Extranets As Internal Management Tools

Most commonly, extranets are thought of as tools law firms can use to share information such as case data, documents and calendars with clients.

While that is true, extranets can also be effectively deployed to address a variety of internal tracking needs within a law firm.

As an example, an extranet with workflow functionality and built-in email alerts can serve as a high quality change management system within a Firm. Similarly, collaboration tools and software like these can assist administrative departments like Marketing and Finance in the management of projects which span multiple offices within a law firm.

Extranets are also useful when deployed to share documents within a law firm but across a number of disparate offices when the suite of existing technologies within a law firm does not fully support the sharing/collaboration of and on documents within a law firm.

ILTA White Paper

April, 2008
Recently, the International Legal Technology Association (ILTA) published an excellent white paper describing various marketing technologies and how they can be used in the area of law firm marketing.

One of the articles in this white paper describes some creative uses of extranet technologies and how they can help to construct content portals and information repositories containing case law, opinions, forms and other information of interest to current and prospective clients.

These repositories and the content stored within them can, when appropriately packaged, serve as a springboard and innovative way to help present services (both new and existing) to prospective clients.

For more information, please see the white paper at ILTA White Paper.

Even more uses for collaboration software !!!!

Recently, we worked on a project to put together a collaboration site for a client which allows one to track and manage a set of vendor-based projects relating to E-Discovery at the Firm.

It is a pretty interesting application of collaboration software which allows us to track project metrics, quantitative data and the qualitative opinions of project managers and end-users as to how the project was completed. The underlying database also provides the ability for some annual review of vendors used, volumes, quality, etc. which could be useful in obtaining better licensing and pricing terms or making process adjustments which could result in smoother projects in the future.

Flexible Legal Collaboration Software

It's critically important to build software which is flexible and can be adjusted to meet a variety of different needs.

We have used our software recently for many different types of projects in addition to the initial intended use of Litigation Support. Some of these areas include the construction of systems to track internal projects (status, due dates, costs, vendors, etc.). Other uses include change management and task tracking with the the IT discipline as well as other implementation to support business development efforts for some clients.

Thankfully, we are in the position, based on our object oriented method of programming and strong focus on developing reusable code, to adjust our software to meet a wide variety of emerging business needs and client requirements.

Project Management Offices

The use of formal project management methodologies as well as the creation of Project Management Offices (PMOs) to attack legal technology issues in areas like E-Discovery, Project Tracking and Litigation Support is growing quickly. There are many different articles on project management in the legal technology field in a fairly recent copy of PEER to PEER published by ILTA.

Deposition Schedules

Using law firm client workspaces or legal extranets for the purpose of publishing schedules of depositions is a excellent use of this technology. It enables all parties to see the upcoming depositions (where, when, what time, etc..) and, if desired, the legal extranet could also post the transcriptions of the depositions to all system users or a subset of the legal extranet system users.

Many other types of events, like client meetings, updates, trial dates, court appearances, hearings, etc... can also be posted in a collaboration calendar.

This is a somewhat small or narrow use of the entire set of available legal extranet functionality, but in many litigations it is a very helpful way of publishing what often is a very dynamic schedule.

Legal Extranet Security

When building a legal extranet system, be sure to keep the following security considerations in mind:

• Be sure the site is protected by a strong SSL certificate.
• Be sure you can control who can access different sets of data.
• Be sure you can control the type of access (enter, edit, delete) you can grant.
• Be sure grants can be role based or individual based.
• Be sure grants can vary by data type (case data, calendar data, documents, tasks, etc.)
• Be sure you enforce an ID and password.
• Be sure you delete the session cookie when one logs off the system.
• Be sure you scan all the documents added to the system for virus contamination and/or spyware.
• Be sure your services are in a hardened data center.
• Be sure your servers are appropriately patched with the latest security O.S. and database patches.
• Be sure you have an audit log in place so clients can confirm who is updated what types of data.

Legal Extranet Security Considerations

Security settings and methods are critically important in the area of deploying client extranets. Here are some of the "basics".

Firstly, we expose extranets both on the internet and intranet. Therefore, it is necessary to protect the data with an SSL certificate so that any data flowing over the internet is appropriately encrypted.

Within your application itself, there are several dimensions to consider. Some of the more important areas are:

- The type of access you will grant to various types of data (submit, modify, delete). Ideally, the access levels can vary by entity type (cases, documents, calendar events, etc.).

- The creation of a set of system privileges (to grant access to see various types of functionality) and a set of corresponding roles granting different sets of privileges. The system roles should correlate to functional roles within a law firm and clients of the law firm. To cite a primitive example, one might consider creating roles for Administrators, Staff Members, Staff Attorneys, Partners and Clients, each with a different set of system privileges (depending on the nature of work they need to do in the extranet).

- Visibility to collections of data must also be protected. For example, to cite another primitive example, some workers in a law firm need access to data from Client A, others to date from Client B, and others still require access to both Client A and Client B's data. Clients A and B obviously may not be granted access to each other's data.

Query Reporting Engines

High quality legal extranet systems provide their clients with tools which allow them to develop ad hoc reports. These reporting engines allow clients to develop reports (including things like selecting the field to show, defining the sorting criteria, defining the filtering logic, and formatting the data selected by the report logic.

A strong query engine should also let one decide who can run which reports, and control the ability to download or view data contained in the reports.

Reporting engines of this nature should support the output of case reports both to printable formats (like PDF files) as well as to common program formats such as spreadsheet files.

It is advisable when selecting a legal extranet system to be sure you select a system which will allow you to run the reports you need, when you need them. It makes the data and information in a legal extanet or case management system far more useful.

Using extranets for document review

Legal collaboration systems are terrific places to post documents for review by many different parties. By providing an extranet system which can deliver the documents to the internet browser, a law firm is providing a client with the valuable service of providing them live access to their document sets and coding status.

This allows entities to oursource, where application, the coding function to others. It also allows and empowers the client and managing case attorneys to view, live and interactively, all the salient case documents, the status of coding efforts, and the information associated with all of the litigation and case documents.

Large Volumes Of Trial Exhibits

Client Workspace or legal extranet systems are good methods of posting large numbers of trial exhibits for joint client and law firm use.

It is important that the system administrator of a law firm client workspace system properly estimate the number of documents (both the actual number as well as the size (in GB) required to post the data) before selecting a system. For databases which are several GB, it is wise to consider a system with a relational database engine (such as Oracle or SQL Server) "under the covers" to be sure this large document set can be properly stored and properly rendered to clients.

It is also wise to advise all the parties connecting to such a extraent or client workspace system that it is important their individual internet connection is sufficient to access files of a large size (i.e. several page TIF or PDF file).

Ideally, the legal extranet system should provide an automated and easy mechanism for administrators to load large blocks of files and information so that the system can be flexible enough to support the evolving and rapidly changing needs of a large litigation.

One should also be sure to select a system with full text searching capability, and well as a system which allows document coders to assign keywords to documents along with the obvious assignment of a document title.

System users should be able to search for documents by the full text search capability (which should include the ability to FTS an image document), the keyword, or the document title. Ideally, users will be provided with a few different searching mechanisms to allow them to find and locate documents in the manner most convenient to them.

Training for such systems can be done in a fairly economical manner using web-based meeting technologies such as Web Ex.

Using legal extranets to facilitate remote document coding

One recent use of legal extranet technology we identified was using this extranet technology to allow remote individuals to code legal documents. Here is how it works.

The documents to be coded are locally stored at the remote work facility(ies). The individuals doing the coding open the files up locally to review them. They, simultaneously, open up the legal extranet system to code the documents. The coders add the documents to the legal extranet system assigning appropriate bibliographic and other coding values within fields on the legal extranet system which are designed to profile the added document.

Then, after the documents are coded, others can use internet-based search screens to execute searches against the documents for the purpose of performing a more detailed and targeted review.

Using Legal Extranet Systems Within Small Firms

Recently I was speaking with several people, all of who thought legal extranets were of use primarily by or exclusively by large law firms and corporations. I think that statement is not entirely true. While it is true that those constituents benefit when sharing information amongst scores of law firms across the countries, I also know of many instances when small law firms (firms with less than five attorneys) use legal extranets for a different reason. The reason is that they totally outsource to an ASP the ability to manage tasks on-line, posting of documents that they wish to use while traveling, putting up simple case calendars and status reports for clients, and many other pieces of data.

This use is far less about collaboration, and more about providing small firms with little or no IT department a way to web-enable key data and documents, but nevertheless is a key reason legal extranet systems might be of interest to smaller law firms.

Document Distribution

Legal extranets and law firm client workspaces can be deployed in a manner to assist clients with the distribution of ad-hoc documents.

For example, should a client need to distribute a document to all outside counsel, once it is added to a legal extranet system a properly configured system can generate emails with links back to this document.

Better systems can distribute documents in a number of ways -- to specific individuals, to specific members of a working team, to specific types of individuals (attorneys only, perilously only, local counsel only, etc..).

This helps get files and documents out to counsel in a reliable, consistent and efficient manner.

Gadgets and Technology

As 2007 ends and we hear more and more information about the latest and greatest technologies, now is a great time to remember that there needs to be a compelling business case (at least most of the time) to implement a new technology. One should really understand the costs, benefits, contributions to the business and effort involved in implementing a new technology prior to proceeding on an effort.

Of course, worthwhile projects should be identified and implemented quickly, this is a friendly reminder just to take a look at all projects and understand the scope, complexity and what you hope to get out of each project prior to diving into a new effort.