Fasken is a leading national business and litigation law firm in Canada with more than 580 lawyers across offices in Vancouver, Calgary, Toronto, Montreal, Quebec City, New York, London and Johannesburg.  We provide services to our clients in virtually all practice areas, on a national and international basis, with particular depth and expertise in litigation, business law and labor law.

In 2001, we sought to implement a consistent document management platform across all firm offices.  We selected a leading proactive compliance and DM vendor, with the intention of eventually adding collaboration capabilities to present clients with a secure and uniform virtual workspace.  At the time, our firm's practice groups were using multiple third-party tools to create client extranets.  In addition to the fact that these extranets varied in appearance, the actual process of sharing documents was more cumbersome than needed.  Attorneys had to first check out a document from DM, save it to a local drive and then upload the document to the extranet.

In 2004, we decided to implement our vendor's enterprise collaboration module.  We started wi

th a pilot within our litigation group as they were already familiar with the extranet concept and had the most immediate need for the solution.  We were operational in a few weeks, and the intuitive interface made training minimal.  From a client perspective, the transition from the third-party tool to the module was seamless.  Our process for initial collaboration site set-up is centralized through our IT department; however, once a profile for the site is completed and security rights are assigned, the attorney and/or assistant can take control from there.

Our attorneys are now able to utilize one centralized repository for sharing information related to a particular client or matter.  The attorneys immediately appreciated the DM integration and the ease it provided in sharing documents with a simple right-click option for placing documents in collaboration.  They've also been able to save time spent via phone or e-mail responding to requests for documents.  Perhaps the most important benefit is the ability to ensure that everyone is looking at the same and most recent version of a document.  Both attorney and client benefit from the ability to look at work product at any time, from anywhere, which is especially important considering time zones and dispersed parties.  Also important, the use of the collaboration module works to strengthen the professional image we put forward to clients and also continues to position the firm as tech-savvy.

Currently we have over 100 operational collaboration sites, mostly used by our litigation group to interface with clients about ongoing work in progress.  However, the system is flexible enough to use in many different ways.  For example, some of our internal teams use it for project management, making particular use of the discussion thread capabilities.  There is also interest in using the module for mergers and acquisitions to create "virtual deal rooms," where sensitive documents can be shared and reviewed in a secure environment.  We have an enterprise-wide license for more than 1,300 seats, so the opportunity to continue to develop collaboration sites for other uses will most certainly continue to grow.

About our authors . . .

Greg Christensen is Director of Knowledge Management Technology Support at Fasken Martineau.  He can be reached at gchristensen@van.fasken.com.

Stephanie Pfeiffer is Director of Marketing and Client Relations, Legal Business Solutions for Hummingbird Ltd.  She can be reached at stephanie.pfeiffer@hummingbird.com.