PerfectLaw Podcasts

Episode #5 - Working with Our Clients to Improve DMS (Part 1)

Valerie Williams of Pender & Coward spent time talking with Anthony Beasley about her law firm's experience using the new PerfectLaw^® DMS product. Val also talked about her experience working with the development team in the DMS project.

Full Transcript

00:00:00 Anthony Beasley

Good morning everybody. This is Anthony again. We wanted to spend some time and let one of our great clients talk to you guys and give you some background on a great experience that they've had with us through the 2020 year. We know it's been a tough time for a lot of folks, but having a firm that is spent, the amount of time with us that pandering Coward has, I think.

00:00:20 Anthony Beasley

It's a great opportunity for them to at least share some good information with you. So on the call I have Valerie Williams and Valerie. And I have worked together throughout their entire T even prior to pendekar becoming a perfect lock client, they've now been a client for us for 1516 years or longer.

00:00:38 Anthony Beasley

So what I'd like to do is just let Val tell you guys a little bit about their transition. They're using a product now called web DM S, which is something that was developed initially for the cloud for cloud users that we now extend to even our in-house users who would like to have some of the flexibility that this product offers. So Val, why don't you just tell us a little bit about your experience to this point?

00:01:00 Valerie Williams

Well, good morning Anthony. It's nice to talk to you again. Henderon Coward embarked on a full.

00:01:08 Valerie Williams

Technology upgrade late last year not knowing what we had ahead of us in March, but nonetheless we plowed through an literally weeks before everything was shut down due to kovid. We launched the DMS product.

00:01:25 Valerie Williams

Alongside the latest version of same within our firm, an went about the task of getting our users up and running and acclimated to the new system an I think it's really been a wonderful tool for us.

00:01:39 Valerie Williams

We have a young lady in the office that works very closely with perfect laws. Well her her true job paralegal but she is very talented and smart and has been working with perfect love side by side for the last few months. Just look trying the features out and getting some feel for.

00:01:59 Valerie Williams

How it might work better for users, and they've been very receptive.

00:02:05 Anthony Beasley

Great, now I know one of the two challenges early on was and it's it's one of those things that we always tell people you don't know what you have in perfectly until you don't have it.

00:02:14 Valerie Williams

So tell us a little.

00:02:15 Anthony Beasley

Bit about, you know there early on that we didn't have certain things because aim does so much and I think even in your firm, in my experience in talking to you and.

00:02:25 Anthony Beasley

And working with you guys for as long as we have, we knew that there were things in aim that sometimes you weren't using.

00:02:30 Anthony Beasley

But tell us a little.

00:02:31 Anthony Beasley

Bit about that transition and how that all worked out for you guys.

00:02:34 Valerie Williams

Well, there's a lot of features in DM S that I think are very helpful, and I think one of my favorite ones was the search capabilities. I was not one to do full text searches in aim, just never did it, and this has been.

00:02:51 Valerie Williams

Opened up a whole new world to me where I can go in and search for a document if I know.

00:02:56 Valerie Williams

Which which attorney may have drafted it or a date range or something like that. I can go in and search for it and come back up with a document within moments. It's very helpful to compare the documents for differences an I think another feature that I really enjoy.

00:03:16 Valerie Williams

Is the ability to set up a personal folder on your on your DMF desktop and link it to the document management system so that when you actually update that folder from your.

00:03:32 Valerie Williams

Personal files you don't have to go all the way through DMS and go to the matter or search for the document. It's right there and it instantaneously updates the one that's on the matter in DNS.

00:03:43 Anthony Beasley

Great great, now you guys have truly been champions for us in this sense because I think in the last time I checked with the development crew.

00:03:53 Anthony Beasley

I think this was back in maybe late July early August. I think we went through a period where you guys did like 15 new things that you said, hey, we're missing this and the aim product.

00:04:03 Anthony Beasley

Can we have this in DM S and I think now one of the things that's really going to separate our system is the fact that you have time capture. You have other things, but there's some coming features and in your last update that you just had with us was something that you saw that you really liked. That kind of stood out to you that maybe you weren't using months before. Maybe it was talked about in some planning sessions, but now you get an opportunity to actually test it out.

00:04:28 Valerie Williams

Well, one of the things that I had used very sporadically was the search tools, both in a man in the billing and accounting module, and those are phenomenal. I love 'em, we use them all the time now for things such as closing files.

00:04:50 Valerie Williams

Sending letters to you know group of clients. We can export it to Excel and do a mailing list. All of those things are possible and in a very short order. By using those search tools.

00:05:03 Anthony Beasley

OK OK, now the you.

00:05:06 Anthony Beasley

Mentioned Lorne and one of the things that I I really think is a true part of perfect law that is not product oriented but is just perfect laws accompany oriented right? The ability for us. You know when you first signed with us many years ago I sent you an email that says, you know, we're family of users.

00:05:25 Anthony Beasley

An you also participate in the National User Group, an Advisory Board that we have now what? What is the experience been like working with that part of the team that's responsible for taking your comments, your issues, and making them live in the DM S product?

00:05:45 Valerie Williams

Well.

00:05:46 Valerie Williams

As you said, Lauren has just been a Rockstar through this whole thing, Xi'an.

00:05:50 Valerie Williams

Our IT consultant work together along with perfect law and I believe they have a teams session setup where they're just going back and forth back and forth whenever something comes up with one of our users and Lauren can't figure out a way for them to do it. If it sounds like a good idea, perfect lost the first one to know about it an I think there have been some very good.

00:06:13 Valerie Williams

You know I call them tweaks. It was there, but it's she's trying to make things a little bit more user friendly for people. Ann Perfect Law has been very receptive to that. Ann has incorporated some of those changes into the DM S product for us.

00:06:29 Anthony Beasley

OK great well.

00:06:30 Anthony Beasley

Thank you for your time and telling us about the experience.

00:06:34 Anthony Beasley

In your web DM S experience, I know you've.

00:06:37 Anthony Beasley

Helped us out along the way and you've been working with us and both using the product but also in improving the product. Since your firm, again, you're very longstanding user, you've been with us for a long time, so there's things that you know when touching the product that someone new just wouldn't know. So you have helped everyone across the board from both the development side.

00:06:59 Anthony Beasley

To the users who are purchasing perfect law on a day to day basis in for everyone who's even interested. You recently took part in our teams training event. So having you there and understanding what lies ahead of folks who are looking to be where you are. That was great. So until next time when we'll have a chance just to have you talk a little bit about your transition.

00:07:21 Anthony Beasley

From your prior high end billing system to perfect law, we thank you for the time that you've given us today. Thank you.