The document should link to both the client and the matter. Document management must link cleanly with your document delivery service system. Your document management system should link to your time and billing system. As a document is completed, the lawyer should simultaneously be able to submit the bill to Accounts Receivable. These reminders and filing deadlines are very much a part of document management, but are treated as separate by many document management systems.
Integration means freedom from rekeying information.
If you want the convenience and comfort of rules-based docketing to avoid missing deadlines, make sure that the document manager you choose works as part of the same system. If you're thinking about implementing document management in your firm today, or just upgrading an existing document manager, stop. Get away from modules, get away from thinking of documents as separate from cases as separate from billing and accounting, and move toward full, 32-bit, integrated matter management system. Change your definitions, and your firm will begin to function better than ever before. William F. Bice is president of ProLaw Software in Albuquerque, New Mexico.