Documents are one of the most important aspects of law firms and their security is highly essential for law firms to stay reliable and competitive. With so many cloud data storage services available nowadays, it is often a tough decision to select the best one for their data management. It is important to remember that price is not the only determinant whilst making a choice among these systems.
Here is a list of few things you should look for when you are selecting an online document management system for your law firm:
1.Lock Down System
The document management system should be locked down, allowing no access to circumvent the policies developed and programmed into the software. A lock down system is a much more secure option.
2. Profiling
The system should be able to allow users to create different profiles for different type of documents such as Administrative files and Client files. This can help the users to create a much more organised storage and retrieval system.
3. Speed Text Searching
The system should be able to allow the users to search for documents in their database with the help of a single word or phrase, within a few seconds. The system should also allow full-text searches and not just title searches.
4. Auditing
The system should provide complete audit details of every single document like its creation date, its editing records, its accessibility and its sharing history.
5. Remote Access
You should find out if the system would be accessible from a remote location easily. This can help you to edit or add documents even when you are miles away from your office.
6. Offline Access
You should also consider if the system allows you access to your files offline or let you copy documents to a flash drive or laptop allowing you to take them to court conveniently.
7. Document Versioning
The system should be able to save the documents in different file versions, preferably with date and time stamping of editing. You should also see if the system allows you to access previous versions of your documents easily in case you lose the current one.
8. Security
The system should allow customised accessibility settings for different documents, allowing you to share certain documents with only necessary people. The system should also restrict unauthorised people from editing or deleting a shared document.
9.Retention Policies
The system should have automated archiving option for documents older than a specific time period, saving them off the main server. This can save a lot of valuable space for more recent documents without the giving the users any trouble.
10. Email Integration
The system should allow integration with your mailing system so that you can directly save an email on the system or mail a document directly from the main server.
11.Scanning
The system should also allow you to scan documents and saving them in the system automatically in a word processing format rather than having you to type in all information manually.
Now that you know what to look for in a document management system, you can select a much more secure online backup service for your law firm.
