What's So Great About SharePoint?

The popularity of SharePoint is undeniable. As the legal competitive landscape intensifies, more and more firms are looking to SharePoint to improve client service and collaboration. SharePoint allows law firms to store and locate critical information in convenient, flexible, sites, bringing it together in a meaningful way and enabling attorneys to become educated on industry trends and client concerns via the use of wikis, blogs, RSS feeds and the like.

Below is an outline of the key benefits of SharePoint to law firms of all sizes, and how firms can take advantage of these features.

Internal Collaboration

SharePoint is highly customizable and offers flexible collaboration tools. Whether work occurs across borders or down the hall, SharePoint enables departments, practices, internal teams or individuals to connect and collaborate together without directly involving the firm's IT experts. Users have the ability to make changes to an intranet site on their own, such as adding documents, pulling together and publishing related information to the site, or adding an attorney's blog information as a feed to the site.

Simply by accessing a Web browser, teams can work together, collaborate and publish documents online, maintain task lists and implement workflows. Teams can also create group workspaces, coordinate calendars, organize documents and receive notifications and updates through alerts set up on the system. All of these collaboration tools allow law firms to operate more efficiently.

SharePoint provides an easy and quick search tool that allows firms to access information across many sites ' and even to other data outside SharePoint. The search is extremely comprehensive, ranging from locating attorneys and staff by name to presenting documents containing keywords. It can also locate content in business applications and has features such as duplicate collapsing, spell correction and alerts to improve the relevance of results and help users find what they need.

Intranet Portals

Portals, or Web sites, are also a useful tool that can be created without involving the firm's IT group. SharePoint's open, scalable architecture enables the creation of customized portals, whereby team members can create department sites, document libraries, meetings sites, survey sites and discussion boards for use within their firm's intranet. Portals also offer many application templates to law firms that address specific business processes, such as billing, whereby reports for clients and their matters can be pulled from the financial systems.

Via the portal, wikis can be created and used to brainstorm team ideas, collaborate on design, build encyclopedias or store administrative information. Also, firms can use blogs to share ideas, ask questions and give project updates on the portal. Generally, internal wikis and blogs can be used to share institutional knowledge with other members of the firm, eliminating the need to find the “right person” to obtain information.

Portals can personalize a law firm's operations by allowing attorneys to create individual MySites that share information such as skills, roles, colleagues, managers, groups, distribution lists and documents in progress. They can also create a “resources” box with practice-specific resources. As a convenience, each MySite has a security measure that can be fully customized to control access across the firm.

Establishing these features ' portals, blogs, wikis and MySites ' is quite easy. Firms need to first learn how to construct sites in SharePoint. Working initially with the IT experts:

• Site templates should be created that facilitate site creation, ensuring a consistent look and feel along with content objectives; and
• Users should be granted the appropriate level of rights ranging from creating sites down to merely reading content.

A site administrator, typically a practice's paralegal, can create a site using the template and answering a few questions. SharePoint then automatically builds the site that becomes available immediately.

With the site built, the actual pages will need some customization for the content to present, so the site creator will manage the “Web Parts” on the pages. A Web Part is a specialized SharePoint tool placed onto a site page that does a specific function. There are many Web Parts available out of the box: announcements, Web links, document library, customizable lists, tasks, wikis, blogs, etc. Literally within minutes, the site page can be customized to contain all kinds of Web Parts, ranging from simple lists to complex Key Performance Indicators that extract real-time data from other sources. With a little effort and time, a site can be customized to the needs of the team. For example, if events need to be tracked, a calendar Web Part can be easily placed on a site page.

After the Web Parts and pages are customized, content can be loaded into the various sections. Documents can be uploaded into the document libraries, and lists can be populated easily by importing data from a spreadsheet.

Enhanced Client Collaboration

Extranet Sites

Law firm clients can benefit from SharePoint via the use of extranet sites, which enable firms to provide better client service, a faster recall of information and increased ease of communication and collaboration with clients. Like the intranet site capabilities, the extranet is highly customizable, and both clients and internal team members can make most changes to the extranet site on their own, without involving the IT experts.

SharePoint makes the process of collecting sensitive data from clients and suppliers relatively effortless. The data can be integrated directly into the system from the firm's billing software, which helps avoid redundancy and errors that normally result from the manual entry of the information. The customized extranet site also can include matter documents and agreements that both the firm and clients can access simultaneously, speeding up the process of review and approval time, and helping teams gain a holistic view of a particular client matter.

The extranet is a tremendous benefit for clients because it allows them to directly share information and ideas though a Web browser, creating a more personal experience and tighter client connectivity.

The process for setting up an extranet site is very similar to what is done to create any site. However, special considerations must be given to security and what data to publish:

• Policies and procedures become very important because technology alone cannot guarantee success.
• For a client-facing system, a secure connection using SSL through a Web browser is strongly recommended. The firm's IT experts will need to set up SharePoint for secure access.
• The firm's IT experts or outside consultants may have to do some specialized development that goes beyond what can be done with the out-of-the-box capabilities of SharePoint.

Dashboards

The term “dashboard” is not new, but SharePoint enables users to create and use dashboarding techniques in very innovative ways. Dashboards generally describe how a firm can display various related information on a single page, making it easy to see the big picture. SharePoint provides a way to create dashboards on whatever firms want by utilizing advanced Web Parts coupled with Web Part connections, which all allow for passing data between Web Parts.

Dashboards have many applications, such as helping with client matter coordination, project management or employee tracking. Firms can integrate back-end data, such as contact lists and client-billing information, in one place to get a full picture of what work is being done.

Setting up a dashboard in SharePoint is very easy by simply managing Web Parts on a site page as previously discussed. However, knowledge of the more advanced features is necessary in order to manipulate data through Web Part connections.

The goal in a dashboard is to gather and present data in a summarized fashion. Often times, additional Web Parts beyond what is provided in SharePoint are needed to access data from financial and document management systems. Many software vendors already have SharePoint Web Parts for their software, and so it becomes a matter of integrating these Web Parts into the firm's SharePoint environment. The IT experts can then get them up and running.

Conclusion

With SharePoint's powerful collaboration tools' ability to customize and easy integration with popular applications such as Microsoft Office, it is becoming more and more popular with all types of law firms ' both large and small.

Many firms are already beginning to see direct benefits of SharePoint. For example, one Philadelphia law firm has improved its accounts receivables by making the information about clients who are 30 days overdue on their bills available to all attorneys via SharePoint. Clients that are 30 days overdue are prominently listed and brought to attorneys' attention immediately. The results have been to reduce the time to collect overdue bills. The firm tied its accounting system to SharePoint through third-party Web Parts and made SharePoint the initial Web site for attorneys when opening their Internet browser.

Additionally, more firms are choosing to use IT consultants and managed IT services providers to help them jumpstart SharePoint implementations and be able to deliver more complex intranet/extranet functions in less time. This enables them to deliver even higher quality service to clients, while continuing to focus on their key competencies. Sounds like a win-win for everyone.

The popularity of SharePoint is undeniable. As the legal competitive landscape intensifies, more and more firms are looking to SharePoint to improve client service and collaboration. SharePoint allows law firms to store and locate critical information in convenient, flexible, sites, bringing it together in a meaningful way and enabling attorneys to become educated on industry trends and client concerns via the use of wikis, blogs, RSS feeds and the like.

Below is an outline of the key benefits of SharePoint to law firms of all sizes, and how firms can take advantage of these features.

Internal Collaboration

SharePoint is highly customizable and offers flexible collaboration tools. Whether work occurs across borders or down the hall, SharePoint enables departments, practices, internal teams or individuals to connect and collaborate together without directly involving the firm's IT experts. Users have the ability to make changes to an intranet site on their own, such as adding documents, pulling together and publishing related information to the site, or adding an attorney's blog information as a feed to the site.

Simply by accessing a Web browser, teams can work together, collaborate and publish documents online, maintain task lists and implement workflows. Teams can also create group workspaces, coordinate calendars, organize documents and receive notifications and updates through alerts set up on the system. All of these collaboration tools allow law firms to operate more efficiently.

SharePoint provides an easy and quick search tool that allows firms to access information across many sites ' and even to other data outside SharePoint. The search is extremely comprehensive, ranging from locating attorneys and staff by name to presenting documents containing keywords. It can also locate content in business applications and has features such as duplicate collapsing, spell correction and alerts to improve the relevance of results and help users find what they need.

Intranet Portals

Portals, or Web sites, are also a useful tool that can be created without involving the firm's IT group. SharePoint's open, scalable architecture enables the creation of customized portals, whereby team members can create department sites, document libraries, meetings sites, survey sites and discussion boards for use within their firm's intranet. Portals also offer many application templates to law firms that address specific business processes, such as billing, whereby reports for clients and their matters can be pulled from the financial systems.

Via the portal, wikis can be created and used to brainstorm team ideas, collaborate on design, build encyclopedias or store administrative information. Also, firms can use blogs to share ideas, ask questions and give project updates on the portal. Generally, internal wikis and blogs can be used to share institutional knowledge with other members of the firm, eliminating the need to find the “right person” to obtain information.

Portals can personalize a law firm's operations by allowing attorneys to create individual MySites that share information such as skills, roles, colleagues, managers, groups, distribution lists and documents in progress. They can also create a “resources” box with practice-specific resources. As a convenience, each MySite has a security measure that can be fully customized to control access across the firm.

Establishing these features ' portals, blogs, wikis and MySites ' is quite easy. Firms need to first learn how to construct sites in SharePoint. Working initially with the IT experts:

• Site templates should be created that facilitate site creation, ensuring a consistent look and feel along with content objectives; and
• Users should be granted the appropriate level of rights ranging from creating sites down to merely reading content.

A site administrator, typically a practice's paralegal, can create a site using the template and answering a few questions. SharePoint then automatically builds the site that becomes available immediately.

With the site built, the actual pages will need some customization for the content to present, so the site creator will manage the “Web Parts” on the pages. A Web Part is a specialized SharePoint tool placed onto a site page that does a specific function. There are many Web Parts available out of the box: announcements, Web links, document library, customizable lists, tasks, wikis, blogs, etc. Literally within minutes, the site page can be customized to contain all kinds of Web Parts, ranging from simple lists to complex Key Performance Indicators that extract real-time data from other sources. With a little effort and time, a site can be customized to the needs of the team. For example, if events need to be tracked, a calendar Web Part can be easily placed on a site page.

After the Web Parts and pages are customized, content can be loaded into the various sections. Documents can be uploaded into the document libraries, and lists can be populated easily by importing data from a spreadsheet.

Enhanced Client Collaboration

Extranet Sites

Law firm clients can benefit from SharePoint via the use of extranet sites, which enable firms to provide better client service, a faster recall of information and increased ease of communication and collaboration with clients. Like the intranet site capabilities, the extranet is highly customizable, and both clients and internal team members can make most changes to the extranet site on their own, without involving the IT experts.

SharePoint makes the process of collecting sensitive data from clients and suppliers relatively effortless. The data can be integrated directly into the system from the firm's billing software, which helps avoid redundancy and errors that normally result from the manual entry of the information. The customized extranet site also can include matter documents and agreements that both the firm and clients can access simultaneously, speeding up the process of review and approval time, and helping teams gain a holistic view of a particular client matter.

The extranet is a tremendous benefit for clients because it allows them to directly share information and ideas though a Web browser, creating a more personal experience and tighter client connectivity.

The process for setting up an extranet site is very similar to what is done to create any site. However, special considerations must be given to security and what data to publish:

• Policies and procedures become very important because technology alone cannot guarantee success.
• For a client-facing system, a secure connection using SSL through a Web browser is strongly recommended. The firm's IT experts will need to set up SharePoint for secure access.
• The firm's IT experts or outside consultants may have to do some specialized development that goes beyond what can be done with the out-of-the-box capabilities of SharePoint.

Dashboards

The term “dashboard” is not new, but SharePoint enables users to create and use dashboarding techniques in very innovative ways. Dashboards generally describe how a firm can display various related information on a single page, making it easy to see the big picture. SharePoint provides a way to create dashboards on whatever firms want by utilizing advanced Web Parts coupled with Web Part connections, which all allow for passing data between Web Parts.

Dashboards have many applications, such as helping with client matter coordination, project management or employee tracking. Firms can integrate back-end data, such as contact lists and client-billing information, in one place to get a full picture of what work is being done.

Setting up a dashboard in SharePoint is very easy by simply managing Web Parts on a site page as previously discussed. However, knowledge of the more advanced features is necessary in order to manipulate data through Web Part connections.

The goal in a dashboard is to gather and present data in a summarized fashion. Often times, additional Web Parts beyond what is provided in SharePoint are needed to access data from financial and document management systems. Many software vendors already have SharePoint Web Parts for their software, and so it becomes a matter of integrating these Web Parts into the firm's SharePoint environment. The IT experts can then get them up and running.

Conclusion

With SharePoint's powerful collaboration tools' ability to customize and easy integration with popular applications such as Microsoft Office, it is becoming more and more popular with all types of law firms ' both large and small.

Many firms are already beginning to see direct benefits of SharePoint. For example, one Philadelphia law firm has improved its accounts receivables by making the information about clients who are 30 days overdue on their bills available to all attorneys via SharePoint. Clients that are 30 days overdue are prominently listed and brought to attorneys' attention immediately. The results have been to reduce the time to collect overdue bills. The firm tied its accounting system to SharePoint through third-party Web Parts and made SharePoint the initial Web site for attorneys when opening their Internet browser.

Additionally, more firms are choosing to use IT consultants and managed IT services providers to help them jumpstart SharePoint implementations and be able to deliver more complex intranet/extranet functions in less time. This enables them to deliver even higher quality service to clients, while continuing to focus on their key competencies. Sounds like a win-win for everyone.