What to do when your current document management isn’t cutting it.

Progressive Legal found that standard document storage solutions couldn’t meet the demands of their modern legal practice. This case study explores how NetDocuments’ intuitive integration with existing systems and flexible cloud-based model transformed Progressive Legal’s approach to document management, enabling team collaboration from anywhere.

About Progressive Legal

Progressive Legal provides practical, skilled and timely business legal advice and tailored documents to growing Australian businesses. The firm is client-focused with the ultimate goal of protecting Australian business, their assets and intellectual property. It provides expert legal advice in relation to corporate structure, intellectual property protection (including trademarks), tailored commercial legal documents and advice, workplace, and dispute resolution.

Progressive Legal believes the current legal model is outdated for the modern, fast-paced digital environment and its vision is completely different to the “old school” approach to legal services. It provides online legal services to clients Australia-wide, with fast turnarounds, fixed-fees and cost-effective legal advice from experts in each of the areas. Progressive Legal is a law firm designed around what small businesses need, aiming to provide excellent service with no legal jargon, plain-English and straight-forward practical advice for the modern Australian business.

Born in the cloud and with many remote lawyers, trademark attorneys and paralegals, Progressive Legal needed an easy to use, secure cloud-based solution.

Outgrowing Local Document Storage

Progressive Legal is always looking to identify the best technology to assist its team and drive results for clients. Until 2017, the firm used a combination of Microsoft SharePoint and local storage to save documents, but this wasn’t a legal specific solution. Progressive Legal needed a reliable and secure way to find, share and collaborate on documents, from anywhere, using any device. As a result, Progressive Legal decided it was time to adopt a dedicated cloud-based Document Management System (DMS) purpose-built for legal professionals.

Ian Aldridge, Principal Lawyer at Progressive Legal, says: “We needed a central repository of all emails and documents. I wanted to draw a line in the sand, and make sure nobody would have to go through the experience of losing a document. We also wanted to eliminate any possible version control issues or difficulty searching and retrieving documents.”

“NetDocuments has great functionality and features, user experience and security, plus its price point per user was affordable, and its pay-per-seat approach made it an easy decision for us.”

Ian Aldridge, Principal Lawyer, Progressive Legal

‍“Looking across the market, NetDocuments was one of only a handful of legal-specific email and document management systems. Many law firms just use their practice management system or a combination of Microsoft SharePoint and Office, but this doesn’t offer the same level of functionality as NetDocuments.”

NetDocuments was the clear choice due to its integration with Progressive Legal’s existing Clio Practice Management System (PMS), and productivity applications such as Microsoft Outlook. Progressive Legal was also attracted by NetDocuments’ heritage as a document security specialist, and its commercial model.

After working for a number of small and large law firms in both Australia and the UK, Aldridge has significant experience working with various DMSs over the years. He adds: “NetDocuments has great functionality and features, user experience and security, plus its price point per user was affordable, and its pay-per-seat approach made it an easy decision for us.”

Game-Changing Functionality With Microsoft Office Integration, Intelligent Document Filing and Secure ‘On The Go’ Access

Aldridge says he experienced a number of ‘a-ha’ moments during the initial product demonstration. He was excited about the ability to have all emails in a safe and secure repository, which was easily searchable and closely integrated with Clio.

“As we continued to find more great functions, I was constantly asking staff, ‘how good is NetDocuments?!’. It was like we had stumbled across a trade secret.”

Progressive Legal went live with NetDocuments in 2017, with support of NetDocuments certified partner Verlata Consulting. Today, the firm uses NetDocuments for precedent and library storage and management, internal document management and client document management.

Aldridge explains: “Each email sent and received from a client is saved to NetDocuments in one click through the ndMail capability. We use the ndCompare function in Microsoft Word to source documents to be compared straight from a client’s workspace. The Microsoft Office suite integrates with NetDocuments so each item can be saved straight from Word, Excel, Outlook, as well as from Adobe. We have also been using the NetDocuments app on smartphones, which makes it possible to access documents on the go.”

As we continued to find more great functions, I was constantly asking staff, ‘how good is NetDocuments?!’. It was like we had stumbled across a trade secret.

Ian Aldridge, Principal Lawyer, Progressive Legal

“The integration with Clio and Microsoft Office is a game-changer for us. Version control is also great. We can save over a document without losing previous versions and access them at any time. The Echo backup makes it feel very safe, as you can’t lose a document you have spent time working on. The powerful search function can be used across all cabinets, so if you have the title of a document in mind, you don’t need to scroll through infinitely or open various folders.”

Our practice definitely could not have grown at the speed that we did without NetDocuments.

Ian Aldridge, Principal Lawyer, Progressive Legal

“Our practice definitely could not have grown at the speed that we did without NetDocuments. Looking back, finding NetDocuments was a pivotal moment for our firm,” Aldridge mentioned. He says NetDocuments’ compliance and security expertise has been particularly beneficial: “It’s now very easy for us to search and retrieve historic emails and documents, which is important as legally we need to retain information for seven years. NetDocuments runs on the platinum standard for email and document security, storage and management, which is naturally a primary consideration for us. Prospective clients do ask about the platform we use, and we’re proud to say we are using NetDocuments. I have no hesitation in recommending NetDocuments to Australian law firms of all sizes.”

Looking to the future, Progressive Legal to is starting to explore how NetDocuments ndMAX native AI and automation capabilities can benefit the firm. “We are looking for a platform to generate documents from precedents, create libraries of useful clauses, how-to’s and questionnaires now that we have an extensive precedent library,” concluded Aldridge.

With NetDocuments, Progressive Legal has been able to reap the rewards of greater productivity as its business continues to grow. The firm’s employees can now collaborate and securely work on documents from anywhere, raising the bar for client service. In addition, Progressive Legal has peace of mind it has a future-proof platform that will enable it to leverage the latest legal AI capabilities.

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