Table of Contents
Every legal DMS demo shows the same feature list: search, versions, email, security. The lists look alike, so firms choose on price or on the cleanest screen, and find out later that scanned PDFs don’t come up in search and the email side of the matter still sits in someone’s inbox.
The features that matter at a law firm are the ones a generic list skims past. Can every email land in the matter, can search read a scanned exhibit, and can you wall off one matter from the rest of the firm?
This guide takes the features of a legal document management system in turn: what each does, why it matters at a firm, and the question that tests it in a demo. It assumes you know what a legal DMS is and leaves product comparisons to our roundup of the best legal document management software.
Filing email to the matter feels like nothing when you start; over time it becomes the matter’s whole record, in one search.
What Core Features Does a Legal DMS Need?
A legal DMS needs seven core features: matter-centric organization; document profiling; search that covers documents, email and scans; version control; check-out; email filing from Outlook; and permissions down to the individual matter.
Firms evaluating a DMS insist on the same short list:
Each feature below covers what it is, why it matters at your firm, and the question that tests it.
Matter-Centric Organization by Client and Matter
Matter-centric organization files every document, email and note under the client and matter it belongs to. A matter can be a case, a transaction, a client project or any other body of work your firm tracks.
Search, permissions and sharing all work at the matter level. A new associate can open one matter and see its whole record without asking where things live.
Ask: Does every document and email have to belong to a matter, or can files still be saved loose in a shared folder?
Document Profiling with Firm-Wide Metadata Fields
Profiling tags each document with a few consistent fields, such as document type, status and date, so you can filter for it later. Fields set at the firm level keep everyone tagging the same way.
The number of fields decides whether profiling works. Too few and documents are hard to tell apart. Too many, or fields nobody understands, and staff guess, which a senior associate reviewing NetDocuments on Capterra described plainly: “Sometimes the tag labeling can be confusing and if something is mislabeled it can be hard to track the document down.”
A well-built system makes sure every document lands in a matter without stopping users with a questionnaire each time they save. For an immigration practice, a workable profile carries:
Ask: How many fields does a user have to fill in before a document saves, and can we choose our own?
Full-Text Search Across Documents, Email and Scans
Full-text search finds documents by the words inside them, and a legal DMS should search filed email in the same place. Good search also filters by client, matter, document type and status, so you can narrow a long result list to the one document you need.
Firms we talk to put search near the top of their list, usually after losing time hunting for a document they know exists. Search only reads text, so a scanned PDF that hasn’t been through legal document OCR won’t appear in results.
Ask: Will one search return documents and filed email together, and will it find words inside a scanned PDF?
Automatic Version Control on Every Save
Version control saves each version of a document as people edit it, so you can see what changed and go back to an earlier draft. In a well-built system that happens on every save, without anyone having to remember.
Versions matter most on documents that pass through several hands before signing: a settlement agreement, a lease, a brief. When a client asks what changed between the draft they approved and the one they signed, the version history answers it.
Ask: Are versions saved automatically, and can a user restore an older one without calling IT?
Check-Out and File Locking for One Editor at a Time
Check-out lets one person edit a document at a time. While it’s checked out or open, colleagues can read it but can’t save over it.
That’s a deliberate trade-off. Live co-editing suits early drafts where several people type at once, but on a document heading for signature or filing, one editor at a time means nobody’s changes disappear under someone else’s save.
Firms that want both often draft together in Microsoft 365, then file the final version in the DMS.
Ask: What happens when two people open the same document, and does the system offer check-out, live co-editing or both?
Outlook Email Filing to the Matter
From inside Outlook, email filing saves an email and its attachments into the matter, where everyone on the matter can find it. Without it, the matter record is split between the document store and individual inboxes.
Email is where clients give instructions, approve drafts and move deadlines. If that correspondence lives in one attorney’s Outlook folders, nobody else can search it, and it leaves the firm when that attorney does.
Ask: Can staff file an email to a matter without leaving Outlook, and are its attachments saved with it?
Permissions and Ethical Walls
Matter-level permissions control who can open each matter. Restricting a matter to named people and groups is how a firm builds an ethical wall around a conflicted team or a lateral hire.
A wall has to cover filed email as well as documents, and your firm needs a record of who could see the matter, which is where ethical walls meet document management security.
Ask: Can you restrict a matter to named users and groups, and who keeps access regardless, such as administrators?
Smaller features round out daily use:
They’re worth having, and they rarely decide which system you buy.
Which Advanced DMS Features Are Worth Paying For?
The advanced features worth paying for are the ones that shorten how long it takes to find and file work, or that answer the security and uptime questions clients and insurers ask. Each one adds cost or setup, so test it against a problem your firm already has.
AI Across Documents and Matters
Document AI answers questions about a document or a whole matter in plain language, with citations back to the source. It’s useful for summarizing a long file or finding the clause that mentions a specific deadline.
With any AI for legal documents, what the AI can see matters as much as what it can do. It should only read what each user is already allowed to open, and the vendor should say whether your firm’s data is ever used to train a model.
Ask: Does the AI respect matter permissions, and is our data used for training?
OCR on Scanned Documents
OCR (optical character recognition) converts a scanned PDF into searchable text. Without it, every scanned exhibit, signed agreement and faxed record is invisible to search.
Some systems run OCR automatically on upload. Others limit it to certain plans or sell it separately: OCR in SharePoint is a pay-as-you-go service billed through an Azure subscription.
Ask: Does OCR run automatically on every scan, and which plan includes it?
Integrations with Office and Practice Management
Integration with Microsoft Word, Excel and Outlook is the baseline: users should open, edit and save documents without leaving the apps they already use. After that, look at your practice management system, such as Clio, and document comparison tools such as Litera Compare.
Every integration list has gaps. A missing integration usually means exporting and re-uploading files by hand.
Ask: Which integrations are built in, and what’s the workaround for the tools we use that aren’t on the list?
Windows and Mac Support
Windows and Mac support means every feature, including the Office add-ins, works on both platforms. If your firm has even one Mac user, test the add-ins on that machine during the demo.
Ask: Does every feature work on Mac as well as Windows, and which browsers are supported?
Secure External Sharing
Secure sharing sends a document to a client or co-counsel through a link that expires, can be revoked and can carry a password. It replaces email attachments that sit in someone else’s inbox indefinitely.
Outbound sharing is a different job from a client portal, where clients upload files to you. Check which one you’re being shown, because a DMS that shares documents out won’t necessarily accept files back.
Ask: Can clients send files back through the share, or do we need a separate portal for uploads?
Audit Trail of Who Opened or Changed Each Document
An audit trail records who opened, edited, shared or deleted each document, and when. It’s the record you’ll need when a client security questionnaire, an insurer or an ethics inquiry asks who had access to a matter.
Ask: Can we see the full access history for a matter, and export it?
Security Baseline: Encryption, MFA and Backups
The security baseline for a legal DMS has three parts:
ABA Model Rule 1.6(c) requires lawyers to “make reasonable efforts to prevent the inadvertent or unauthorized disclosure of, or unauthorized access to, information relating to the representation of a client.”
These are the controls you’ll point to when a client or insurer asks your firm to show those reasonable efforts.
Ask: Is MFA enforced for every user, where are backups stored, and where is the data hosted?
Uptime, Failover and Offline Access
Uptime is how much of the time the system is available, and failover is what happens when part of it goes down. Every hour your firm can’t reach its files is billable time lost, and at worst a lost client.
The vendor’s contract and its outage history answer these questions.
Ask: What’s the published service-level agreement (SLA) and service credit, where’s the status-page history, how long did the last outage take to recover, and what can users still reach offline?
How Does LexWorkplace Handle These Features?
LexWorkplace is a matter-centric DMS that files documents and Outlook email to the matter, searches both (including OCR’d scans on the Advanced plan), and adds AI that only sees what each user can access. Here’s how it maps to the features above.
Three things LexWorkplace doesn’t do, so you can plan around them:
Small firms can test all of it with a 7-day free trial, with full feature access, sample data and no credit card.
What Should You Ask in a Legal DMS Demo?
Start every demo with the find-something test: ask for everything on one matter from two years ago, every document and every email, and count how many places it takes to pull it together.
Run it on your own firm before the first demo, too. If rebuilding one old matter means opening a shared drive, then Outlook, then asking someone where the signed version went, you already know which features you need most.
That one request shows where a matter’s record lives, and how much of it a new system has to bring together.
Then work through the features in order. These are the questions from each section above, in one place:
Asking every vendor the same questions is what makes their answers comparable, and our Document Management Comparison Chart lays several side by side against the same features.
Watch · 8 min
How to choose a law firm DMS before the first demo
One test to run on your own firm, then four questions to take into every vendor demo.
The video walks through the same test and four of these questions in about eight minutes.
The Right Legal DMS Passes Your Own Find-Something Test
The right legal DMS passes your own find-something test, and the features in this guide are what it takes: matter-centric organization, search that reads scans and email, email filed to the matter, versions with check-out, and permissions down to the matter, each with the question that tests it.
Take those questions into every demo, and run the find-something test on your own firm first. The system that brings back a two-year-old matter in one search is the one that fixes the problem you came in with.
WHAT’S NEXT
