Today's issue of TL NewsWire covers knowledge management software designed to supplement your document management system (see article below), a Microsoft Word add-in with tools for drafting and proofreading contracts, a rear camera system with an accompanying smartphone app for older cars, and an iPhone app to help you achieve goals. Don't miss the next issue.
In theory, a document management system should contain all the content in your law firm, including email. In practice, this goal remains elusive. Accordingly, your firm would benefit from a tool that can find documents outside of your document management system.
MetaJure ILLUMINATE … in One Sentence
Launched this month, MetaJure ILLUMINATE is knowledge management software designed to supplement a document management system.
The Killer Feature
"In most firms, more than 50% of their knowledge is stuck in email and file shares that never make it into the document management system," MetaJure President & CEO Rob Arnold told me. Arnold and his team refer to this content as "dark data" because lawyers and staff often have trouble finding it or forget it exists.
ILLUMINATE connects to the repositories of dark data such as the firm's Exchange server and your assistant's hard drive. It also connects to popular document management systems such as iManage and Worldox. Connecting these data sources doesn't require any changes to your firm's infrastructure according to Arnold. Built-in OCR technology makes scanned documents searchable.
Once up and running, ILLUMINATE enables you to search all of your firm's accumulated knowledge from one screen. "With ILLUMINATE, firms can finish the job their document management system started and unify 100% of their knowledge into a single system that's as easy to use as Google," adds Arnold. "Firms can cost-effectively unlock email and legacy repositories, discovery files, and other sources of structured or unstructured data. That's their competitive advantage."
Other Notable Features
As Arnold notes, ILLUMINATE offers a Google-like search box that you access in a web browser. ILLUMINATE supports Boolean operators, wildcards, fuzzy searches, and proximity searches. However, most customers use natural language searches because of ILLUMINATE's algorithm and relevancy ranking. This technology removes duplicates from search results, and understands both context and content. For example, if you represent the Port Authority Trans-Hudson (PATH) and search for "path agreement," ILLUMINATE ignores generic uses of the word "path."
Along the left side, three filters enable you to narrow your searches by source, file type, and date. Search results display the document path for quick access to any folder. The built-in document viewer supports many file types and highlights your search terms. From the document viewer, you can open a document in its native application. If necessary for discovery or other purposes, you can export all the documents listed in the search results with one click.
The Sharing Center in ILLUMINATE enables users to share documents and email with individuals or groups. A dashboard displays the percentage of sharing taking place. Regarding security and privacy, ILLUMINATE honors any restrictions already in place. Additionally, you can create rules that limit users to specified data sources and create ethical walls when necessary.
What Else Should You Know?
You can deploy ILLUMINATE in your firm on your own server or on the private MetaJure cloud. MetaJure recently partnered with LexisNexis for its hosting service. Pricing for ILLUMINATE starts at $2,500 per year. Learn more about MetaJure ILLUMINATE.
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