Repstor for Teams

 

In response to the sharp rise in Microsoft Teams adoption seen during the COVID-19 lockdown, the Microsoft 365-based matter management specialist Repstor (www.repstor.com) has launched Repstor for Teams as dispersed teams sought more spontaneous ways to stay connected and keep matters moving once outside the office.

Designed specifically for law firms, in-house legal teams and other professional service providers, Repstor for Teams enhances the Teams experience for users, so they can default to the platform as a hub for their everyday matter work.

Intensifying pressures on legal operations, including the need to support more dispersed teams and pursue new operating models, have exposed inefficient practices including modes of document sharing and client collaboration as part of ongoing matter management, and now more than ever Teams addresses that gap.

“Teams is being keenly adopted right across the legal sector, to the point that pretty much everyone has it now,” notes Fergus Wilson, Repstor’s CTO.  “It’s the natural way to stay connected with peers and clients – but there is so much more to it than its collaboration capabilities – and it’s that potential that our product is designed to unlock for legal teams.”

Where other Teams ‘companion’ products focus predominantly on basic teams creation and lifecycle management, as well as security controls, Repstor for Teams goes further.  “Deriving full value from Teams is about so much more than information housekeeping – tracking conversation threads and deleting content when required,” Fergus explains.

As well as allowing organizations or individual departments to tailor their own security settings, teams lifecycle management and information compliance controls, Repstor for Teams provides direct links to firms’ existing systems of record as well as time management and billing systems, providing a single window into all client activity while closing the loop on document and email filing.

“The great thing about Repstor for Teams is that it takes our use of Teams to the next level, and we can feel relaxed about people using it extensively in their work because Repstor makes it so easy to set up the right controls for each use case,” says Ellen Kinsinger, CIO at law firm Poyner Spruill LLP.  

“Teams is fast becoming our de facto way of working and, thanks to Repstor’s intuitive controls and navigation, that will have a very positive impact – both on people’s productivity, and on morale.”

Repstor for Teams offers substantial efficiency gains for legal operations.  Forrester reviewed Microsoft Teams for its potential in 2019 it noted that many of the savings associated with using Teams were linked to people having everything they needed available in a single space.  It identified that information workers could save more than one hour per week by not having to switch between applications. “Access to third-party and line-of-business apps inside Teams from any device benefits all workers, especially remote workers,” Forrester’s report noted. During the COVID-19 lockdown, these findings bore out for all kind of professional services providers.