June 9, 2025 • 15 mins
I spoke with Peter James, a Senior Partner with @DOCS, and David Leong, the Chief Technology Officer with @GROUP about how modern law firms navigate document management challenges, what post-COVID print volumes and workflows reveal about document production, and the webinar - Closing the Gaps by Modernizing Legal Document Management - on Wednesday, June 11, 2025.
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:01):
Welcome to Reinventing Professionals,a podcast hosted by industry analyst
Ari Kaplan, which shares ideas,guidance, and perspectives from market
leaders shaping the next generationof legal and professional services.
This is Ari Kaplan and I'm speaking todaywith Peter James, a senior partner with AT
(00:24):
Docs, and David Leon, the Chief TechnologyOfficer with AT Group Peter David.
Great to speak with you.
Good to speak to you, Ari.
Nice to meet you, Ari.
David, tell us about your backgroundand how modern law firms navigate
document management challenges.
(00:45):
My background stems over 30 years workingwith professional services in the legal
sector as a chief information officer.
My experience with document managementsystems, in particular information
systems goes quite deep on howlegal firms navigate through this.
(01:06):
Your question around document managementsystem challenges and interesting one
'cause it's has been going on for decadesnow and it's quite ironic that we still
face this problem given the sophisticationof legal firms and how they're so
particular with information managementgovernance we still strike these problems.
(01:27):
The largest problem stemsfrom a number of aspects.
There's technological challenges but moreimportantly there's the human element.
Legal firms build information managementsystems or document management systems
that are specific to the practice of law.
They choose these information systemsand create the solutions and workflows,
(01:50):
classification of information basedon the practice of all four, the legal
practice attorneys and solicitors.
However, there's also the business of law.
We've got all the shared services,finance human resources which all
contribute to the business of law.
When you try to provide those tools tothat side of the business, there's quite
(02:17):
a conflict of how you use these tools.
They introduce , products likeOffice 3, 6 5, because it's
predominantly the productivity tool.
And human nature prevails andsays, okay, this is a great tool.
I'm gonna store this.
Not necessarily in the documentmanagement system because it's not, I.
(02:39):
Tuned for How I Work, I gonna startStory into the Office 3, 6, 5 Environment
Teams, SharePoint, OneDrive, outlook.
Hence, we can look backover two decades now and
Outlook has become the defaultfiling system for many people
(03:00):
, the beauty here is Microsoft.
In their wisdom, create great tools,but they never give any rules on
how to use these productivity tools.
So as a generalist productset, it's great, but law firms
(03:21):
just follow how it's best used.
Users within law firms follow howit's best used for their own practice.
So there isn't really a guide of, this iswhat you're doing, this is the work task,
and this is how you should do the workflowand this is where you should file it.
Lawyers and shared services staffare only interested in creating
(03:44):
their work product and deliveringon the demands that they have.
And they'll always gravitate twowhat they know best if it hasn't been
designed properly for their use case.
Peter, tell us about yourbackground and what post COVID
print volumes and workflowsreveal about document production.
(04:08):
I spent almost 20 years alsoin, in the legal industry.
I was with a large print and managedservices provider for the legal industry.
I was the director of legal technologyfor them before joining at group
approximately six years ago.
I was there for about a yearand a half before COVID and then
stayed on after COVID and manageda number of global law firms.
(04:28):
The biggest trend overall is asignificant decrease in print volumes.
I worked with law firms tryingto digitize these processes for
many years leading up to COVID.
But that inability to be in the officeand have to do it digitally has made
a lot of these workflows pre-bills,they used to print thousands of pages
every month of pre-bills, distributethem to the attorneys to be marked up,
(04:50):
only to then go back, be entered in.
Even things as simple as letters, whenattorneys send a letter to a client,
they were typically scanning it, sendingit as a PDF before COVID, but they were
still sending the paper copy, wherenow they've got that comfort level
that we don't have to also print it,put it in an envelope and mail it out.
A lot of those workflows have beenthe biggest shift, but where we find
(05:14):
the gap that hasn't kept up withthat shift is you still have the same
level of printers that you had before.
So we still usually see in a lawfirm the printer at every LAA
station where they can roll back intheir desk and grab the print job.
The one that drives me crazy is you seepiles and piles of abandoned print jobs.
Whether it's in the output trade ofthe printer itself, or so many firms
(05:35):
will have a little basket next to theprinter that says unclaimed print jobs.
And that starts to become a securityrisk in addition to just complete waste.
Finally, from an IT standpoint,we really haven't done
anything to ease the IT burden.
They still have print servers indifferent offices, different data centers.
They're still heavily reliant on, addressbook changes as people come and go.
(05:57):
There's still a lot of manual processesaround print that have not diminished
in line with the volume reduction.
David, where are firms struggling mostwhen it comes to unifying internal
and external document workflows?
They're struggling most becausethey've got multiple systems and too
(06:21):
many options for the end user withrepositories, so internal workflows.
It's fine when the workflowsare defined or if we are
looking at the practice of law.
They're very stringent in definingwhat the workflows are for legal
staff, particularly well, dependingon what the practice groups are, if
(06:43):
it's a litigation matter and it'sbased on court dates doing a discovery
how they distill that information.
They define that very well, and they canbuild all those workflows within those
systems and have all that categorizationwith their document management system.
These systems, whilst , they can betuned for shared services for the
(07:08):
business of law typically they're not.
When I was working with the law firmsand we had these enterprise content
management systems, there would be onecategory for me to store my information.
It would be miscellaneous.
All the other categorieswere irrelevant for me.
So I would just be throwing and savingall my documents, whether project
(07:32):
documents, transactional documents,reports into just this one classification.
And this over time doesn't mean.
A lot to me.
So then I would start building my ownfiling system outside of that ecosystem.
Typically that would be Microsoft becausewhen I'm using the productivity tools
(07:57):
in Microsoft, when you hit save as ifit hasn't been configured and the rules
haven't been built into the system.
It will default to, wheredo you wanna save it?
Do you wanna save it to Outlook,SharePoint, OneDrive teams?
So instantly I start buildingmy own document management
(08:18):
system based on my workflow.
And then when I'm sharing itexternally, I'm gonna put that in
OneDrive and share my own links whichadds to more problems and challenges
with the business around security.
Governments version control.
And this all stems from havingmultiple options and not the proper
(08:42):
governance and setup with the systems.
Peter, how are the concerns relatedto ESG compliance, security and risk
mitigation, shaping tech strategyand legal operations at firms today?
I always think you look at the amountfrom a security perspective, the
amount of work that firms look tosecure their networks to secure their
environment and having ethical wallsto keep people from being able to see
(09:06):
things they shouldn't be able to see.
But then you still walkaround the law firm and paper
documents sitting everywhere.
You see them sitting in the shared areas.
From an ESG standpoint, this is an areaof much bigger concern than ever before.
When you think about ESG, you think aboutenvironment and when it comes to print,
you're always thinking about the treesthat were chopped down to make the paper.
(09:26):
But what I always think is interestingis when you look at just the sheer number
of printers in an office, it's alsothe number of pa, the number of trees
that are needed to reabsorb the CO2emissions from the electricity generated.
When you've got five or10-year-old desktop printers,
laser printers sitting there, that.
You don't really thinkabout what's the cost?
And you just have it plugged in.
It's not costing a ton it's a fewdollars a year, but you start to look at
(09:49):
hundreds of printers for OTO law firm.
And, we've worked with firms where wecan measure it as being almost 2000
trees required just to reabsorb the CO2emissions from their fleet of printers.
So there's a lot of elements when youstart to look from the environmental
standpoint, but also then from a securitystandpoint and really being able to show,
(10:09):
hey, we're doing everything we can to keepyour information secure, including making
sure that there are no abandoned printjobs sitting in public areas, or even
on, less public areas within the firm.
David, what are some practicalsteps law firm leaders can take to
modernize their technology portfoliowithout starting from scratch?
(10:34):
I think really have a look at what's madeavailable to the users at the moment.
I. And clearly Microsoft office 3, 65 is part of the production tools used
leverage of how best can we use thisand integrate that with an enterprise
content management system and align thatwith the classifications that you have.
(10:58):
Let the users choose what system theywant to use, but then identify what
that source of truth is going to be.
As a quick scenario, you might usethe Office 3 6 5 Microsoft System as
a transactional workspace, but thenhave that aligned and in sync with
(11:20):
your document management system sothat information can flow quickly
and easily into that source of truth.
For all your shared services areaslike finance, hr, human resources, let
them live in that document managementsystem being Microsoft, but then save
(11:42):
it and protect it equally as wellas you do with the legal systems.
This would require a lot of configuration,but there are products out there,
that we support and promote that dothis with the Office 3 6 5 platform.
This allows you to not worry aboutthe content and lifting and shifting
(12:03):
information again and reclassifying'cause let's leverage off what you have.
If you are got your Microsoft E threeE five licenses, you are already paying
a terabyte of storage for every user.
So let's leverage.
Off that in the best way possible,and then align that with the
additional stories that youmay be paying if you've got an
(12:25):
enterprise content management system
. We are collaborating on a webinar called "Closing the Gaps by Modernizing
Legal Document Management," whichis taking place on Wednesday,
June 11th at 11:00 AM Eastern.
What are some of the most promisinginnovations you're seeing in
how global delivery models arecreating efficiency at scale?
(12:48):
The two biggest emerging trendsright now are cloud and consistency.
So consistency, meaning that a lot moreattorneys are traveling to different
offices visiting their clients.
Giving that attorney the exact sameuser experience from New York to LA,
from the United Kingdom to Hong Kong.
When we look at how print fits intothat, it's having that exact same
(13:10):
print experience that you have in yourhome office when you travel to a new
office, so you're not having to huntaround and find a device and then work
with it to be able to map that device.
Cloud obviously makes that type of visiona lot easier to manage than in the past.
Being able to stop relying on datacenters and servers in offices from
(13:32):
a print, but also from a scanningstandpoint, and even being able to
securely segment off different regions.
When you've got a cloud-basedsystem as opposed to something
within your own network, you canachieve that workflow without all
of the offices having the exact sameaccess to your overarching network.
SaaS models and cloudreally enable all of that.
(13:52):
they're still storing it in Outlook.
We're seeing more information flowinto Teams channels and SharePoint.
So this information sprawl still exists,but, MacroView really surfaces and
manages the information in the Microsoftecosystem to align and sync that with your
enterprise content management systems.
(14:12):
We are seeing legal enterprise contentmanagement systems being used, but
there's a lot of friction with usersparticularly, staff, so there is still a
lot of navigation that firms are doing interms of where they're storing documents.
What can attendees of closing the Gapsby modernizing Legal Document Management
expect from that program and how can ourlisteners today learn more and register?
(14:38):
I certainly hope that people will comeaway with some ideas in terms of how
we can modernize and look at with theway workflows have evolved since COVID.
How you can start, getsome practical, tips.
We'll have a great client, CTOfrom a large law firm, Mike
Verdello, will be joining us.
I've had the pleasure of knowinghim for almost 10 years now and just
phenomenal mind with great experience.
(15:01):
For more information and to register,you can definitely go to atgroup.co.
Go to our news and events pageand register for the webinar.
This is Ari Kaplan speaking withPeter James, a senior partner with
AT Docs and David Leon, the ChiefTechnology Officer with AT Group.
We will be participating in a webinarClosing the Gaps by Modernizing Legal
(15:23):
Document Management on Wednesday,June 11th at 11:00 AM Eastern.
Peter, David, it'sreally been a privilege.
Thank you so much.
Thanks, Harry.
Thank you, Ari.
Thank you for listening to theReinventing Professionals Podcast.
Visit reinventing professionals.com orari kaplan advisors.com to learn more.
Welcome to Reinventing Professionals,a podcast hosted by industry analyst
Ari Kaplan, which shares ideas,guidance, and perspectives from market
leaders shaping the next generationof legal and professional services.
This is Ari Kaplan and I'm speaking todaywith Peter James, a senior partner with AT
(00:24):
Docs, and David Leon, the Chief TechnologyOfficer with AT Group Peter David.
Great to speak with you.
Good to speak to you, Ari.
Nice to meet you, Ari.
David, tell us about your backgroundand how modern law firms navigate
document management challenges.
(00:45):
My background stems over 30 years workingwith professional services in the legal
sector as a chief information officer.
My experience with document managementsystems, in particular information
systems goes quite deep on howlegal firms navigate through this.
(01:06):
Your question around document managementsystem challenges and interesting one
'cause it's has been going on for decadesnow and it's quite ironic that we still
face this problem given the sophisticationof legal firms and how they're so
particular with information managementgovernance we still strike these problems.
(01:27):
The largest problem stemsfrom a number of aspects.
There's technological challenges but moreimportantly there's the human element.
Legal firms build information managementsystems or document management systems
that are specific to the practice of law.
They choose these information systemsand create the solutions and workflows,
(01:50):
classification of information basedon the practice of all four, the legal
practice attorneys and solicitors.
However, there's also the business of law.
We've got all the shared services,finance human resources which all
contribute to the business of law.
When you try to provide those tools tothat side of the business, there's quite
(02:17):
a conflict of how you use these tools.
They introduce , products likeOffice 3, 6 5, because it's
predominantly the productivity tool.
And human nature prevails andsays, okay, this is a great tool.
I'm gonna store this.
Not necessarily in the documentmanagement system because it's not, I.
(02:39):
Tuned for How I Work, I gonna startStory into the Office 3, 6, 5 Environment
Teams, SharePoint, OneDrive, outlook.
Hence, we can look backover two decades now and
Outlook has become the defaultfiling system for many people
(03:00):
, the beauty here is Microsoft.
In their wisdom, create great tools,but they never give any rules on
how to use these productivity tools.
So as a generalist productset, it's great, but law firms
(03:21):
just follow how it's best used.
Users within law firms follow howit's best used for their own practice.
So there isn't really a guide of, this iswhat you're doing, this is the work task,
and this is how you should do the workflowand this is where you should file it.
Lawyers and shared services staffare only interested in creating
(03:44):
their work product and deliveringon the demands that they have.
And they'll always gravitate twowhat they know best if it hasn't been
designed properly for their use case.
Peter, tell us about yourbackground and what post COVID
print volumes and workflowsreveal about document production.
(04:08):
I spent almost 20 years alsoin, in the legal industry.
I was with a large print and managedservices provider for the legal industry.
I was the director of legal technologyfor them before joining at group
approximately six years ago.
I was there for about a yearand a half before COVID and then
stayed on after COVID and manageda number of global law firms.
(04:28):
The biggest trend overall is asignificant decrease in print volumes.
I worked with law firms tryingto digitize these processes for
many years leading up to COVID.
But that inability to be in the officeand have to do it digitally has made
a lot of these workflows pre-bills,they used to print thousands of pages
every month of pre-bills, distributethem to the attorneys to be marked up,
(04:50):
only to then go back, be entered in.
Even things as simple as letters, whenattorneys send a letter to a client,
they were typically scanning it, sendingit as a PDF before COVID, but they were
still sending the paper copy, wherenow they've got that comfort level
that we don't have to also print it,put it in an envelope and mail it out.
A lot of those workflows have beenthe biggest shift, but where we find
(05:14):
the gap that hasn't kept up withthat shift is you still have the same
level of printers that you had before.
So we still usually see in a lawfirm the printer at every LAA
station where they can roll back intheir desk and grab the print job.
The one that drives me crazy is you seepiles and piles of abandoned print jobs.
Whether it's in the output trade ofthe printer itself, or so many firms
(05:35):
will have a little basket next to theprinter that says unclaimed print jobs.
And that starts to become a securityrisk in addition to just complete waste.
Finally, from an IT standpoint,we really haven't done
anything to ease the IT burden.
They still have print servers indifferent offices, different data centers.
They're still heavily reliant on, addressbook changes as people come and go.
(05:57):
There's still a lot of manual processesaround print that have not diminished
in line with the volume reduction.
David, where are firms struggling mostwhen it comes to unifying internal
and external document workflows?
They're struggling most becausethey've got multiple systems and too
(06:21):
many options for the end user withrepositories, so internal workflows.
It's fine when the workflowsare defined or if we are
looking at the practice of law.
They're very stringent in definingwhat the workflows are for legal
staff, particularly well, dependingon what the practice groups are, if
(06:43):
it's a litigation matter and it'sbased on court dates doing a discovery
how they distill that information.
They define that very well, and they canbuild all those workflows within those
systems and have all that categorizationwith their document management system.
These systems, whilst , they can betuned for shared services for the
(07:08):
business of law typically they're not.
When I was working with the law firmsand we had these enterprise content
management systems, there would be onecategory for me to store my information.
It would be miscellaneous.
All the other categorieswere irrelevant for me.
So I would just be throwing and savingall my documents, whether project
(07:32):
documents, transactional documents,reports into just this one classification.
And this over time doesn't mean.
A lot to me.
So then I would start building my ownfiling system outside of that ecosystem.
Typically that would be Microsoft becausewhen I'm using the productivity tools
(07:57):
in Microsoft, when you hit save as ifit hasn't been configured and the rules
haven't been built into the system.
It will default to, wheredo you wanna save it?
Do you wanna save it to Outlook,SharePoint, OneDrive teams?
So instantly I start buildingmy own document management
(08:18):
system based on my workflow.
And then when I'm sharing itexternally, I'm gonna put that in
OneDrive and share my own links whichadds to more problems and challenges
with the business around security.
Governments version control.
And this all stems from havingmultiple options and not the proper
(08:42):
governance and setup with the systems.
Peter, how are the concerns relatedto ESG compliance, security and risk
mitigation, shaping tech strategyand legal operations at firms today?
I always think you look at the amountfrom a security perspective, the
amount of work that firms look tosecure their networks to secure their
environment and having ethical wallsto keep people from being able to see
(09:06):
things they shouldn't be able to see.
But then you still walkaround the law firm and paper
documents sitting everywhere.
You see them sitting in the shared areas.
From an ESG standpoint, this is an areaof much bigger concern than ever before.
When you think about ESG, you think aboutenvironment and when it comes to print,
you're always thinking about the treesthat were chopped down to make the paper.
(09:26):
But what I always think is interestingis when you look at just the sheer number
of printers in an office, it's alsothe number of pa, the number of trees
that are needed to reabsorb the CO2emissions from the electricity generated.
When you've got five or10-year-old desktop printers,
laser printers sitting there, that.
You don't really thinkabout what's the cost?
And you just have it plugged in.
It's not costing a ton it's a fewdollars a year, but you start to look at
(09:49):
hundreds of printers for OTO law firm.
And, we've worked with firms where wecan measure it as being almost 2000
trees required just to reabsorb the CO2emissions from their fleet of printers.
So there's a lot of elements when youstart to look from the environmental
standpoint, but also then from a securitystandpoint and really being able to show,
(10:09):
hey, we're doing everything we can to keepyour information secure, including making
sure that there are no abandoned printjobs sitting in public areas, or even
on, less public areas within the firm.
David, what are some practicalsteps law firm leaders can take to
modernize their technology portfoliowithout starting from scratch?
(10:34):
I think really have a look at what's madeavailable to the users at the moment.
I. And clearly Microsoft office 3, 65 is part of the production tools used
leverage of how best can we use thisand integrate that with an enterprise
content management system and align thatwith the classifications that you have.
(10:58):
Let the users choose what system theywant to use, but then identify what
that source of truth is going to be.
As a quick scenario, you might usethe Office 3 6 5 Microsoft System as
a transactional workspace, but thenhave that aligned and in sync with
(11:20):
your document management system sothat information can flow quickly
and easily into that source of truth.
For all your shared services areaslike finance, hr, human resources, let
them live in that document managementsystem being Microsoft, but then save
(11:42):
it and protect it equally as wellas you do with the legal systems.
This would require a lot of configuration,but there are products out there,
that we support and promote that dothis with the Office 3 6 5 platform.
This allows you to not worry aboutthe content and lifting and shifting
(12:03):
information again and reclassifying'cause let's leverage off what you have.
If you are got your Microsoft E threeE five licenses, you are already paying
a terabyte of storage for every user.
So let's leverage.
Off that in the best way possible,and then align that with the
additional stories that youmay be paying if you've got an
(12:25):
enterprise content management system
. We are collaborating on a webinar called "Closing the Gaps by Modernizing
Legal Document Management," whichis taking place on Wednesday,
June 11th at 11:00 AM Eastern.
What are some of the most promisinginnovations you're seeing in
how global delivery models arecreating efficiency at scale?
(12:48):
The two biggest emerging trendsright now are cloud and consistency.
So consistency, meaning that a lot moreattorneys are traveling to different
offices visiting their clients.
Giving that attorney the exact sameuser experience from New York to LA,
from the United Kingdom to Hong Kong.
When we look at how print fits intothat, it's having that exact same
(13:10):
print experience that you have in yourhome office when you travel to a new
office, so you're not having to huntaround and find a device and then work
with it to be able to map that device.
Cloud obviously makes that type of visiona lot easier to manage than in the past.
Being able to stop relying on datacenters and servers in offices from
(13:32):
a print, but also from a scanningstandpoint, and even being able to
securely segment off different regions.
When you've got a cloud-basedsystem as opposed to something
within your own network, you canachieve that workflow without all
of the offices having the exact sameaccess to your overarching network.
SaaS models and cloudreally enable all of that.
(13:52):
they're still storing it in Outlook.
We're seeing more information flowinto Teams channels and SharePoint.
So this information sprawl still exists,but, MacroView really surfaces and
manages the information in the Microsoftecosystem to align and sync that with your
enterprise content management systems.
(14:12):
We are seeing legal enterprise contentmanagement systems being used, but
there's a lot of friction with usersparticularly, staff, so there is still a
lot of navigation that firms are doing interms of where they're storing documents.
What can attendees of closing the Gapsby modernizing Legal Document Management
expect from that program and how can ourlisteners today learn more and register?
(14:38):
I certainly hope that people will comeaway with some ideas in terms of how
we can modernize and look at with theway workflows have evolved since COVID.
How you can start, getsome practical, tips.
We'll have a great client, CTOfrom a large law firm, Mike
Verdello, will be joining us.
I've had the pleasure of knowinghim for almost 10 years now and just
phenomenal mind with great experience.
(15:01):
For more information and to register,you can definitely go to atgroup.co.
Go to our news and events pageand register for the webinar.
This is Ari Kaplan speaking withPeter James, a senior partner with
AT Docs and David Leon, the ChiefTechnology Officer with AT Group.
We will be participating in a webinarClosing the Gaps by Modernizing Legal
(15:23):
Document Management on Wednesday,June 11th at 11:00 AM Eastern.
Peter, David, it'sreally been a privilege.
Thank you so much.
Thanks, Harry.
Thank you, Ari.
Thank you for listening to theReinventing Professionals Podcast.
Visit reinventing professionals.com orari kaplan advisors.com to learn more.
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