Law firms are understandably cautious about revisiting technology decisions they’ve already made. But there’s a risk in assuming the reasons behind those decisions still hold true.
For many firms, perceptions of SharePoint were formed when it consisted of clunky intranets and basic document libraries – and a purpose-built DMS was the obvious choice for sophisticated legal document management.
Microsoft 365 today is a very different proposition.
Content management, collaboration, search, security, governance, automation and AI now sit within an increasingly connected Microsoft ecosystem – alongside the tools lawyers rely on every day, from Outlook and Word to Teams and Copilot.
That creates a strategic opportunity that didn’t exist in quite the same way when many firms made their original DMS decisions: to put legal content on a platform designed to support much more than document management alone.
For firms thinking about the future of their content and knowledge strategy, this changes the question. Rather than asking whether SharePoint can replace a traditional DMS, they should be asking how the wider Microsoft ecosystem could improve on the traditional DMS experience.
More than a connected working experience
At first glance, the obvious answer is a more connected working experience. With Microsoft 365 already central to the working day, building the legal DMS on SharePoint creates an opportunity to bring matter content and the tools lawyers use closer together.
But integration between document management systems and Microsoft applications isn’t new. Established legal solutions already work closely with tools like Word and Outlook.
The more significant opportunity comes from the platform underneath that experience.
With a traditional DMS, legal content typically lives on a separate platform that integrates with Microsoft 365. With a SharePoint-based DMS, the content itself becomes part of the Microsoft 365 environment, allowing firms to take greater advantage of its native capabilities.
That opens the door to:
- Better governance: Matter content can form part of the same security and information governance strategy as the wider Microsoft estate, making it easier to apply consistent controls throughout the information lifecycle.
- Increased automation: With legal content on the platform itself, firms have more opportunities to automate processes around how information is created, managed and retained.
- Stronger knowledge capabilities: Useful matter content can be identified, surfaced and reused across matters and practice areas, bringing knowledge management closer to the work from which that knowledge originates.
- Greater AI potential: Copilot and other AI experiences can find, summarise and connect information held within the Microsoft ecosystem, giving firms new ways to put their accumulated legal knowledge to work.
Reconsidering the platform decision
None of this means every firm with a traditional DMS should rush to replace it.
It does mean that platform decisions deserve to be made on what Microsoft 365 can offer today, rather than assumptions formed when SharePoint played a much narrower role. For firms reviewing their content and knowledge strategy, Microsoft 365 now represents a compelling option.
There is, of course, one important caveat: SharePoint on its own isn’t a legal DMS. In our next article, we’ll explore how to bridge that gap and build the specialist legal experience firms need on top of the Microsoft 365 foundation.
Explore more topics in our legal DMS series:
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