Interwoven Matter-Centricity for Non-Conformists

Continuing my live blogging from International Legal Technology Association's Annual Conference, I sat in the session from Interwoven and MicroStrategies on using their Matter Centric approach to their document management system.

MicroStrategies and Todd from Lownestein Sandler presented their view on how Lownestein Sandler use Matter Centricity.

Specialized practice groups operate differently. Managing partners and other heavy hitters who operate on their own. Administrative departments also have a different way of dealing with documents. They do not work on matters.


You need to dealt with complaints that matter workspaces are organized by matter numbers. Attorney do not remember attorney numbers. They remember client and matter names. Lownestein had half of the firm wanted it organized by client name and the other half wanted client number.

They used shortcuts to see matters in a different way. Lowenstein organized matter workspaces named Client#, Matter#, Client name and matter name (in that order). They used a shortcut with a new name Client name, matter name, client#, matter#. They use a tool from Microstrategies that automatically creates the shortcuts.

The firm had a client with hundreds of matters with several opening per day. They really needed a way to organize the matter workspaces. It also caused a huge screen real estate problem. The solution was to build out a tree structure of the matter workspaces for that client using shortcuts for a fictional user account. The tool automatically adds newly opened workspaces into the client's shortcut tree.

One user wanted to just fill out the document profile and not have to find the matter workspace and folder. They created a script that finds the documents and moves them into document folders. It also required a setting on the computer to keep the classic view and not the matter workspace view when saving documents and finding documents.

Then next problem is cross-disciplinary matters, where you multiple practices involved. For example, when you have tax, labor or another group working on a securities matter. They created an email address that will create a new folder, with the name of the folder in the subject line. You use the "file and send" function and file the email in the matter workspace. This allows the user to create a new folder without the elevated rights that would allow them to edit the workspace.


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