If your firm is still producing pdf bundles of documents to share electronically with barristers and other parties involved in the matter (or worse still, manually compiling paper folders), then we have good news for you – you do not need to do this anymore!
Over the last two years, there has been a quiet revolution in the way law firms are briefing and collaborating with barristers and other parties across the life of a matter.
In this time, more than 700 law firms and many barristers chambers (including 80% of the Victorian bar and 10/13 lists) have embraced Australian-developed electronic briefing platform, eBrief Ready as their preferred way to share, review and reference documents relating to a matter. The platform has gone from 2,000 to 20,000 users.
Here is why you should embrace the next generation of electronic briefing:
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Significantly reduce the time and effort it takes to securely share briefs
With e-Brief Ready, relevant material for each matter (including documents, images, video footage, audio files, email, etc) is uploaded to the eBrief Ready platform using a simple drop and drag function or the new eBrief Ready/FilePro integration.
All material is automatically converted to PDF and stored in its native format. It is easy to organise documents into folders and subfolders. You can customise your own folder structure and set your preferred structure as a default for all matters.
You can easily download documents from the brief as PDFs or in their native format. This is particularly useful for Word, Excel and email evidence, where the metadata may also be important. This is impossible to do in a PDF bundle as the native format is lost.
PDF and native format files can also be downloaded from the platform – unless the document has been marked as restricted, in which case it cannot be copied, printed or downloaded.
Only those invited to the matter are granted access to the material. Two-factor authentication (2FA) provides added access security. The activity log keeps track of who is accessing which documents, providing an audit trail for the matter owner if needed.
If you are already using eBrief Ready platform, we have great news for you! A new seamless integration between eBrief Ready and FilePro is now available. Documents can now be easily extracted from FilePro and uploaded directly into eBrief Ready with just a few clicks. >> Learn more
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Speed up the briefing process and receive preliminary advice earlier
Many firms currently wait until they have all relevant documents available and have produced an explanatory memo for the barrister explaining the documents, before sharing the documents with their barrister.
Today’s best practice requires a change to this mindset.
With eBrief Ready, you can upload primary documents as soon as they are available and share with the barrister – so the barrister can get up to speedy quickly and provide preliminary advice as appropriate.
As new documents become available, you simply upload them to eBrief Ready to share them in an organised, secure manner. All parties invited to the matter are notified as soon as new documents are added to the matter, saving the need for email correspondence advising of new material.
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Enable better collaboration with all parties involved in the matter, across the life of the matter
eBrief Ready becomes the single source of documents relating to the matter.
The material can be readily accessed by all parties to the matter, 24 hours per day, 7 days per week on PC, Mac or any mobile device, without any local software being required. The platform works with every browser.
E-Brief Ready includes powerful search and annotation capability, making it easy for barristers and other parties like expert witnesses to review the material, identify key evidence and develop a chronology of events.
When you are ready to share the material with the Court, you simply select the relevant documents and create a moderated matter to share with the courts, arbitrators and mediators.
A moderated matter does not allow any annotations to show, eliminating the risk of sharing any annotations you have made on these documents accidentally. It also includes the ability to restrict documents, so they can only be copied, printed or downloaded by the owner of the matter, not any other party.
Courts then use eBrief Ready as a platform for all parties to share and quickly reference documents relating to a matter, which speeds up the running of a trial.
If the Court still requires a pdf bundle of documents, you can create this better and faster with eBrief Ready.
In fact, Landers and Rogers found that using eBrief Ready was 10 x faster than their previous method of producing electronic bundles. Imagine how much happier and more productive your paralegals and legal assistants will be!
Want to try out the next generation of electronic briefing?
Simply sign-up here for a free trial.