In today’s digital age, technology plays a crucial role in the success of any business. Especially for law firms, technology can help streamline processes, improve productivity and enhance client satisfaction. Microsoft 365, formerly known as Office 365, is a well known, well used, cloud based and locally installed suite of tools that are used by businesses worldwide. As experts in Microsoft 365, particularly when used in law firms, we understand the importance of maximising the suite’s features. Here are some tips to ensure your law firm is getting the most out of your investment:

Use Microsoft Teams for efficient collaboration

Usage of Microsoft Teams since 2020 has exploded. If you weren’t aware of it before 2020, we bet you are now! Microsoft Teams is a collaboration platform that allows teams to work together on projects, share files, and communicate in real-time, both in house and externally. This can be particularly helpful for law firms as it ensures that everyone is on the same page and it eliminates the need for lengthy email chains. For our team, we love the informal nature of the chat, especially when working in a hybrid environment. 

Maximise the power of Microsoft SharePoint

SharePoint is another powerful tool that can help law firms manage their documents more efficiently. By using SharePoint, you can create a centralised repository for all your documents and make them easily accessible to everyone in your firm. You can also set permissions to ensure that only authorised users can access certain documents. We use SharePoint to power our Snippets Clause Library which allows firms to quickly insert firm vetted clauses and templates into Word, Outlook etc. Read more here.  

Deliver professional documents with Word & Outlook

Uniformity can be a challenge in firms of all sizes, with everyone having varying degrees of experience in document editing. Ensuring you maximise the editing and style capabilities that Word & Outlook provide is crucial to delivering professional looking documents. Need help with this? We offer a Style Suite solution. You can read more here.

Security

Microsoft 365 also offers compliance and security features that are especially important for law firms. These features include multi factor authentication, data loss prevention and encryption. With these features in place, law firms can have peace of mind knowing that their sensitive client data is protected.

Overall, Microsoft 365 offers law firms a range of tools that can help them be more productive, efficient, and secure. By leveraging these tools, law firms can provide their clients with the best possible experience. With its real-time collaboration and powerful security features, it’s clear why so many law firms prefer Microsoft 365 over other suites.

At Mosmar, we have been helping businesses for over 15 years optimise their processes to gain efficiency and better serve their clients. It is no secret we are big Microsoft fans! If you want to know how we can work together and help you maximise your software, please get in touch here. We would love to hear from you.

To head to the Microsoft website for more info, click here.

In today’s world, workers are spending an average of 520 hours per year on tasks that could easily be automated. Automation is evolving at a rapid rate all over the world and the legal industry can’t afford to be left behind. Microsoft has been a household name since the 90’s and have been innovating ever since. At Mosmar, we LOVE Microsoft.

What is SharePoint?

If you are unfamiliar with Microsoft’s SharePoint, it is software allowing sharing of information, which is stored centrally and easily accessible with its powerful search function. It is used by over 100 million people worldwide.

What is the Snippets Clause Library

Mosmar’s Snippets clause library is a smart tool that uses SharePoint to save law firms time and money. After years in legal firms, it is no secret that a lot of the admin work is repetitive, however crucial to get right. We developed our tool to enable firms to be able to use their existing software (Outlook & Word) to quickly add snippets of firm vetted information (clauses, templated, graphs etc) into documents. So simple yet so effective!

How does it work?

These snippets can be inserted into documents by drag and drop or by directly coding them in. The content brought into the document will adopt the styling, formatting and numbering of the document. This eliminates the need for manual fix ups. The content is stored in SharePoint 365 and utilises SharePoint’s fast and efficient indexing services to always return accurate search results. Search by clause code, clause name, comments or full text data to quickly find the required content.

Is it secure?

SharePoint’s security model allows easy control over who can maintain and contribute to content. Global libraries are used to provide firm level, vetted and accurate business clauses. 

The best part? It’s so easy to implement and use! Our customers see quick gains and it’s a cost effective solution for firms of all sizes. Want to see it in action? Book a FREE 20 min demo here. For more information or to find out how SharePoint could work for your firm, contact us here.

We get a lot of queries about Office 365, and about whether a law firm can use the online version instead of the local applications.

It’s an interesting question, and a very interesting answer.

The first thing to be aware of is the online version of Word is very limited in what it can do. So as long as your needs for editing are basic, then the answer is “possibly”.

A deal breaker for legal is often the fact that the online version has limited support for track changes. If you have a document with track changes turned on already, then yes you can edit it online and your changes will be tracked – but the kicker is you won’t see the tracked changes online. You need to open the document on the desktop version to see your tracked changes. Also, there is no way to turn track changes on or off with the online version, so you need to do that in the desktop version of Word first.

Another commonly used feature in legal documents are cross references. Well you can forget about them in the online version.

We also won’t mention that you can’t insert or update a table of contents, you can’t add or edit styles, or you can’t add shapes, textboxes or WordArt.

There is also only limited support for content controls. The online version only supports rich text content controls – so you can forget about things like date controls and dropdowns.

Law firms tend to have a lot of addins and customisations, most of which are also not supported in the online version.  So forget about all those macros and ribbon customisations your firm uses on a daily basis  – they won’t be available. Most commercial addins are either COM or VSTO addins – which do not work online as they rely heavily on the operating system and the .Net framework so will not be happy in the confines of a browser.

Speaking of addins, that usually includes your document management system. You’ll find most will require the desktop version of Word.

The online version of the Office apps have a long way to go to even get close to the desktop versions. They may be a handy tool to get you across the line with a few basic edits especially when you’re stuck with only your phone, iPad or browser. But I don’t think you’ll be doing any of the real heavy lifting online any time soon.

Hopefully that answers the question for now.

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