Bringing Law and Order to Online Information using SharePoint
Visualize a lawyer’s firm – whether its lawyers handle bankruptcy, divorce, immigration or corporate law – and all that comes to mind is a conventional book shelf seating mammoth law books and huge piles of documents and files, which has to be kept on guard. Thus, getting the key documents and records collaborated, organized, and shared are the vital needs for any lawyer’s firm. That is where SharePoint plays a major role. So, how is Hosted SharePoint 2010 useful for the lawyers? Using SharePoint, one can collaborate, organize, and manage work through intranet, extranet, or web.
Take for instance, if a group of lawyers are working on a particular case and if certain documents have to be passed amongst each other umpteen times for reference and cross reference, in such circumstances using Microsoft SharePoint is beneficial. Instead of sending the documents via emails, which can be a strenuous task, one can just upload the required documents on the space given by the Sharepoint program. It can be viewed by the group of people who are entitled to have access to the SharePoint space. The best part of using hosted SharePoint is that these closed user group can edit, delete, and add content and update the latest version in their free SharePoint hosting space. Consequently, if the users are at diverse locations, everyone can view the document without being bodily there at the similar location, which saves cost and time.
Lawyers can use Windows SharePoint Services as a store house, where they can work on a particular file online and also can save it there itself. The other members of the team can login to the SharePoint account and view and edit the file easily. Precisely put, the sharing feature of SharePoint gives lawyers the ability to get spontaneous sanction from their senior that too with changes if there’s any.
Even the clients or vendors can get access to their lawyer’s SharePoint portal if they wish to give any comments on the documents pertaining to their case. Sharing of audio and video files is also possible.
Some other significant features of SharePoint that is really advantageous for lawyers are the ability to import SharePoint data to an excel format and ability to store, share and search their business documents.
All in all, using a SharePoint portal—be it SharePoint 2010, SharePoint 2007, or SharePoint Foundation 2010—a legal firm can mechanize their work process stress-free, wherein the files can be edited, updated and made ready with the consent of all parties, which further can be approved by a senior, all in a smooth and effortless way. There are also other application hosting available in the market that can be really beneficial for any profession or business.
Hosted BES and MS Exchange hosting for email management are also really beneficial for lawyers.