UPDATE: ComputerWeekly interviews Neil Davison of Farrer & Co about the eFile project and technology initiatives at the firm. Read the interview

Last year we announced that a top 100 UK law firm, Farrer & Co, selected NetDocuments for their document and email management. After a successfull implementation, the firm's IT Director, Neil Davison, stated: "We were confident in the selection of NetDocuments as our modern DMS platform and knew the rollout of the service was equally important in order to achieve firm-wide buy-in and 100% user adoption." Continuing with their innovation and technology improvement inititatives, the firm has just announced an eFile project working with Kodak alaris. The project is centered around improving information governance, records management, and DMS alignment for physical and digital records. 

Read the release and case study

The news and case study outline Farrer & Co's amibitious eFile initiative to streamline and unify their paper and digital file initiatives. The program includes:

1. Business analysis - mapping and reviewing how existing paper-based process would work in a digital environment;
2. EDMS update - selecting and implementing NetDocuments after reviewing seven competitive systems and shortlisting three;
3. Desktop refresh - updating software and installing dual 22 inch monitors for each solicitor;
4. Meeting room technology - purchasing new low profile PC's and large screens to allow EDMS access from all meeting rooms;
5. Training - delivering initial training for over 400 staff, half of whom are solicitors covering process changes and how to work with scanned documents, as well as the NetDocuments system itself;
6. Communication and enhanced support around roll out – delivering regular communication to the business, before, during and after rollout. The team also engaged and trained 20 floor walkers on short term contracts to work with staff on each floor to help with queries about NetDocuments as the system went live;
7. Scanner selection and implementation - working with ITEC to implement the best capture and scanning solution to meet the business' needs. Since the Kodak i3450 scanners have been installed, scanning throughput volumes have increased 25%.

The Farrer & Co news comes just weeks after DocsCorp announced contentCrawler, an OCR integration with NetDocuments to crawl a repository and convert image-based files to full-text searchable documents, as well as FileTrail's announcement of an integration with NetDocuments for physical records management. These integrations and yesterday's news of Farrer & Co's initiative with Kodak alaris, highlight the industry's focus on improving information governance around both physical and digital records management and alignment with the DMS. Improved information governance of a firm's and their clients' data equals, increased knowledge transfer, enhanced security and compliance, and a reduction in the liability of lost data and data leakage from documents existing outside the firm's DMS.

Mr. Davison also participated in a CIO Roundtable discussion [whitepaper] on "The Future of Legal Technology", which was accompanied by a Q&A interview which you can read here.