The business need
- Reduce the strain on the IT Department’s time and resources
- Empower lawyers and legal secretaries to create PDF binders for their clients – unassisted
- Help staff meet deadlines by giving them tools to create PDF binders whenever they need them – even if it’s outside of regular hours
- Help staff become more self-sufficient and work productively
About Simpson Grierson
Simpson Grierson is one of New Zealand’s leading full-service commercial law firms. It has over 330 staff members located across three offices in Auckland, Wellington, and Christchurch. The firm is the country’s only member of Lex Mundi, the world’s leading association of independent law firms. Simpson Grierson champions inclusivity and became the first New Zealand organization to be awarded the Rainbow Tick in 2014. It was awarded the Supreme Award at the White Camellia Awards in 2017, a program recognizing businesses promoting gender equality through the UN Women’s Empowerment Principles.
The impact of PDF bundling on IT Department resources
PDF binders are a key part of the client experience at Simpson Grierson. They represent the final piece of the puzzle when it comes to deals, transactions, and litigation. Yet generating these electronic document bundles was placing a massive time constraint on the firm’s IT Department, according to Information Services Director Valerie Fogg. “The IT Service Desk was responsible for compiling these PDF binders since our lawyers and legal secretaries didn’t have the tools to do the work themselves,” explained Valerie.
This disproportionate reliance on a small department with limited resources meant the work of creating PDF binders wasn’t as efficient as it could be. “The firm needed to deliver an exceptional client experience and manage the use of billable hours to stay competitive,” said Valerie. “This means allowing staff to work outside of regular hours if that is needed to get the job done. But without a PDF bundling tool, this wasn’t possible.”
Giving lawyers tools to make PDF binder creation more efficient
Simpson Grierson empowered their lawyers and secretaries to rely less on the IT Department for PDF binder creation by rolling out a solution for automated, electronic PDF bundling. “Now, staff can create PDF binders or bundle multiple case files whenever they are required and without delay, ” explained Valerie. “If staff are working late, they won’t need to rely on someone to create PDF binders for their clients. They’ve become more self-sufficient, and that helps them to work productively.”
The application the firm chose was pdfDocs binder for PDF file editing and bundling. pdfDocs binder can cut the time spent on electronic binder creation by up to 75% in some cases. It can boost efficiency because of the way it automates the process of converting and assembling hundreds of files into a PDF binder that can be distributed quickly, easily, and securely. Valerie notes that the firm uses other features of pdfDocs binder to work smarter and faster. “pdfDocs binder supports other workflows at the firm including redaction, freehand markup, file splitting, Bates Numbering, forms, and OCR’ing of image-based files.”
Valerie observed that user adoption at the firm for pdfDocs binder was unusually high. “People are finding how versatile pdfDocs binder can be for a wide range of uses, and it is helping them become less dependent on the IT Service Desk.”
Summary
PDF binders are a key deliverable for lawyers at Simpson Grierson, but their creation was placing undue strain on the IT Service Desk. To help staff become less dependent on its IT department, the firm deployed an automated electronic PDF bundling application. Now, lawyers and legal secretaries are able to produce their own PDF binders without assistance and are spending less billable hours on slow manual PDF bundling.