Microsoft Matter Center for Office 365 boosts law firm productivity

REDMOND, Wash., Aug. 18, 2014 /PRNewswire/ -- Addressing the unique document management and collaboration requirements of today's legal professionals, Microsoft Corp. on Monday announced a preview version of Matter Center for Office 365 at the International Legal Technology Association (ILTA) annual conference in Nashville, Tenn. Matter Center, an intuitive document management and collaboration solution catered toward law firms and law departments, works seamlessly with Office 365 and offers legal professionals a way to easily find, organize and collaborate on files without leaving the familiar Microsoft productivity tools they use the most.

"Microsoft has built a security-enhanced, cloud-based document management application that allows our professionals to quickly locate and collaborate on documents with our counsel from virtually anywhere," said John Frank, vice president and deputy general counsel at Microsoft. "We've decided to make this solution more broadly available at the request of our outside counsel, who want to utilize it in their own environments."

Matter Center for Office 365 offers benefits to both legal professionals and IT.

Valuable benefits for legal professionals

Matter Center gives legal professionals security-enhanced access to the information they need — virtually anywhere, anytime, and from virtually any device. 

• Your briefcase in the cloud. Matter Center works with OneDrive for Business, providing 1 TB of individual storage and a personal briefcase, which automatically synchronizes your documents so you can access them online and offline from virtually any device.
• Get more work done together. Share your files with others, both within and outside your firm. Work simultaneously on your documents with other attorneys, and easily track changes with automatic version control.
• Robust matter and document search. Easily search and find matters and related documents directly within Outlook or Word. Track or pin frequently used or recent matters and documents.  
• Integrated and automated document management. Drag, drop and save emails and attachments from Outlook into the right matter. Tagging and sharing each document separately is no longer necessary, as the matter documents are automatically saved with the right metadata, permissions and version control.
• Security-enhanced access and permission controls. Users can be granted or excluded access to a matter. All subsequent documents associated with the matter will inherit the same permissions, thereby reducing the worry about ethical walls and data leakage.
• Reduce overhead and maximize time with clients. Matter Center helps you to reduce the amount of administrative resources needed to support a document management system, enabling you to spend more time working with clients.

Maximizing ROI for IT professionals

Matter Center offers a way to begin your journey to the cloud, enabling you to maximize the ROI on your existing infrastructure with enterprise-grade security, management and administrative controls.

• Deploy based on your terms. Matter Center can be deployed in the cloud, in a hybrid scenario, or as part of an on-premises SharePoint environment based upon a firm's needs and existing infrastructure.
• Maximize ROI on existing IT investments. Adding Matter Center to existing on-premises solutions such as SharePoint and Exchange will help you realize greater value from a unified productivity platform.
• Built on an industrial strength platform. Matter Center includes enterprise-grade security, management and administrative controls, and is compliant with multiple industry standards. Permission control and taxonomy are centrally managed and applied automatically; legal professionals don't need to manage with the back-end settings.
• Always up to date. By deploying in the cloud, you can reduce the cost and time of upgrades and migrations as Office 365 is always up to date. No patches or software upgrades are necessary, and Microsoft frequently adds new value and capabilities.
• Higher adoption rates. Matter Center has an intuitive interface, simplifies processes, and can be accessed directly from Microsoft Office products that are used every day. This tool satisfies the most important needs of users, while reducing training and support efforts.

"Matter Center for Office 365 is the product of months of collaboration between Microsoft's Legal and Corporate Affairs (LCA) division, outside law firms, and our Office 365 product engineering teams," said Tejas Mehta, group product manager for Matter Center at Microsoft. "We are very excited to bring Matter Center to market in the near future."

Matter Center for Office 365 is available in a limited preview. Interested customers can learn more about participating in a beta program at http://www.microsoft.com/mattercenter. More information about Matter Center and other solutions for customers in the legal vertical can be found at http://www.microsoft.com/legalproductivity.

Founded in 1975, Microsoft (Nasdaq "MSFT") is the worldwide leader in software, services, devices and solutions that help people and businesses realize their full potential.

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SOURCE Microsoft Corp.