A Cloud-First Solution to Align with the Firm’s Immediate and Future Needs

About King & Jurgens, L.L.C

For nearly 40 years, King & Jurgens has served both regional and national clients over a broad spectrum of practice areas, including maritime, energy, environmental law, general corporate, tax, banking, construction litigation, and insurance defense.

Headquartered in New Orleans with a second office in Houston, their firm of over 25 lawyers represents a wide range of clients, from individuals and closely held companies to publicly traded and international corporations. As a member of the Law Firm Alliance, a strategic alliance of more than 50 firms and 2,500 lawyers worldwide, they are dedicated to serving every client’s needs while retaining the values, service commitment, and culture that their clients expect from a midsize law firm.

An Introduction to Centralized Document Management

Since joining King & Jurgens in 2008, IT Director Johnston Smith has been responsible for modernizing and streamlining the firm’s processes through implementing and managing technology solutions. “When I was first hired, I had just come in from a larger firm. When I asked what document management system (DMS) they were using, they asked ‘what’s that?’ With the number of attorneys we had, I knew that was the first thing we’d have to change.”

While investigating where he could make a positive impact, he found that the firm’s existing document creation and sharing processes varied from person to person, using a combination of shared drives and platforms, each with their own categorization system and no central repository. “Our siloed document management practices were very cumbersome; nobody could find anything.”

With few document management solutions suited to the needs of the legal industry available on the market in 2008, Johnston selected Worldox as a foundation to centralize the firm’s documents.

The Catalyst for Change

Worldox worked well for the firm for over a decade, but as technology advanced, they soon noticed the platform wasn’t keeping up with their evolving needs.

“We were going to need our technology to be Microsoft 365 friendly and integrate with it well. That’s the model for the future.”

Johnston Smith, IT Director, King & Jurgens, L.L.C.

Johnston witnessed increased dissatisfaction with the platform’s user interface and a lack of integration with Microsoft 365. Johnston decided it was time for the firm to shop around for a new document management solution. He noted, “We were going to need our technology to be Microsoft 365 friendly and integrate with it well. That’s the model for the future.”

Choosing NetDocuments for Intuitive Experience, Time Savings

Based on attorney feedback and what Johnston had seen at other firms, NetDocuments was the most logical choice to replace Worldox: “It’s user intuitive, and I didn’t think people would have much trouble learning how to use it.”

As a cloud-first solution, Johnston knew that NetDocuments could ensure the firm stays up to date with current technology and security trends. And when speaking about his personal experience, Johnston also shared that his workload managing the firm’s IT has lightened significantly since migrating to the cloud and will no longer consider on-prem technology for the firm’s tech stack. He commented, “For example, right now we’re also looking for a new billing solution, and we’re not even looking at anything on-prem. Even the biggest law firm is still a small business, and it doesn’t make economic sense to handle your own servers and hardware.”

Johnston outlined the goals the firm anticipates achieving by moving from Worldox to NetDocuments:

1. Make document creation and management easier than ever before for everyone in the firm to use. “This is the first phase, and our main goal. I can already see that on the document management side, we’ll see high adoptions due to how easy NetDocuments is for everyone to understand.”
2. Develop a central hub of knowledge that both attorneys firm staff can reference to get their questions answered quickly. “It will be easier for us to create a knowledge base for everyone to use. This will be especially useful for younger attorneys, so if they’re looking for an example of something, we’ll already have created it in-house and it will be easier to find and repurpose.”
3. Be confident that each document is the most current version and a single source of truth when sharing between attorneys, clients, and outside firms. “I can envision us using NetDocuments for sending large documents back and forth for easier collaboration.”
4. Ensure all solutions within the firm’s tech stack not only work well and communicate with one another, but are also compatible with what clients are using. “Being a law firm, you have to adapt to whatever software your client uses. That’s been an issue for us on the virtual desktop side, but NetDocuments is a DMS that’s easy to run and manage on a real desktop that pairs well with Microsoft 365.”
5. Use integrated AI capabilities and document templates to save time and increase accuracy when creating common contracts, forms, and other documentation. “It’s useful to be able to have something automatically add the right tags and information into a document. Anything to make the client experience better.”

A Bright Future with an Easy-to-Use DMS

As for what the future holds for King & Jurgens, Johnston is positive things can only improve from here now that they’re using NetDocuments. “Previously, we were using only around 10% of our DMS’s features. I’m hoping the ease of use of NetDocuments will increase the use of its features and overall user adoption.” He is also pleased with the firm’s continued progress in moving all of their data management to the cloud. “Now my time is spent more with discovery than managing IT, and it’s lightened the load by going to the cloud.”

“I’m hoping the ease of use of NetDocuments will increase the use of its features and overall user adoption.”

Johnston Smith, IT Director, King & Jurgens, L.L.C.

While the firm plans to remain with virtual desktops for a while, he also envisions a future where they may be able to reduce or potentially eliminate the need once they begin exploring NetDocuments’ full capabilities. “We might be able to save a little money by not using full virtual desktops, and instead keep a closed environment within NetDocuments instead. We are excited for what the future holds.”

To learn more about NetDocuments and how you can work smarter with an intelligent document management system, click here to request a personalized demo.