Come together

Changes in regulation such as the Legal Services Act and the Jackson Review mean that UK law firms are re-examining the way in which they work with clients. Collaboration and transparency are fast becoming the watchwords of the legal services industry, but organisations on both sides of the equation are beginning to learn that while they have no choice but to work more closely together, a new set of risks is emerging around the technology that they use to share and work on documents.

Close collaboration takes place across all legal procedures, particularly within financial activities such as inital public offerings (IPOs) and mergers and acquisitions (M&As). Documents such as information memoranda and prospectuses need to be worked on by a range of stakeholders, including bankers, lawyers, executive directors and communications specialists. The traditional approach to drafting those documents has always been to share paper or electronic documents, with all of the formatting, version control and last minute redrafting that goes with them.

Apart