Global News
First integrated suite of solutions for government legal needs keeps the matter at the center
Thomson Reuters today announced the availability of Thomson Reuters Concourse for government legal departments. Matter-centric and cloud-based, Concourse is a powerful suite of integrated tools and information designed expressly for government agencies and corporate counsel.
Concourse is built around an intuitive dashboard, providing an integrated, collaborative platform for government legal departments.
Concourse connects the key tools, people and data that government legal departments rely on. It makes legal departments’ workflows more efficient, facilitates better collaboration, and enables easier managing of the department and its matters. And like the workflow of government legal professionals, Concourse is organized around matters, providing one place where documents, research, emails, media files and more can be easily accessed, searched and shared.
Thomson Reuters Concourse is designed to streamline and organize the unique workflows of government agencies. “Government legal departments frequently deal with a high volume of document-intensive matters that require organization as well as close collaboration with a variety of internal and external entities,” said Stephen Rubley, managing director of the Thomson Reuters Government segment. “We listened to hundreds of our government customers and then delivered Concourse in answer to their persistent need to connect the things that matter – people, documents, research, emails and more – in one location that is easy to access.”
Concourse is part of a series of new products introduced in recent weeks by Thomson Reuters, and is also available for corporate counsel. The Concourse suite leverages tools that government legal departments already rely on, including WestlawNext®, Microsoft Outlook® and Microsoft Windows Explorer®. Two new workflow modules – Matter Room and Legal Hold – are built natively within Concourse and represent the first in a family of new tools Thomson Reuters is building for government legal departments.
Matter Room allows matter-centric document organization and access, and enables documents, people, email and legal information all to be searched at once using the same powerful search technology behind Westlaw. The second new module within Concourse, Legal Hold, is a repeatable, automated and defensible workflow tool that supports the litigation hold notification and tracking process. Users also will be able to access legislative alerts served up through Concourse via the Thomson Reuters Capitol Watch product.
The customizable Concourse dashboard provides seamless access to other Thomson Reuters subscriptions, as well as insight and analytics on the legal department’s matters and legal holds. Additionally, the dashboard delivers current awareness reflecting the breadth and unique insights of the world’s largest news gathering organization – Reuters News.
Government legal matters frequently involve multiple stakeholders – other departments or agencies, other government entities, external and private sector participants. Concourse seamlessly shares documents and information in a secure, private cloud-based environment. Internal and external participants can be invited to collaborate on matters using permission-based access, tasks can be assigned to a matter, and deadlines monitored – all with a few clicks from the Concourse dashboard.
“In our conversations with government legal departments, a consistent theme was the difficulty in finding and leveraging previous work product – especially email that contained information and advice that would be relevant to the matter at hand,” Rubley explained. “Matter Room makes that information and team work-product organized and accessible, which can greatly increase efficiency.”
The cloud-based architecture of Concourse allows work to be managed continually across multiple devices, so a matter can be worked on or shared with other stakeholders anytime, whether from desktop, laptop, tablet or other mobile device. Concourse solutions are built for the mobile experience, and the convenient, single sign-on creates seamless access to all of the applications and tools on the Concourse dashboard.
“Government legal departments play a key role within their respective city, county, state and federal communities,” said Rubley. “They manage a multitude of civil, regulatory, advisory and transactional actions to keep the machinery of society moving forward. Thomson Reuters is committed to providing government legal professionals the best information and tools to support these activities, and to do it in an integrated, collaborative environment that is consistent with how this important work gets done.“
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