South African law firm Adams & Adams bases a more agile future on Repstor for Legal and Cloud Essentials
Adams & Adams is a leading South African law firm which provides intellectual property and commercial services across Africa. It serves many of the world’s largest corporations and organizations as well as small to medium-sized companies. The firm employs around 600 people across four office locations and, until the COVID-19 pandemic struck, 95% of its people worked from these premises.
In 2019, Adams & Adams migrated its general office systems to Microsoft 365, a move that prompted the firm to rethink its legal document and matter management. “Although we had a document management system, it wasn’t doing its job,” explains CIO Colin Short. “Half of the workforce didn’t like it, so it had never been fully deployed and from a governance and compliance perspective we couldn’t
continue as we were.”
Initially, Adams & Adams looked at replacing the system with one of the modern legal ECM brands, but the Steering Committee felt that continuing to run a more bespoke system would be expensive without necessarily fulfilling the firm’s broader plans to transform the way it operated.
“Functionality, cost, security and information privacy were our key priorities so we decided to consolidate our legal document management and use SharePoint,” Colin says. “We’re a Microsoft house and had already invested in Microsoft 365, so, economically and practically, it made sense to make this the basis for our legal DMS. In my opinion Microsoft is leading the way on information management security and privacy, too.”
Optimizing Microsoft 365/SharePoint for legal DMS purposes
For help navigating the options, Adams & Adams contacted Cloud Essentials, an established Microsoft partner renowned for its experience in migration and content management. Colin already knew people who worked there and had talked to them about how to ease the complexities of legal information management during a meeting at a CIO forum.
“I liked their way of thinking, so they were the obvious port of call, especially as we don’t have extensive inhouse SharePoint skills,” Colin says. “Cloud Essentials assisted with a proof-of-concept exercise to show whether we could functionally replace the existing system with SharePoint for legal email, document, and matter management.”
At that point, there was no fixed view on the best solution to enable the email and matter management element. Adams & Adams conducted the POC with Cloud Essentials and a third-party solution provider but the software wasn’t the exact match the firm was looking for. “At that stage, there were questions around the mobility and web access side of the solution, as well as its taxonomy restrictions,” Colin notes. “Everything seemed a bit rigid.”
On personal recommendation: Repstor for Legal
The CIO at another major South African law firm recommended Repstor for Legal. “He had met with the Repstor team in the US and had been impressed with what he saw,” Colin says. “Following his suggestion, I watched the demos and discussed Repstor with the guys at Cloud Essentials who attended the sessions too. Although it was quite late in the planning of the project, we agreed with Repstor that they would run a proof of concept.”
This confirmed the decision in favor of Repstor. “We did some good tests and were blown away by two things in particular,” Colin says. “Firstly, we were impressed with the simplicity of the application. “Secondly, the customer service from the Repstor team was just amazing. For example, they agreed to match the already-approved budget.”
Additionally, Repstor has been optimized to work with SharePoint Online: “so the speed of communications between SharePoint and the front-end user experience is fantastic, ensuring easy and seamless syncing of matter documents and emails,” Colin explains. “All of this clinched Repstor as the way to go, a decision which was unanimous.”
Transformation urgency intensified by the pandemic
The arrival of COVID-19 further cemented Adams & Adams’ choice of SharePoint Online and Repstor. With Cloud Essentials close at hand to provide Microsoft expertise and data migration services, Adams & Adams was able to roll out the new Repstor/SharePoint solution to two of its four practice areas during a time of lockdown.
Given that the majority of people were now working from home, defaulting to Microsoft 365 for legal document access and management made even more sense.
As well as vital migration experience, Cloud Essentials provided a proven methodology and attention to detail that would ensure a smooth and seamless transition for Adams & Adams.
Paving the way for a new partnership
The potential of the SharePoint/Repstor approach was deemed so significant, especially in the light of the pandemic, that Cloud Essentials and Repstor have entered into a formal partnership. This will pave the way for other law firms in South Africa to benefit from this intuitive, streamlined and more agile take on matter management, harnessing their existing Microsoft 365 investments.
Adams & Adams’ experience is feeding into this partnership and will help others to optimize the migration to SharePoint-based matter management fronted by Repstor for Legal. “Cloud Essentials have seen the strategic importance of doing this properly – so that others too can benefit from this flagship approach,” Colin notes. “They also provide the all important ongoing local support.”
Overcoming connectivity challenges
The rollout, which continues, includes ‘punchy’, 15-minute Teams web training to encourage adoption. Fortunately, Repstor scores highly with user acceptance because its Microsoft 365-based approach to matter management feels so intuitive and integral to the way people already work.
Adams & Adams is also exploring Repstor’s seamless mobile capabilities which have enhanced value as lockdowns continue. “It was a big plus that this option was available. Before COVID, we’d already started to plan for scenarios in which everyone might need to work from home, which demanded agility and the freedom to work from anywhere,” Colin notes. “And then the pandemic arrived.”
South Africa has its challenges for remote working, which the Repstor approach can help address. “There are infrastructure, connectivity, and power issues here, which means that supporting remote-working is not as straightforward as in more developed countries,” Colin explains. “But Repstor masks all that. Users can continue working work offline, and sync everything as soon as they reconnect.”
Virtual data rooms are of interest to Adams & Adams too, he adds, if Repstor and Cloud Essentials can continue to find ways around South Africa’s Internet connectivity issues.
Building for a bright future
The fact that Repstor has built its legal document and matter management capabilities on top of Microsoft 365 will be important for the longer term too.
“That they are innovating on top of the Microsoft suite, taking advantage of the latest features, is a fantastic strategy by Repstor,” Colin says. “It has put us in a better place, too. For example, we’re now reassessing our office footprint and assessing the scope for people to work remotely for the long term and Repstor for Legal and SharePoint are the key to enabling this.”
Capitalizing on Microsoft Teams is a priority too, as teams continue to be dispersed. “I’m very eager to see how this could progress,” Colin says.
“I had been worried about a lack of synchronization between Teams and SharePoint, but Repstor has demonstrated how quickly and reliably this happens, which means there won’t be the problem of different versions of content existing in different places and users having to hunt for them.”
Above all, Adams & Adams feels valued as a client by both Repstor and Cloud Essentials. “They give me that sense that I am at the center of their universe, and that what I want matters,” Colin says. “This has been very refreshing. And Cloud Essentials have been not just an implementer, but a trusted partner. They’ve effectively become our ‘SharePoint arm’ within Adams & Adams. They haven’t taken a cookie-cutter approach with something from another environment, but have genuinely wanted to find the best way to help us.”