How a major employment law firm solved document processing and sharing challenges

At the Bell Law Group, lawyers and staff use a single platform to seamlessly convert and collaborate wherever they work with Xerox^® Workflow Central.

The Bell Law Group is a legal firm that provides vigorous representation in personal injury matters and in employment law for employees, federal employees, and employers. Serving clients nationwide, the firm has offices in five different cities: Washington, New York, Syosset, Garden City, and Miami.

The Challenge

Five office locations with different IT networks made sharing data difficult

A high-profile employment and personal injury law firm, the Bell Law Group has expanded through growth and acquisitions over its twenty-year history to have offices in five different cities across the U.S. Its lawyers often move from one office to another, depending on client requirements, and need to share and process documents between offices on a daily basis.

However, the fact that each location had a separate IT network and disparate software solutions made document access, sharing, and processing a struggle. Lawyers might use software capabilities at one location, for example, to convert, redact, or translate documents only to find they were not available or were totally different at another location. Such gaps could inspire staff to use unauthorised tools to accomplish those processes, costing time and resources and leaving the group open to possible security risks.

The firm needed a way to allow its attorneys and staff to easily access documents across all offices with a single, simple environment. It also needed a solution that would let its staff access the same document processing tools wherever they were working.

And In light of the fast-paced demands on its firm, the group was seeking a simple solution that would not require substantial user training and would work with the infrastructure it already in had in place.

A longtime customer of Xerox, the Bell Law Group sought help from Xerox Business Solutions (XBS) in finding a solution.

The Solution

A flexible workflow platform

XBS recommended Bell Law Group consider Xerox^® Workflow Central as a reliable and flexible platform that would work with its cloud repository already in place and provide 24/7 data access across all locations.

Considering the time demands on the group, Xerox suggested it conduct a trial of the platform before deciding to adopt it firm-wide. That way, the firm could try out the platform capabilities at its own pace.

Over a three-month trial, the Bell Law Group not only found Workflow Central could resolve its collaboration challenges, but also discovered added capabilities it offered could address its document processing needs, including document conversion, translation, redaction, and a feature that converts hand-written notes into editable documents.

The Results

Lawyers can easy access and process documents fast across all locations

The firm’s lawyers are now able to access, share, and process documents faster and easier via the Xerox^® Workflow Central Platform.

Since the platform works with Bell’s cloud repository, team members can share documents and collaborate securely in real time—a crucial factor in meeting the demands of time-sensitive legal processes such due diligence in mergers and acquisitions, for example.

Bell’s associates can seamlessly and securely access consistent tools wherever they work to convert files into usable, actionable formats, including quickly translating, redacting, and creating audio files from documents. Key features that have proven to be particularly useful to lawyers day-to-day include the ability to convert handwritten notes into editable format and an option that lets them summarise notes.

Overall, the newly unified collaboration environment is helping the group optimise its clients-first policy.

The firm is currently testing additional Xerox solutions to further improve the workflow of its associates and enhance client service.