Watch Clare Winzar, IT Training and Change Manager at Norton Rose Fulbright, discuss BigHand Document Creation, the risks created by inconsistent templates, and how firms can improve document governance, compliance, and consistency at scale.

Transcript

I’m now IT Training and Change Manager. I started with the firm 26 years ago as a secretary.

Document production, document work, it’s the bread and butter. It’s where I’ve come from.

I’ve lived through various iterations of templates and non-templates. Now, on this side of it, I’m not just training it. I got involved with implementing it a couple of years ago, so I saw the other side of it and just saw how easy it was to maintain.

Q: Why does document creation need more attention from leadership?

It’s always the branding. It’s always the consistency, and it’s always the ease with which you can produce the documents.

If you’ve got a rubbish template system, or you’ve got things that are going out that are not in-house style, they’re a little bit all over the place.

It’s not trustworthy. It’s not compliant. You could be sending something out with an old header or an old disclaimer.

Especially with firms, there are a lot of new mergers going on. We’re adding offices and gaining traction in other countries.

It’s all to do with that governance, the compliance, and making sure that your documents are going out correctly.

Q: What's the risk of inconsistent or incorrect document management?

No one wants to send out a document with somebody else’s letterhead on.

When we’re using things like PowerPoint and you’ve got maps, if you’ve got new offices and you’ve got your little pin drops, you want to make sure you’ve got the right map going out in the presentation.

It’s embarrassing if you’re standing up there presenting and someone says, “I thought you just added another office,” and you’ve got an out-of-date slide.

So it’s about having content that is consistent and up to date.

Q: As AI is adopted in the legal industry, why does strong document governance matter more than ever?

With the AI part of it, we’re getting sources from everywhere and we’re bringing that content into our documents.

We have got to make sure that it’s the correct content, but also that we’re putting it in our documents and it’s sitting in our documents properly.

It might come over in a different font. It might be in a different line spacing. Then all of a sudden your document formatting is all kind of screwed up, and it’s back to square one.

Q: What challenges were you facing before implementing BigHand Document Creation?

The biggest one was people using their own templates, having things stored locally that no one knew about.

Then, when we did get issues with corruption, they’re landing on our desk and we’re like, “Where does this come from? Who has created this?”

Again, that’s risk. That’s compliance. That’s all of those boxes.

That’s not even touching the formatting side of it, because then you’ve got to spend ages picking it apart.

So, templates every time.

Q: How has BigHand helped your firm create more consistent documents at scale?

It means we’re all using it. We’re all using it in the same way.

Recently, I had someone from our Paris office who said, “I’ve created this engagement letter, but it’s actually got to go out on London letterhead. How do I do that?”

As soon as you say, “Show the wizard, use the drop-down, you’ve just got to change the office,” they were like, “Oh, okay.”

They were actually going in there, snipping the image, and copying and pasting.

That’s taking too long.

Q: How can firms modernize their document creation?

Implement this template solution and get insight from all of the different departments, because your departments use different templates.

For us, we’ve got disputes teams, banking teams, and corporate teams. There’s not one standard size that fits all. They’ve all got their own little bits.

No one’s putting a limit on how many templates you can have. Have as many as you need to provide the users.

Once you give them that structure, it then just becomes second nature.

Q: What stands out about BigHand?

Support. Friendly faces. They’re always at the end of the phone.

Customer service is excellent. I think communication is key as well, keeping us informed.