Document creation, organization, revision and sharing — internally and externally — are often the biggest impediments to legal teams accomplishing more work faster. In fact, a Harvard Business School study found that legal teams could improve their productivity and collaboration — 12.2% more tasks, 25.1% more quickly — when their software and platforms work together and incorporate artificial intelligence, ensuring a familiar experience with effortless connections.
That seamless interaction has arrived with a collaboration between NetDocuments and Microsoft. The two leaders in innovation have worked together to integrate NetDocuments’ SaaS solution products and all Microsoft 365 tools, including Copilot, to create a smarter, next-generation experience that still feels familiar.
For example, legal teams can file emails from Outlook into the DMS for a complete matter profile and securely share NetDocuments content via email. And when a document is open in Word, a user can run PatternBuilder apps to gain even more efficiencies. As a result, teams can reduce document cycle times, enhance collaboration with colleagues and maintain robust data governance by keeping all content securely within the NetDocuments platform.
“Bringing together NetDocuments and Microsoft to [deliver] these experiences and use cases is really powerful for the legal professional to do their best work,” NetDocuments senior product manager, Jared Hasleton, said in a recent webinar.
These expanded integrations are indicative of the long relationship between NetDocuments and Microsoft. A decade ago, the co-created ndOffice product allowed NetDocuments cloud-stored documents to open directly in Microsoft Word, PowerPoint and Excel, and several years ago co-editing within the online applications became available. Next came the fusing of ndMail and Outlook, followed by PatternBuilder MAX, a NetDocuments workflow automation product, which features Microsoft-enabled generative AI.
Stronger connections, streamlined workflow
This ongoing partnership between NetDocuments and Microsoft now taps the latter’s Copilot, Fluent design system and Azure OpenAI to let legal teams achieve so much more with two trusted partners and platforms they already use regularly.
- Reduced training and work time due to familiarity with both platforms. Endless toggling is over. Legal professionals can make natural language requests to locate specific work products stored in NetDocuments and access documents by opening via ndOffice, opening via Office Online, opening in NetDocuments or previewing straight from Teams — thanks to a NetDocuments extension in Copilot.
- Effortless back-and-forth — cross-platform anywhere, anytime on any device. Leveraging Microsoft’s new integration capabilities, the NetDocuments Progressive Web App, a hybrid between web and mobile apps, ensures that users will have the same experience no matter what hardware and operating system they are using. Whether mobile, Mac, desktop, tablet or Windows: Gone are the days of having to maintain multiple integrations specific to each operating system or hardware.
- Evaluation and revision of information across apps, rapidly and automatically. Legal teams can connect incoming documents with legal-oriented apps using PatternBuilderMAX’s generative AI for data extraction, summarization, translation, drafting and revision. Beyond that, the extracted data can be stored and reused to generate new work product and complete complex workflows.
- Improved precision and consistency in and across work products for better data governance. The use of AI can allow 40% higher quality, a Harvard study indicates. It also notes that employees whose work performance was below average saw a 43% improvement using generative AI, while those whose performance was above average achieved a nearly 20% increase.
- Easily scaled technology to keep up with a thriving firm’s growing client list. No matter what size your practice is, NetDocuments can help. Their solutions scale to support the highest demands of global firms while also working for smaller groups.
Kim Knotchick, an Azure executive at Microsoft, praises what NetDocuments is establishing with ndMAX: “It is the prototype of what we encourage – which is leveraging our groundbreaking AI technology with a purpose-built, responsible AI solution that industry experts can best bring to market for their customers.”
Connections across all Microsoft 365 tools
Just as Microsoft 365 has been evolving to create a more uniform experience across all mediums, “NetDocuments is leading the way to make their technologies available and fully functional wherever and however our people work,” Steve Johnson, IT Applications director for law firm Ice Miller, says. Among the integrations:
- Co-authoring and co-editing in Word, Excel and PowerPoint. As part of NetDocuments CSPP+ partnership with Microsoft, legal professionals soon can collaborate with real-time desktop co-authoring across all tools. Native co-editing is currently possible via the online applications, with desktop coming soon. Documents and their revision history stay safely inside NetDocuments.
- NetDocuments and Outlook. NetDocuments has a new, web-based Microsoft 365 add-in that offers an elevated way to access Outlook and manage email with secure content sharing. Users can send and file emails and documents directly to the matter workspace within NetDocuments or simply map their Outlook folders directly to the workspace. In addition, email attachments can be instantly and easily renamed, reordered and compressed into a zip file format right from Outlook.
- Teams collaboration enhancements via NetDocuments’ ChatLink. Microsoft Teams’ new capabilities connect seamlessly with NetDocuments. All NetDocuments functionality resides on a tab within Teams, reducing the need to switch between applications. Users may also quickly link documents within Teams chat with options to preview, open or email them. This offers better security as well as productivity, as legal teams can collaborate with each other and with clients without generating copies of documents outside their secure system of record.
Users are impressed with the seamless connections
Early adopters say the recent improvements in Microsoft 365 and the collaboration with NetDocuments already have proven beneficial.
Gilbert + Tobin CIO Mitch Owens says he “was particularly impressed by the deep integration with the Microsoft 365 stack and the refined add-in design, which promises consistent user experience across platforms, complemented by its intuitive contextual awareness.”
Johnson notes that NetDocuments’ efforts show that the company “recognizes the importance of seamless work” to law firms.
“It allows us at NetDocuments to provide more entry points into our ecosystem and be more integrated into the workflow, which is definitely our goal,” Hasleton says.
View the free on-demand webinar “Building a Winning Future with NetDocuments and Microsoft.”
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