Law firm Bull & Co Advokatfirma AS, located in Oslo, Norway, was founded in 1864. Their clients include listed international companies and privately held businesses, the public sector, pro-bono organisations and private individuals. Through their international network, Bull & Co has access to local legal expertise all over the world.
Clients benefit from their interdisciplinary teams. Partner attention, team work and knowledge sharing are cornerstones for effective co-operation in order to fulfil client expectations.
As a modern, knowledge-powered practice, Bull & Co operates a wide range of core services, including: Company Law, Intellectual Property Law (patents, design, trademarks, copyright, know-how), Labour Law, Company Law and Transactions, Information Technology and Telecommunications, Commercial and Trade Law, Real Estate, Energy and Recycling, Family and Inheritance Law, Sports Law, Dispute Resolution and Litigation, Competition and Marketing Law and Insolvency and Restructuring.
Like all law firms, Bull & Co receives and generates a large volume of documentation and email on a daily basis. Each of these has to be filed, including adding appropriate indexing information or metadata, associated to the correct client matter or case. Without this, later retrieval is both time consuming and unreliable.
The existing Document Management System (DMS) was no longer meeting their needs. Based on an ageing Customer Relationship Management (CRM) system, which was becoming increasingly costly to maintain, Bull & Co had no document version control or email management capability. Search provision was poor and there was a heavy reliance on paper documents. With client and other party interactions increasingly reliant on email, the time was right to seek a new, modern, reliable solution to meet their needs.
Following a review of potential solutions to meet the needs of Bull & Co, two emerged as front-runners: iManage Work (formerly WorkSite) from IRIS, the market leader in the Nordic region, and OpenText Document Management, eDOCS Edition.
Unlike many other solutions on the market, IRIS offers iManage Work FastTrack, a fixed price deployment, with three implementation levels: Express, Professional and Ultimate. Bull & Co opted for the Professional level solution, leveraging the extensive experience of IRIS in deploying iManage Work into law firms throughout Norway and more widely in Europe. “I.R.I.S immediately gave us confidence that they were up to the task of quickly providing Bull & Co with a solution, without any interruption to daily business,” states Husebye.
With the solution deployed, the roll-out to all partners, associates, secretaries and administration personnel began and has been completed. Feedback from user training has been wholly positive, with users reporting that they find the solution intuitive, responsive and supportive of more efficient ways of working.
“Our staff used to spend too much time searching for documents. They would frequently ask colleagues for information rather than look for a document, as it was quicker. The new solution will make that thing of the past, with users able to locate what they need, quickly, accurately and efficiently. Within days of receiving their training, some of our partners had already added thousands of documents and emails to iManage Work. Users have given a clear indication that adoption will be quick across the entire company,” says Husebye.
The implementation team from I.R.I.S worked closely with Bull & Co to ensure that the needs of the business are taken into account, including working with their IT supplier, internal IT and their third party document template provider. Users are already finding the search capabilities to be far superior to the old system and as more content is added, they feel they will save more and more time. “IRIS has worked tirelessly to ensure the project is a success, and in the true spirit of partnership even stepped in to help out when a third party supplier was unable to fulfil their commitments,” states Husebye.
With greater document control, including version control, faster, simpler searching, it’s clear that time will be saved for Bull & Co with the new solution. This translates into better client service, with fewer delays due to hard to find documents. The benefits from vastly improved email management will be significant too.
The benefits of filing email within WorkSite will not just be related to quick retrieval. Should an employee leave Bull & Co, they are required by law to close and remove their email account – any emails not filed elsewhere would be lost.
“The simplicity with which emails can now be managed, in the same way as any other piece of content, means we no longer face the challenges of not being able to locate emails, or of dealing with emails deleted when an employee leaves,” says Husebye.
Thoughts are already turning to the future use of iManage Work at Bull & Co. iManage Work FastTrack by IRIS has provided the solid, proven platform from which Bull & Co can now build. The possibilities are endless, such as federated searching within iManage Work which allows searches to be made of other systems and all results displayed together. iManage Work will also enable the integration of document comparison technology making comparisons much quicker too.