‍About Barrila Law

Barrila Law was founded 11 years ago by Gaetano Barrila. Headquartered in Ontario, Canada, the firm has two offices and is dedicated to real estate, corporate commercial law, wills, and estates.

Early on, Barrila recognized a need for a central document repository to encourage organization and efficiency, and prevent document hoarding. NetDocuments was an ideal solution, enabling the firm to establish a culture of productivity, teamwork, and social consciousness. This case study shares why Barrila chose NetDocuments and how it has successfully helped him create a collaborative, remotefriendly atmosphere.

A Simple Transition

Before Barrila Law Firm chose NetDocuments, the Firm was already using a document organization structure that was similar to the one used by the NetDocuments platform. Barrila had experienced the detrimental effects of document hoarding at other firms, so he prohibited staff from storing documents anywhere but a shared drive. That established culture of document sharing, along with the similar organizational strategy, meant that staff members were well-prepared to start using the NetDocuments platform following its implementation. “We were structured to move in,” Barrila said.

Stress-Free, Remote Access

Having a cloud-based document management system (DMS) has been critical to support the on-the-go, flexible environment that exists at Barrila Law.

Barrila was originally interested in a cloud-based solution as a means to be able to work remotely from anywhere, whether at home or on vacation, and he quickly realized that these benefits extended throughout the entire firm. Now, Barrila Law boasts a formal work-from-home policy, allowing and encouraging staff to work from home at least once a week. This flexibility gives additional convenience to staff, allowing them to have time to drop kids off at school or adjust their commute time to avoid peak traffic. The firm also employs young mothers who can use the cloud-based platform for a seamless remote experience.

“Even before the pandemic, we’ve had times when the power went out, so I’ve told my staff to go home and they were able to log into their internet at home and have everything they needed.”

Gaetano Barrila, Founder, Barrila Law

It is not just work-life balance that wins with remote accessibility. When shutdowns and stay-at-home orders occur, such as the most recent COVID-19 pandemic, Barrila and his Firm were able to remain operational while immediately working from the safety of their own homes. “We’re ready,” he said. “Even before the pandemic, we’ve had times when the power went out, so I’ve told my staff to go home and they were able to log into their internet at home and have everything they needed.”

Features that Encourage Evolution and Success

A key quality that drew Barrila to NetDocuments was the document profiling features. The NetDocuments profiling system allows contributors to create metadata reports— essentially, tags that describe a document’s attributes and associate them with those attributes for easier identification and searching—which have been instrumental in helping Barrila Law enhance information governance and improve document functionality.

“Now, once we have a final document, we dump it into SetBuilder and it saves our billing clerk hours of time of standing at a machine.”

Gaetano Barrila, Founder, Barrila Law

“Now, once we have a final document, we dump it into SetBuilder and it saves our billing clerk hours of time of standing at a machine,” Barrila said.

The cloud-based functionality of NetDocuments also allowed Barrila Law Firm to ditch their server and transition to a serverless operation. Since serverless frameworks eliminate the need for server management and are inherently scalable, converting to a completely cloud-based architecture is a major step toward creating the kind of flexibility that is coveted by most modern firms.

Greater Team Collaboration

According to Barrila, the Firm has seen countless benefits from NetDocuments’ document organization features and its ability to maintain a single document repository.

“Every single file we work on in the office has a team approach, so it’s not just assigned to one person” Barrila stated. “Everything is right there, in one place. No matter where you are, you can access and edit.”

This heightened level of collaboration is necessary in a team-based environment like Barrila Law Firm, where multiple people are often working on the same files.

Having a central repository that is accessible from any device further supports collaborative efforts, as staff members can pull up documents whenever the need arises. “Having every single document that our firm has ever produced in my cell phone when I need it is quite handy at the end of the day,” Barrila said.

Why Barrila Law Stays

NetDocuments has greatly improved the efficiency, collaborative efforts and overall culture of Barrila Law Firm, all of which comes as a great relief to Barrila. Before implementing NetDocuments, some staff members expressed concerns about switching to a webbased platform. Luckily, these worries were quickly alleviated once they started to use NetDocuments, and saw how easily it fit into their day-to-day operations. “Everybody loves NetDocuments. We would not be able to live without it,” Barrila said.

Barrila Law also uses Software Analysis Corporation for their consulting needs. In fact, Jen McComb “has been excellent. Just when we think something cannot be done, we call Jen. Her response is ‘Yes, absolutely you can do that, and here’s how to do it.’ Or ‘let me log myself in, and we’ll get this done.’ When we have a need for a new or different functionality, Jen can find a solution.”

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