FordHarrison Selects iManage Share to Securely Collaborate With Clients

USA/Canada News

17
Dec
2015

Editor

iManage today announced that FordHarrison, one of the country's largest management-side labor and employment law firms, has selected iManage Share as part of its iManage work product management deployment. The firm selected iManage Share to better serve the needs of its clients, with a solution that professionals find as easy to use as consumer alternatives, yet address the firm's need for greater information governance and secure collaboration.

FordHarrison has been using iManage Work for work product management since 2013, having switched from OpenText Hummingbird. “The move to iManage has enabled significant changes in how our attorneys organize their work product, including documents and email,” said Scott Shaw, chief technology officer of FordHarrison. “It has made it much easier to find documents and the matter-centric file structure makes sense to our lawyers.”  

FordHarrison faced a challenge common to many professional service organizations. With greater client interest in faster collaboration, attorneys were challenged with how to share work product from iManage  with clients in a way that was secure, yet still fast and easy. “We found that attorneys wanted to use Dropbox because of its ease-of-use, but were unaware of the security and other governance implications that introduced,” said Shaw. “We needed to find a solution that met the clients’, the lawyers’ and the firm’s needs.”

FordHarrison selected iManage Share as its secure collaboration platform after evaluating several alternatives.  “Sometimes I see firms make a significant investment in technology that is never used because it is  cumbersome,” continued Shaw. “iManage Share offered us a lightweight, intuitive user experience, and an easy, cost-effective way to adopt the solution. It is refreshing to see a vendor respond with a new way of thinking about solutions as lightweight, appealing apps. And, the integration with iManage Work means that it is now easier for lawyers to share with clients and external parties from within iManage than using consumer file sharing services.”  

iManage Share is the first and only solution to fully integrate professional work product management and secure file sharing. With iManage Share, professionals can provision a new sharing site, upload scrubbed and secured content and start collaborating with external parties—with a single click. iManage Share makes it simple to share files by suggesting whom to include in collaborations based on email analysis. Professionals can do all this through the same familiar iManage Work interfaces they use every day. And clients and external parties can add or edit content through a consumer-like Web application. The result is that professionals are more productive, while satisfying the organization’s data governance and security needs.

“The challenge of sharing work product with clients and other external parties requires a very tricky balance between what is easy enough for professionals to use, so it is adopted, and what can provide the governance and control needed by professional service firms who are stewards of their clients’ information,” said Dan Carmel, chief marketing officer of iManage. “iManage Share is the only secure file sharing solution today to offer complete integration with iManage Work, so that professionals never need to leave their core work product management system to be able to collaborate securely and safely with external parties. It is easier and safer for professionals than Box.net or Dropbox, yet offers governance and security features that meet the unique needs of professional service organizations.”