NetDocuments was one of only a handful of legal-specific email and document management systems. Many law firms use their practice management system or a combination of Microsoft SharePoint and Office, but this doesn’t offer the same functionality as NetDocuments.”
NetDocuments was the clear choice due to its integration with Progressive Legal’s existing Clio Practice Management System (PMS) and productivity applications such as Microsoft Outlook. NetDocuments’ heritage and commercial model also attracted Progressive Legal as a document security specialist.
After working for several small and large law firms in Australia and the UK, Aldridge has significant experience working with various DMSs. He adds: “NetDocuments has great functionality and features, user experience and security, plus its price point per user was affordable, and its pay-per-seat approach made it an easy decision for us.”
Aldridge says he experienced several ‘a-ha’ moments during the initial product demonstration. He was excited about having all emails in a safe and secure repository, easily searchable and closely integrated with Clio.
“As we continued to find more great functions, I constantly asked staff, ‘How good is NetDocuments?’ It was like we had stumbled across a trade secret.”
Deployment and Key Features
Progressive Legal went live with NetDocuments in 2017, with the support of NetDocuments' certified partner Verlata Consulting. Today, the firm uses NetDocuments for precedent and library storage and management, internal document management and client document management.
Aldridge explains: “Each email sent and received from a client is saved to NetDocuments in one click through the ndMail capability. We use the ndCompare function in Microsoft Word to source documents to be compared straight from a client’s workspace. The Microsoft Office suite integrates with NetDocuments so each item can be saved straight from Word, Excel, Outlook, and Adobe. We have also been using the NetDocuments app on smartphones, which makes it possible to access documents on the go.”
“The integration with Clio and Microsoft Office is a game-changer for us. Version control is also great. We can save over a document without losing previous versions and access them anytime. The Echo backup makes it feel very safe, as you can’t lose a document you have spent time working on. The powerful search function can be used across all cabinets, so if you have the title of a document in mind, you don’t need to scroll through infinitely or open various folders.”
Results and Impact
“Our practice definitely could not have grown at the speed that we did without NetDocuments. Looking back, I realise that finding NetDocuments was pivotal for our firm,” Aldridge reflected. He says NetDocuments’ compliance and security expertise has been particularly beneficial: “It’s now very easy for us to search and retrieve historical emails and documents, which is important as legally we need to retain information for seven years. NetDocuments runs on the platinum standard for email and document security, storage and management, which is naturally our primary consideration. Prospective clients ask about the platform we use, and we’re proud to say we use NetDocuments. I have no hesitation in recommending NetDocuments to Australian law firms of all sizes.”
Looking to the future, Progressive Legal is exploring how NetDocuments ndMAX native AI and automation capabilities can benefit the firm. “We are looking for a platform to generate documents from precedents and create libraries of useful clauses, how-tos, and questionnaires now that we have an extensive precedent library,” concluded Aldridge.
With NetDocuments, Progressive Legal has been able to reap the rewards of greater productivity as its business grows. The firm’s employees can now collaborate and work securely on documents from anywhere, raising the bar for client service. In addition, Progressive Legal has peace of mind and a scalable, forward-looking platform that will enable it to leverage the latest legal AI capabilities.
About NetDocuments
NetDocuments is an enterprise content management system in the cloud. Small to large organisations, including many Am Law 100 firms, rely on NetDocuments’ modern, secure solution for intelligent and confidential document and email management. With decades of document management experience, NetDocuments continually enhances the application, providing customer firms with the most innovative document and email management solution. By eliminating on-premises or hosted system hardware and moving into the security of the cloud, the IT burden is dramatically decreased, reducing the cost and complexity of the DMS.
