Lawtrac - Matter Management Solutions for Corporate Legal Departments

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Document Module

The Document Bank, or Document Module, operates at two levels - a program level and a matter level. This area allows you to keep a variety of electronic documents online and available for use by the department members or others as security is granted.

The Administration Area offers the location to manage the kind of files you want to make use of in Lawtrac - you can use everything from PDF to wave files (audio).

If you are hosting your own program, make sure any necessary server settings are set to allow for searching. When we host, documents are searchable based on the type of document. For instance, a wave file, or a jpeg or tif would not be searchable. A word document is searchable.

Program Level

This area is for documents not assigned to a specific matter. It is the ideal place for department wide documents, user guides, forms, things you would share.

One of the key elements of this product is that it enables your law department to conduct online collaboration with its law firms. This system will provide several mutual partnership benefits with your outside law firms. This collaborative system will enable your department to increase responsiveness and enhance the quality of work developed while reducing the cost associated with providing those services.

Use: Left Menu, Click on Document Bank, Add document, click on the browse button to go pick up the document, click continue.

Classifying Documents

Once a document is imported, clicking on the pencil icon will get you to the area where documents can be classified with a type of matter and keyword. There are two personnel names that can be associated with the document: typist and author. A synopsis or comment area can include an abstract of the document, or basic author, date, subject information. Security groups can be assigned by executing a check mark in the appropriate boxes. Access to Outside Counsel or Vendors can be assigned.

Matter Level

Documents can be associated to the matter. If a matter is created to capture corporate secretary meetings or committee meetings, the electronic documents associated with those meetings can be uploaded to the matter. Those key personnel (BOD) who need to could log in and view minutes and other publications for their use. This would allow a flexibility and access that may prove useful to those who are far away or on the road a lot. In a contract scenario, copies of the executed documents could be scanned and associated with the matter, along with a contract review/summary of terms. Mergers could have important documents that are frequently used (stock option plans, conversion criteria) uploaded against the matter for ease of access.

Note: If more than one copy of a document is loaded in to the document bank, the system gives the second and subsequent copies a unique name. To prevent this, review the document bank prior to loading your document, or name your document including a unique identifier, i.e. rev2, or date, or append with your initials.

Use: Left Menu, Click on Document Bank, Add document, click on the browse button to go pick up the document, click continue.

Reports: There is a support report for the content of the document bank. The report title is Document Bank Inventory, the file name is BB_ inventory.cfm. There is another report, title Documents by Type of Matter, file name is BB001.cfm.

The Value Proposition as it relates to Document Management: