See the Committee’s August 2019 practice note, Case management systems – Practical advice and potential suppliers.

We recommend that you carry out extensive due diligence before buying a CMS:

• Discuss the systems with members who have experience with each CMS
• Most suppliers provide demos online or in person - it is recommended that members utilise these demos prior to purchase.
• PDF editors are an alternative solution for those who do not have a CMS. We have included a short note on the key features of Acrobat Pro / Nuance Power PDF.

Electronic document bundling providers

The following list, including links to websites, is provided for information purposes only, and does not constitute approval or endorsement by the Law Society of Ireland. This list is non-exhaustive. If you are aware of other potential suppliers, please advise the Society's Technology Committee.

Practice Evolve

PracticeEvolve includes a fast and fully featured Document Bundling facility that allows users to create consolidated, paginated and indexed PDF documents from multiple source documents in a matter or client record. Ideal for court documents, disclosure or simply providing a tidy and well-presented document pack for clients.

The Document Bundling facility comes as standard within PracticeEvolve, so all required documents remain within the firm’ss server environment, as opposed to being uploaded to a third party server location. Briefs for court create within minutes, without the requirement of dedicated PCs to create the bundled document.

Styles and layout of coverpages and table of contents can be configured to firm requirements. Sections can be paginated individually as required, and all documents added are book marked for easy navigation.

Thread

Users can tag all documents for the brief as the come into the file or select multiple documents and place them in the appropriate group for a brief. Documents can be included in multiple briefs

To run the brief, click a button and Thread will generate a table of content, paginate the documents and put it back on the file in minutes. The brief can be printed off, or emailed to the appropriate person.

Clio and Bundledocs

• Bundledocs allows documents to be quickly and easily uploaded to a brief. Once uploaded, Bundledocs takes over to automatically create a fully indexed, paginated, bates numbered, hyperlinked and bookmarked bundle. The completed bundle is immediately ready to print, save or share - and it only takes 5 steps.
• It provides a video for users which sets out the 5 steps required to create an eBrief.

For more information, see the Bundledocs website.

LEGALIT and Worldox

• Indexing Structure for Lawyers: provides a customisable indexing structure and indexing fields that easily capture information pertinent to your firm or legal department.
• Effortlessly Add Documents into Worldox. Within Microsoft Office Word you can save to Worldox using Save/Save As or the QuickSave button. You can also drag/drop files, right click and save any file, or use one of the many integrations to move your documents into Worldox. 
• Worldox monitors incoming and outgoing emails so users can access your most recently used folders and save emails directly from Outlook.
• Search function allows users to search by index value, document ID, date range, terms, comments, categories (meta tags) etc.

For more information, see the Worldox website.

Keyhouse Document Management

Automatic document organisation saving time spent searching for documents

• Full integration with Microsoft Word and Microsoft Outlook
• Any incoming or outgoing document can be connected to a case, ensuring all documents associated with a case are instantly accessible from the case diary
• Quickly review case documents with the built-in previewer.

For more information, see the Keyhouse Document Management website.

Advanced Software (ALB)

• Integrated legal software allows all documents, emails, faxes and scanned items to be added directly to a client’s file at the touch of a button.
• ALB’s document management allows you to store all of your documents in one place, resulting in one version of the truth.
• The full text search facility ensures users can quickly locate documents, and versioning of documents means that the current draft is apparent.
• You have the ability to allow streamlined document comparisons.

For more information, see the Advanced Software (ALB) website.

CORTBase

CORTBase provide a Booklet system as part of their package. It is possible to generate Briefs from a case with Table of Contents and pagination automatically handled for the user.

For more information, see the CORTBase website.

eXpd8

The eXpd8 ScanWatcher allows you to easily scan items and allocate them to a file. This helps to speed up post handling and ensures that all of the important documents within a file are stored within one place.

Acrobat Pro DC

• Combine PDFs and other documents into single PDF.
• Create indexes using built in functions.
• Paginate automatically by editing header/footer.
• Redaction functionality.

For more information, see the Acrobat Pro DC website.

Nuance Power PDF

PDF file size optimiser – minimise the size of files without compromising the quality. PDF Converter Professional lets you easily size documents for sharing and archiving.

Keep your files safe – with the Power PDF converter you can secure your PDF files by requiring others to know a password in order to view or print a document.

One-click searchable PDF files – the auto-detect feature automatically identifies an “image-only” PDF file and offers to make it searchable or editable with a single click.

For more information, see the Nuance Power PDF website.

eNewsletters

This article originally appeared in the December 2019 member eZine. For more information, and to subscribe, visit eNewsletters.