“After removing and managing the metadata in my document I want to automatically place it back into the DMS (Document Management System)”

This statement came from a peer and sparked a full-on metadata policy discussion within Esquire Innovations.

My question…why?

It’s really been Esquire Innovations philosophy to purposely stay away from doing that. I see two types of documents in a law firm – “organic” documents and “inorganic” documents. You want to have the organic document in your DMS, and then send out published copies of that document (inorganic) for outside consumption (based on the firm’s enterprise metadata policy).

If a firm starts putting multiple versions of a document (based solely on the metadata managed within it) on the DMS, where does that stop? You would have 10, 20, 30 clean versions of the same document there. For what purpose? Wouldn’t there be concerns about outside requests for clean documents, as well as original documents, and having to answer questions about why there is metadata in this version, and not in that version, and how about these other 20 versions?

Just something to think about.

A law firm needs a firm-wide metadata policy and the software you choose should enforce it. iScrub certainly can.

Here’s a great white paper from Judye Carter Reynolds that talks-just-about this very thing – Managing Your Metadata

I love iCreate, not just because from the inception I have so much personally invested, but also because it is simply so powerful…and very cool. iCreate is the stalwart in our iOffice System software suite for MS Office 2003 and 2007. iCreate is a template and document production application that’s geared-up for legal.

We recently won a big iCreate deal. From a business standpoint I love big deal wins (…and yes I hate deal losses too.) This win is a big deal for me because it was a head to head evaluation (with our competitors) with a law firm back east. What’s great about this… is that we beat out two competitors… strong competitors…once again.

Here’s a quote from the new client:

“I love the function that allows you to take a document with manual numbering and covert it. I did this on someone’s document, and it worked well”.

They’re talking about one small aspect of iCreate and there’s so much more. Trust me, with iCreate you could easily replace several applications on your desktop you’re using for document clean-up, templates, and macros.

When and how does iCreate get implemented as part of a firm’s work product workflow?

1. When the firm truly looks at the all the Template and Document production application alternatives objectively. If you’re using a so called “objective consultant” or “objective consulting firm” be careful because they may make more implementation money off more complicated and costly products. High Cost and complexity is not better. It’s crazy what some of these products require – especially at the server level.
2. When the firm takes out “who you know”… the relationships involved. This is hard.
3. Let your users use it in a 30 day pilot.
4. I coined and trade marked a term called ENA (Enhanced Native Architecture). ENA promotes the best use of Microsoft Office by building upon the user interface and features of the existing parent software application whenever possible. ENA keeps custom applications consistent with parent software native functionality. All documents are “round-trip-able”. The cost of ownership is much lower in the long run.

With this win, 1-3 above were assured and then ENA and functionality was the kicker for this client. This is fun!

This means that the new Office 2007 file format we’re all freaking out about has now been approved as an international standard Tuesday (3/25/08), a step Microsoft says its proof it is willing to make once-proprietary technology work openly with competing programs. Good riddance – the old binary format was a mess. Of course you can still use the old format… and I still see some important uses for it… but that’s another blog.

What does this mean for my company Esquire Innovations, Inc? Well for one, I can take a deep breath and relax. I was betting our future on this standard. For instance, with the next version iScrub v5.1 we’re taking advantage of this format to manage metadata outside of Word. Templates for iCreate can be pure XML and much more easily managed and we’re using XSLT big time. Even for iRedline with OpenXML the speed and features significantly improve and enrich. OpenXML is a wonder thing.