Developing internal tools to manage the legal process is not an uncommon practice for large technology companies. Likewise, when the developmental resources of that company are applied successfully, it's not uncommon for the home-grown solution to be made available to the wider legal community. Such is the case with Microsoft's Matter Center, which the company has announced it will being offering to law firms and legal teams intent on better collaboration within the Office 365 environment.

The genesis of Matter Center has been two years in the making, and it started with a concept pitched by the company's Legal and Corporate Affairs Group. The idea was to develop a plug-in that would connect the Microsoft Office tools that lawyers rely on, tying them together in a way that facilitated collaboration and workflow.

According to Microsoft, once installed, Matter Center turns Outlook into a more powerful tool for creating and managing tasks tied to legal processes. Through the assets created in Outlook, users can tie Word, Excel, and OneNote files, as well as other supporting documentation for a case. Version control of those documents allows for real-time collaboration within a legal team, and search and visualization functionality provides assistance, identifying relevant information across all cases.