Esquire Innovations, Inc.
Burns & Levinson Find Ease and Efficiency with Esquire Innovations
Law Journal News Legal Tech Newsletter
As part of the network upgrade, it was very clear that Burns & Levinson needed a macro/template package to assist in both creating a consistent branding and in creating stable, functional documents.
Burns & Levinson LLP, with over 120 attorneys in four offices throughout New England, is a full-service Boston-based law firm. The firm has grown steadily and strategically throughout the years and has become a premier law firm with regional, national and international clientele.
BACKGROUND
With expertise in business/corporate, real estate, business litigation, intellectual property and private client legal services, Burns & Levinson represents dynamic, growth-oriented businesses, privately and publicly held companies, universities, institutions and individuals.
Our clients are in various industries from traditional New England manufacturing and service businesses, high-technology and life sciences companies and emerging companies to scientists and entrepreneurs as well as Canadian, Chinese and Israeli-based companies.
After several years using a very vanilla version of Office 97, we decided that we needed to do a complete network upgrade. As a large firm with multiple users, we were continually struggling with document stability and consistency of look with the documents we created.
Our marketing department created guidelines for our staff to try and maintain a consistency with our documents, but we had no way of effectively making them easy for people to follow. Staff members were using the “Save As” function from old documents to make things easier but eventually, documents were becoming corrupt as users passed along corruption from one document to another. In addition, we did not use any styles when creating documents and time management became an issue.
As part of the network upgrade, it was very clear that we needed a macro/template package to assist us in both creating a consistent branding and in creating stable, functional documents. The network upgrade also included moving from a Novell/Groupwise environment to a Windows/Outlook one and upgrading all of our desktop machines.
Undertaking such a large upgrade we knew we were going to be bombarding the users with so many new applications that we wanted to make the transition as easy and as similar to Word (a core application) as possible - to retain as much “comfort” as we could.
FINDING THE BEST FIT
After gathering a list of possible products/vendors, including Esquire Innovations, Legal MacPac, Softwise/Innova and DeltaView, we went through an extensive period of demos and testing. We had each vendor show us their product and selected several to run in our test environment if at all possible. We also conducted in-depth conversion with other legal IT professionals to get their candid views on the products.
While there are many products out there, we found that Esquire Innovations’ iCreate and iRedline products were the best fit for our firm. The two products blend seamlessly with Microsoft Word, a fact that is appreciated by our users who are extremely comfortable with Word. iCreate and iRedline utilize Enhanced Native Architecture ™ (ENA), a term coined by Esquire. ENA is the methodology for retaining the look and feel of Microsoft Word to promote streamlined workflow and reduce end-user training requirements. In addition, by retaining Word’s native capabilities, an electronic document can be used for collaboration purposes more effectively.
IMPLEMENTATION
We set up a timeline for the entire upgrade and representatives with Esquire came out to our headquarters in Boston to help us customize our templates and toolbars, as well as train our IT department on how to maintain the system going forward. The products were installed on every computer and each user participated in an initial training session. The roll out of iCreate and iRedline went seamlessly. The tie in to native Word made the learning curve for the end users just as easy as it was for the IT department. Most of the administration of iCreate and iRedline is done by me or our trainer. The products have been fairly easy to customize to our needs and also to deploy any changes to the end users.
Since installing and implementing iCreate and iRedline, we have upgraded our version with only minimal calls to Esquire for support. The upgrade was a much less daunting experience for us due to the products ease of use and customer support from Esquire. Staff members have reacted extremely positively to iCreate and iRedline. This is definitely not something that happened overnight but as people see the time savings of creating and formatting a document right the first time, they have become advocates for it.
KEY BENEFITS & RESULTS
iCreate
iCreate offers enormous capabilities for quickly creating, editing and standardizing legal documents, a problem that had been plaguing our law firm for many years. The product enabled us to stop users from using the “Save As” function for documents, especially primary documents like letters, memos and faxes. As a result we have had a large decline in the number of corrupted documents. iCreate’s “answer screen” has allowed our users to input information, tie into “Contacts,” and maintain a certain degree of flexibility in terms of writing style all the while keeping a firm grip on marketing standards. The templates also allow us to embed firm styles and numbering into documents while still enabling users to change them as necessary. It has taken any fear over the use of styles out of the equation.
iRedline
With a similar interface to iCreate, iRedline has allowed us to effectively track documents internally and still clearly communicate with anyone externally using Word. For a small cost iRedline gives us the tools we need to be more efficient using Word’s “Track Changes” and “Compare Documents” features. iRedline has the look and feel of Microsoft Word, which was something that we touted to our users. Built using Enhanced Native Architecture iRedline brings hard to find features of “Track Changes” and “Compare Documents” to the forefront, provides shortcuts to frequently used features, fixes broken features and provides important features missing from native Word.
ABOUT iCREATE
iCreate encourages more efficient, standardized document production by providing ways to easily create automated templates for end users. iCreate also provides tools to quickly apply and make changes to styles, numbering and other MS Word formatting elements. Users have traditionally struggled with formatting MS Word documents, yet firms that implement iCreate find they can significantly reduce time spent drafting, formatting and re-purposing documents. iCreate leverages MS Word’s native architecture. The benefit of this is twofold. First, by retaining the look and feel of the native parent software dialog boxes, it promotes streamlined workflow, efficient usage and reduces end user training requirements. Second, by retaining Word’s native formatting, an electronic document can effectively be used for collaboration purposes, without concern that the formatting will be rendered completely useless. Traditionally in this scenario, added valuable time has been required to "fix" a document upon its return trip to the firm, thus negatively impacting overhead costs and efficiency.
ABOUT iREDLINE
iRedline enhances MS Word’s Document Comparison feature by providing the additional tools and flexibility crucial for attorneys and law firms such as DMS integration, the ability to work with Deltaview changes as tracked changes, adding reporting features and condition documents before comparison ensuring more accurate results. While we are very happy with our current products, we do plan to review any and all new products that come onto the market and evaluate them as to whether they can improve our environment. In the near future I expect that we will continue to use Esquire’s products and re-evaluate the needs for upgrades as time goes on.
Dowd is the Applications Manager for Burns & Levinson LLP.
