Whether you are general counsel, a compliance officer or contract manager, you are likely managing a large volume of complex documents for your university on a daily basis. Without a dedicated way to efficiently and effectively manage these important files, you are at risk of wasting valuable time and money. But, there is a better way to organize, track, and safeguard your valuable documents through legal case management software.
University legal professionals are increasingly turning to legal technology to help them be more productive and efficient so they can focus on what’s really important—strategizing and building relationships. Whether it is vendor contracts and student policies or research agreements and employment issues, legal case management software helps you manage all your critical documents and more—within a single system.
The legal document management industry continues to see unprecedented growth and is expected to reach $9.67 billion by 2034. By adopting legal technology now, your university will be one step closer to keeping pace with the rapidly evolving industry. Here’s a quick look at just a few of the ways universities can utilize legal software to boost performance.
Six Ways Universities Can Use Software to Better Manage Legal Files
- Centralized Document Storage
As a university legal professional, the amount of documents you are juggling daily can’t be overstated. With legal software, you can maintain all your legal and compliance documents in a single, searchable digital hub. This provides numerous benefits including:
- Access control (i.e. other departments such as Human Resources can view employment contracts but not student files).
- No more lost or outdated files.
- Quickly view current versions of contracts, policies, or MOUs.
- Accessible by remote and hybrid teams (especially important if you have multiple campuses).
A legal case management system that provides comprehensive, built-in document management features eliminates the need for multiple systems, leading to cost savings and preventing data silos.
- Version Control and Document Integrity
One of the essential parts of the job is not only maintaining research agreements, vendor NDAs or endowment contracts, but also managing the draft iterations of each of these items and more. Legal case management software can help reduce the manual, labor intensive process this can sometimes be through:
- Automatic tracking of each edit, when it occurred, and who made it.
- Record of redlines and comments from various departments including procurement, research, and IT.
- Maintaining the final version of documents with signatures for safe recordkeeping.
These features are instrumental in safeguarding the university from outdated clauses or incorrect versions of documents—while also helping minimize risk and maintain compliance.
- Advanced Search and Metadata Tagging
With so many documents to manage and fewer demands on your time, being able to easily tag documents by specific parameters and instantly retrieve them is an essential component to look for in legal software. These search parameters can include: file type, contract owner, expiration date, department, risk level, and more. Searchable metadata can help universities when staff must quickly produce:
- Institutional policies
- Student-related legal documents
- Sponsored research agreements
- Compliance certifications (Title IX, FERPA, export controls)
The ability to search documents quickly is important especially when responding to public records requests, accreditation audits, or legal discovery.
- Security and Access Control
Gone are the days of passing legal documents and sensitive files back and forth via secure email links. Through legal case management software, you can share student records, donor agreements, HR files, research data, and more directly via the legal software. Plus, everything is tracked, saved, and shared in one place. You can assign permissions directly within the software, giving you full control over who can access the documents through:
- Role-based permissions: restricts who can view or edit documents.
- Encryption and audit trails: ensures data integrity and accountability.
- Cloud or on-prem deployment options: tailored to the university’s IT and data privacy requirements.
This helps provide more peace of mind in a world where one mistake or data leak could be quite damaging to the university’s reputation and costly.
- Analytics and Reporting
By maintaining all your legal data in a single location, you can easily generate reports and dashboards informing you of important data such as:
- Approaching renewal and compliance deadlines.
- Department workload distribution.
- Average time to conduct a review or gain signatures.
- Volume and types of contracts handled.
These built-in analytical features give universities the chance to showcase value and efficiency to leadership, while also providing valid reasons for requesting more resources or staff.
- Contract Lifecycle Management
When dealing with a variety of contracts such as vendor services, leases, athletic sponsorships, research funding agreements, and more— you need a way to quickly move documents through the appropriate processes. Legal case management software can help with this through automating key parts of the workflow such as:
- Contract template libraries: Approved standard templates with university terminology.
- Clause management: Pre-approved clauses (FERPA, HIPAA, data privacy) can be automatically inserted.
- Approval notifications: Contracts can be automatically routed to legal, finance, and administration for sign-off.
- Renewal reminders: Standard notifications automatically sent before contract expiration or renewal deadlines.
Universities can utilize these features to eliminate administrative bottlenecks, provide consistent legal communication, and reduce lapsed agreements.
Managing Your Most Important Documents Through Legal Software
The right legal document management system can help speed up your workflow, improve your accuracy and save you valuable time and money, but the right legal case management system can do all this and more.
With a comprehensive, built-in document management system, legal case management software allows you to manage all your important documents and eliminate the cost of multiple systems. Legal case management software is the complete solution to manage your entire legal process from intake and matter management to workflow automation and reporting/compliance. You no longer need disparate systems to manage everything your university’s legal department might require.
By focusing on the unique needs of higher education, Legal Files is able to help colleges and universities implement superior legal software that minimizes risk while promoting transparency, efficiency, and compliance.
It’s this tailored approach that sets Legal Files apart from other legal software providers. With a dedication to customer feedback and continuous improvement, Legal Files ensures that your university or college software system will work the way you want it to no matter what your needs are.
“We are incredibly impressed with the flexibility and customization capabilities that Legal Files offers.”
Kim Benoit, Assistant to the Director of Public Safety and Chief of Police
University of Connecticut, a Legal Files client
Request a demo to learn more about how we help organizations like yours manage what matters most.