The quarterly publication of the International Legal Technology Association
Issue link: https://epubs.iltanet.org/i/448505
PEER TO PEER: THE QUARTERLY MAGA ZINE OF ILTA CONVERTING OUR DOCUMENTS Documents in our old DMS were methodically converted into the new structure by mapping between document type and folder level. We began with well-structured data, so we had a good base to start from. Files remained 100 percent full-text searchable, and now included PDFs. We were moving from a distributed network design to a centralized one; as each office came online, we would need to convert their data over the wire. Our biggest obstacle in document conversion was the amount of data — how to transfer it, convert it and get it into the system over a weekend. We moved a copy of the data to the home office and performed incremental updates to ensure the copy was complete when the conversion was done. We performed the conversion from the local copy to speed up the process. We started our upgrade/conversion in one of our smaller regional offices in order to gauge how long our larger offices would realistically take. CONVERTING OUR EMAIL The email conversion was more challenging. We had massive mailboxes, and their structures ranged from well-organized to sorted by month for umpteen years. This was the case even though our users had been on a rolling purge of Inbox, Deleted and Sent mail. We notified each office three months prior to its upgrade/conversion date that users were required to organize email by client/matter. Compliance was high, and users put a priority on their email. All email messages were brought into the system regardless of whether they had been categorized or not. Any uncategorized email was placed into the users' personal folder to ensure non-case-related, confidential or personal data were not accessible to the entire firm. The email conversion was a very time-consuming process. The end-user organization of email continued with assistance from floor support staffing provided by our consultant for days after end-user training and the conversion. Heavy individualized attention was given to users during this process. This post-training support was important to achieving the high level of organization we have today. Our consultant's training and floor support 22 CASE STUDIES teams participated in many of our matter-centric planning meetings, so they were familiar with the design goals and could answer and deal with users' questions about the setup. THE ROLLOUT ORDER The upgrade process was spread out over a long period to enable in-house IT staff to perform the majority of the work. Offices were migrated sequentially, not simultaneously. This saved the firm money and allowed for a personal approach. We started with the smaller regional offices to determine actual timetables and resources necessary for the larger ones. One of the simplest but wisest decisions we made was the order in which the offices would be converted. After a month-long pilot group and final testing, we began the migration in a small remote office and did the rest in reverse order by size. This left the home office for last ... not the most popular decision, but the right one. REQUIRED TRAINING End-user training was approved and embraced by firm management. Again, this support was critical to the success of this upgrade. All attorneys and staff were required by management to attend training prior to receiving new equipment. We were able to get every employee and attorney in training during the upgrade — no exceptions. Our training ran seven days a week during the upgrade process to ensure we could accommodate everyone's schedules. Floor support and one-hour workshops were critical post-training. Workshop subject matter was both planned and ad hoc.