Document Security for Legal Technology: Flexibility and Confidentiality Without Compromise

Law firms, and legal departments of businesses and government organizations stress over one or more stages of the document lifecycle. Most law firms use a combination of a document management repositories, various matter management software, and cloud-based or local file-shares solutions. However, accessing client files can be challenging without an enterprise document viewer.

By implementing a document lifecycle that works for your company and enterprise document viewer, much of the stress can be alleviated. Let’s dive deeper into the document lifecycle for the legal sector and how the right enterprise document viewer plays a critical role in it.

Document Create, Capture, and Organize

As case files grow, more documents are added to the workload. Once a document is created, it must be converted into searchable PDFs. Often times, it’s easier to create a searchable PDF with all the case information and metadata in one collective document. However, merging different file types together can be a hassle, such as a faxed TIFF and a PDF. With the proper enterprise document viewer, multi-file case documents can easily be supported allowing you to profile document within the case with metadata such as case number, date, keywords, and etc. to enhance the file’s discoverability.

Also with the right document viewer, paralegals and attorneys are able to:

• Redact a document for sensitive phrases, sentences, or words using powerful AI search
• Highlight areas of concern
• Watermark the file to impede unauthorized document distribution or copying
• Use digital rights management controls to restrict who can print, download, copy, or share a document

Once the document is filed in the repository or file-share system, that content will either follow the workflow rules setup in the ECM system or remain there securely until it is needed again.

Review and Collaborate

Many law firms and legal professionals within government organizations have restrictions on the file viewing applications that can be installed on computers and mobile devices. This protects corporate devices, facilitates file access, and enhances security. With the right enterprise document viewer integrated in your application, you can redact any further sensitive content within the document which should be restricted to protect the client, firm, or organization which wasn’t completed in the first stage.

In some cases, you can even highlight, annotate, and comment on the document as it is going through revisions. Plus, you can merge multiple file types into a single file for eDiscovery or litigation readiness. Instead of multiple file types in a folder, all requiring their own viewing and editing application like Word, e-mails, or PDF attachments, integrating the proper enterprise document viewer into your legal application can provide access to an entire case file.

Workflow and Approval

Documents often go through multiple internal and external reviews before being approved. Many document revisions maybe made during this review process and reviewing the changes between them is critical and essential. Human error can cause minute changes to be missed, causing unforeseen issues in the future, especially during contract disputes. The right document viewer can compare the changes between versions and highlight the differences so humans do not miss any unapproved changes in the document.

Along with viewing documents, annotations, redactions, comments, and signatures are essential to the workflow state of the document lifecycle. Other users can review and update the comments and annotated areas of the documents as appropriate. These modifications should not alter the underling document unless necessary for case evidence, which the document viewer should merge them to the document.

Publish and Share

Once a document is finalized or a court case is completed, law firms or legal departments often need to make them accessible depending on the situation. Other times, it may be a private entity who needs access through an internal system or ECM. These files often need to be accessible through various devices including desktops/laptops, smartphones, and tablets. With the proper enterprise document viewer, documents do not need to be modified or converted in order to display them on these various devices, and should be able to display them as intended to the user.

Additionally, the document viewer should be able to protect sensitive data from users that do not have the correct permission levels by using real-time redactions to prevent certain users from seeing these types of data. Also, if the document is to be distributed to outside parties, the redactions should be burned to the document to prevent the sensitive data falling into the wrong hands.

Integrating eViewer v7 Into Legal Tech

MS Technology’s eViewer easily integrates into your Legal Tech software and workflow solutions to provide your team with robust document viewing, collaboration, and security features. eViewer is built using the latest HTML5 and Angular technologies to provide organizations with the greatest flexibility and security available for document viewer across all devices including mobile. eViewer enables your users to:

• View any document stored in your system regardless of format.
• Annotate, redact, comment, and watermark on any document.
• Compare versions of documents and find all the changes between them so they are not missed during the finalization process.
• Convert documents to PDF for publishing and easy distribution.
• Follow user permissions to ensure documents are protected at all times.
• …and more

Are you a partner in a law firm, corporate counsel, or legal technology executive looking to embed document security and lifecycle management capabilities into your application stack? Check out the eViewer website for a more in-depth review of the latest HTML5 viewer as well as a live demo to try it for yourself. If you’re ready to get started with an evaluation, you can contact us now to discuss testing the eViewer in your environment.