customer success story

Ranked in 2008 as one of the 100 largest law firms in the country by The National Law Journal, Baker, Donelson, Bearman, Caldwell & Berkowitz, PC, has 22 offices located in five states in the southern U.S. as well as Washington, D.C., plus a representative office in Beijing, China. Through strategic acquisitions and mergers over the past century, the firm has grown to include more than 560 attorneys and public policy and international advisors.

Keeping up with such growth requires a considerable level of IT flexibility, especially when it comes to the information management needs of the law firm. The challenge in recent years for Baker Donelson has been to consolidate and manage its large and ever-growing amount of data ranging from case-related documents, time, billing and contact information, and financial data, which might be found in Microsoft® Office Word® documents or Microsoft Office Excel® spreadsheets, in email, or in other software applications for the legal industry that the firm utilizes. In order to facilitate improved collaboration and knowledge sharing between offices, and service its clients more efficiently, Baker Donelson wanted to provide its attorneys with a single interface to all client and matter information, regardless of storage location.

SituationBaker Donelson’s legacy intranet, called BakerNet, was built using SV Technology’s portal product, LawPort™. The firm had been satisfied with the application for many years but with its desire to move in a new direction, it was determined that the legacy portal could not offer the firm the functionality it needed without a great deal of effort to maintain, update, and extend the product, and it was not cost-effective for the firm.

For document management, Baker Donelson utilizes OpenText Document Management, eDOCS Edition (eDOCS DM), which provides a secure environment to capture, organize, and store the firm’s client information. It provides the firm with the functionality and control over documents that it needs. The eDOCS DM system supports centralized searching across multiple remote libraries; however, Baker Donelson configured the application using “non-remote” libraries, which means that each of its 22 offices maintains its own eDOCS DM repository or library from which attorneys and legal staff can access and share internal documents. As a result of this configuration, consolidated searching for documents stored across the various offices was not possible. With the firm’s decision to offer its attorneys a matter-centric view of all of its matter and client information, it required a simple and secure way to access the multiple repositories via a single interface. This way, users would be able to search for, review, and edit the information in real time. Potential version control problems would also be averted.

IndustryLegal

Customer

Business Challengesn Improve access to internal information

in non-remote librariesn Enhance collaboration and

communications between legal teamsn Provide a mechanism to publish and

synchronize controlled documentation via SharePoint portal

n Seamless SharePoint user experience

Business Solutionsn Microsoft® Office SharePoint®

Server 2007n OpenText Document Management,

eDOCS Edition n OpenText Application Governance &

Archiving for Microsoft® SharePoint®

Business Benefitsn Improved access to internal datan Improved search across

multiple repositoriesn Provides “single version of the truth”

across different groups and sitesn Better collaborationn Version control of documents

can be maintained

Baker, Donelson, Bearman, Caldwell & Berkowitz, PC Deploys OpenText Solution to Help Streamline Matter ManagementOpenText Application Governance & Archiving for Microsoft® SharePoint® provides attorneys with a single interface to all client and matter information

Improving efficiencies, reducing costsWhen Baker Donelson began looking for a more robust intranet solution, its main goals were to improve productivity and optimize its IT infrastructure. Since the firm relies extensively on Microsoft technologies, it decided that Microsoft Office SharePoint® Server 2007 would integrate seamlessly into its existing IT infrastructure, offer flexibility in terms of a lower cost portal, and would provide a solution to the issues with its legacy intranet.

With the SharePoint portal implementation, Baker Donelson was able to take it out of the box, customize the content it wanted, and be up and running in a matter of months. “SharePoint gives us the functionality that we were looking for, and it offers a lot more headroom to build on and leverage from a portal and collaboration perspective than our legacy intranet,” says David Walker, MCP Manager, Development & Programming at Baker Donelson. “One of the other implementations that had to get done as a result of the decision to use SharePoint was to be able to integrate the eDOCS DM system and SharePoint. We tested several solutions before we selected OpenText Application Governance & Archiving for Microsoft SharePoint. It was the only solution that fulfilled all of our requirements.”

Paul Davis, Lead Developer/Architect at Baker Donelson, adds, “With the OpenText solution we have taken matter-centricity to a new level at the law firm. Basically an attorney can go and look at everything he or she has worked on for a matter, be it financial information about the matter or documents related to that matter. They have access to everything that is related to the matter within a single browser interface.”

Unlike other products, the OpenText solution covers all aspects of the integration with a consistent, easy-to-deploy architecture. Baker Donelson is able to deploy Web parts that enable attorneys to easily access and upload content into the SharePoint workspace. Once content is uploaded, users have full use of all the SharePoint collaboration features and synchronization of all changes back to the eDOCS repositories to ensure that the content is managed appropriately. Users can invoke features directly from the eDOCS repository (check-in, check-out, security, version control, audit trail, etc.), or across repositories (copy/paste, move, etc.).

Easy access to remote libraries improves productivityThe OpenText federated search option enables real-time searching across the firm’s 14 non-remote DM libraries from within SharePoint. Since it is connected to DM, attorneys can edit the documents directly within the results page using the eDOCS context menu. If a DM server is down, users can still search the other eDOCS libraries. “This gives our users a simple, straightforward way to search for documents that are in eDOCS or SharePoint. Searches can be performed much quicker, and it’s context driven. It’s able to search through the contents of every document,” Davis explains.

“The attorneys are also using Enterprise Search in SharePoint Server to access all content in SharePoint, whether it is DM content, documents that are housed inside of SharePoint—just about anything stored in SharePoint can be searched. If they want, they can choose to search enterprise-wide. However, when looking for a document in DM, it’s more efficient to specify a DM search only. This will return documents stored in any of the eDOCS libraries,” adds Davis.

SharePoint Enterprise Search will crawl and index all documents and properties. Users can search based on document relevance. This search option is an extension of the SharePoint portal, so it offers a consistent user experience.

“The attorneys can get to their documents a lot easier and quicker,” says Davis. “When attorneys are doing research, the faster they can find what they are looking for the better, and the more cost savings. Time is everything in a law firm.”

From the BakerNet home page, users have access to any site inside of SharePoint. Davis explains, “On the BakerNet portal we have a menu bar in the header and also a side menu bar where users can go to access the various sites. If someone wants to search for a DM document, for example, we offer various ways of finding it, such as using our Search Center. We developed a search interface that looks a lot like the search interface the attorneys are used to using with the legacy portal. They can type in a document

“Out of everything that we looked at, the OpenText solution was the only one that really fulfilled all the requirements that we had and that was a fully realized, mature, ready-to-go product at the time that we needed it. It’s been a very good fit for us.”

David Walker, MCP Manager,Development & Programming,Baker, Donelson, Bearman, Caldwell & Berkowitz, PC.

number or the author of the document or various other search criteria that they may want to use, and it will return all the DM documents that match that search criteria.”

Another way for the attorneys to find information is to access “My Site” on their BakerNet home page. “At the top of each page is a link for My Site. Clicking on this link will display a list of all their matters, their documents, and so forth. A lot of times they can get to their documents easier that way than searching in the DM Search Center,” says Davis. The relevant content for each attorney is automatically published in their personal list of matters within SharePoint, enabling effortless access to the information they need on a daily basis. Users can also browse using the eDOCS tree structure to find the content or search using the profile search screen.

The firm has found that accessing documents from SharePoint Web parts is as fast as an eDOCS DM search outside of SharePoint.

“Most of the time attorneys based in Atlanta are looking for Atlanta documents, so they’re only inside of that DM library. But sometimes they may need to find a document stored in a different library. Our search interface allows them to do that. They can also search multiple libraries by initiating simple search requests that automatically span multiple repositories, and the results are returned in a uniform result list. The user simply needs to tick off the check boxes of the all libraries they want to browse. They can select all the libraries or only choose one of them,” explains Davis.

By using SharePoint as the front end to the multiple external DM repositories, users are provided with a virtual view into more than one repository or search interface. Data remains in the eDOCS system where it was created without movement or duplication. This way, version control and security of the document can be maintained. The law firm can also provide a consistent categorization of the content. The attorneys can be assured they have a “single version of the truth” across multiple departments, workgroups, or team sites. eDOCS also provides an audit trail of the lifecycle of the document including who worked on the document and when.

Implementation strategyThe process of rolling out SharePoint as their intranet portal is going smoothly because of the firm’s approach to ensuring user acceptance. Moving a large workforce that has been used to using one product for more than eight years to a new system requires some forethought to ensure a uniform transition.

“We phased in SharePoint one office at a time, so we could train the users before moving on to the next office. We put a great deal of time and effort into making the new product look and behave as much like the old product as possible, but even so, there are differences,” says Walker. “We purposely moved individuals over to SharePoint after training, so we could answer any questions that may come up beforehand.”

Walker is pleased not only at the speed of deployment, but also of user acceptance. Eighty percent of the offices have been converted to SharePoint. Once the conversion is done there will be 1,200 users across the firm. “It’s a culture change but by and large the response has been very positive. There have been minor issues from people that are adjusting to SharePoint, but I’d say that only about 2% have had trouble adapting. The other 98% are very pleased with it.”

Developing new processes and supporting old onesDavis shares some best practices to consider when replacing a legacy system. When employees are used to performing tasks in a certain way, there will naturally be some resistance to new processes. “We wanted to make the transition as smooth as possible, so rather than taking on the task of making the new system perfect, we tried to mimic the legacy system as much as possible with some of the look and feel while utilizing the SharePoint features to demonstrate the enhanced functionality. We’re now at phase two of the project, where we’re going in and changing a lot of what was done in the legacy system and utilizing more of the functionality and add-ons that are available out of the box with SharePoint, which will allow us to run our business better.”

“With the OpenText solution, our focus, of course, is helping the attorneys to get the most benefit out of searching and finding relevant documents. So our focus for phase two is going to be to improve the search, adding more federated searches and bringing in other resources that the attorneys can use. We’re also going to federate other search engines that might have benefits for law firms, such as dedicated legal databases. And then, of course, whatever else we can draw into the SharePoint Enterprise Search,” adds Davis.

Walker adds, “We’re also going to enhance the search interface, either by extending it ourselves or purchasing a third-party product that extends the interface to offer us things like previewing a document. If an attorney can see a document without having to open it or download it, this makes it a lot more efficient. I mean, truthfully, that’s an attorney’s main goal: to research and find data and then to be able to relate their research to a matter, and that’s where the matter-centric part comes in.”

The right solution at the right timeWalker and his team tested many different solutions and talked to several companies before they decided on OpenText Application Governance & Archiving for Microsoft SharePoint. “As we began to talk to people to get an idea of the features that were offered, we became more and more aware that none of the products that were pitched to us were ready to go into production. We were either too far ahead of the curve or too far behind the curve in some cases. So we saw products that promised to address all of our needs, but they wouldn’t be ready for another six months, or there were products from other vendors that made all kinds of promises, but they didn’t come anywhere close to fulfilling our requirements. Out of everything that we looked at, the OpenText solution was the only one that really fulfilled all the requirements that we had and that was a fully realized, mature, ready-to-go product at the time that we needed it. It’s been a very good fit for us,” says Walker.

“One of the other benefits to this solution is that it can be used to access information from any number of back-end repositories, including databases and even legacy versions of SharePoint. So we’ll be able to use it for federating a lot of data together,” concludes Walker.

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