SharePoint applications in four law departments: blog, directory, invoices and dashboards

One of the speakers at the SuperConference mentioned that his seven-lawyer department uses SharePoint as an internal blog. Inside lawyers and others can collaborate with that tool. Also at the SuperConference, a speaker from Hewlett-Packard’s law department mentioned that they have created a SharePoint application where, among many things, they share photos of the legal team members.

A law department I have assisted can have its law firms upload PDF files of their invoices whereupon SharePoint automatically forwards them to the correct lawyer for review as well as to the administrator. The matter number in the Subject line of the email invokes the forwarding rules. The department also uses SharePoint to list engagement letters and rates.

Hartford Financial also makes full use of SharePoint in its legal department. According to a recent article, “In conjunction with the teams’ custom-made intranet, SharePoint gives each law group a dashboard to manage calendaring and key information such as forms, boilerplate documents, and research materials. It was expanded in 2010 to include board materials and calendaring, and broker-dealer compliance functions.”