Mergers and acquisitions of law firms have become one of the main drivers of change and growth in the legal industry.

The successful completion of a law firm merger ­­presents many challenges for both parties. Managing the overwhelming task of the merger itself is enough of a challenge, but newly combined firms also must find ways to bring together two or more cultures in a time- and cost-efficient manner.

Firms must maintain client relationships and collaborative cultures in order to best leverage the collective expertise and productivity post merger. This can all be done without interruption with proper planning to implement forward-looking technology in innovative ways.

When faced with the inevitable challenges of a merger or acquisition, firms must make decisions on how to allow their attorneys to efficiently and securely work together on legal matters that require immediate attention. This can be especially difficult if each firm owns a unique collaboration platform and/or document management system (DMS).

Turning to technology is the best solution to make the transition seamless.

Firms must identify the best technology to provide common ground and immediate solutions, but it must also have the versatility to handle and functionally support future growth. All of this work can be done well before a merger or acquisition becomes a possibility.

Firms should analyze the current state of technology to see if the systems in place could support complicated transitions. From there, they should identify needs and work to implement scalable and versatile tech tools that are ready to facilitate any potentially significant changes to the business model.

In many cases, the solution required must be capable of syncing documents and metadata in a secure manner that is compatible with the preferred collaboration platform. This challenge involves compliance with Information Governance initiatives, maintaining ethical walls, ensuring accurate audit reporting and allowing all attorneys to easily collaborate and communicate on matters. In addition, the firms must have administrative control over access and permissions for their internal teams and external partners.

For firms researching integrated collaboration solution tools, here are a few functionalities to consider that could be beneficial if and when a merger takes place.

Collaboration

Giving attorneys the ability to effectively communicate and collaborate on legal matters is essential. That includes work in the same office or between offices located across the country or across the globe.

Many mergers include the need for attorneys to bring in, for a short time, attorneys from new office locations or those working remotely. Project and document management must be unified and simple, keeping teams organized and productive.

The ability to collaborate also stretches to include clients, who can benefit from secure client portals to maintain access and transparency for effective project management.

Document Management and Migration

Having the ability to locate and pull documents or data from the document management systems (DMS) of both firms is important for any seamless merger. There is a need to quickly migrate and merge all documents from the firms to maintain access with interruption but also to make sure the merged data is compiled in a useful format. 

Using a robust content migration product can help reduce the cost, complexity and risk of migrating systems. The proper tool will enable you to configure a migration to suit a merger's precise needs and seamlessly transition content—up to and including synchronization of content between systems during the migration.

Administrative Control

Remote access for attorneys and clients makes collaborative documents easy to share while maintaining transparency with legal matters.

With this comes the need for administrative control over access and permissions among internal groups and external partners. When handling and sharing sensitive documents, clients expect that they are secure. The IT department needs the administrative ability to control who has access to particular documents and what can be done with those documents once access is granted. All of these concerns should be met through the platform used for collaboration and DMS during and after a merger.

Security

For firms and their clients, maintaining security remains the overall top priority. Tech platforms must give the ability to securely connect and manage data across all repositories—on-premise, cloud and hybrid. In some cases, clients will require that firms do not use cloud-based systems to store their documents. For such instances, firms might require the ability to host a securely managed application.

All regulatory requirements for data and information should be considered ahead of a merger, especially when using cloud-based solutions. The collaboration system adopted should be able to verify the location of all data and documents and have backup systems in place that ensure there is no need for information to be moved across jurisdictions—a potentially expensive and complicated incident for a firm to mitigate.

Conclusion

Identifying needs and deploying tech that can handle current requirements before a merger takes place will help ease the process. When looking for the right tools, always maintain a forward-looking approach and consider the future when identifying a system that can work closely with industry partners, including other law firms, and can help successfully navigate future operational challenges.

Most importantly, identify the specific needs and then find tools that can be customized and adapted to address essential needs. This includes identifying technology providers with useful industry partnerships that can help manage all aspects of mergers, acquisitions or other major changes to a firm's operations.

Don Fuchs is Vice President of Sales North America at HighQ.