iManage Wins 1st US Client for Insight System With Neal Gerber in Chicago

iManage has today announced that Neal, Gerber & Eisenberg, the Chicago-based law firm, has become the first US law firm to implement the new RAVN-powered iManage Insight system for enterprise search.

Neal Gerber has long used iManage Work for document and email management. The addition of iManage Insight augments their capabilities with powerful enterprise search functionality and serves as a replacement for their existing knowledge management system, Recommind.

Sonia Menon, Chief Operating Officer, Neal Gerber, in Chicago (pictured above), said: ‘We saw the opportunity to significantly upgrade our search platform with iManage Insight. It’s a powerful but easy-to-use application that enables our professionals to quickly surface key knowledge from many internal and external repositories.’

‘We’ve already started using one of Insight’s key features, Insight Knowledge Graph, to identify hidden experts and expertise throughout the firm. We are excited to take this step and we see it as a foundation for advancing knowledge management for the firm,’ she added.

Artificial Lawyer caught up with iManage to find out some more about the significance of this move, and what is another substantive outcome from the merger between iManage and RAVN.

How significant is this client win for this new product line? 

Neal, Gerber & Eisenberg LLP’s implementation of Insight is significant in that they are the first US firm to implement the new RAVN-powered iManage Insight for enterprise search, validating the idea that iManage Insight enables lawyers to discover and harness hidden knowledge and expertise in their organization. In addition, their use of iManage Insight demonstrates that tightly integrating AI with document management software delivers value above and beyond the automation of tedious manual tasks – it also enables professionals to secure insights that they can use to improve productivity and increase the value of they deliver to their clients.

Can you tell us more about the ability of Knowledge Graph to provide insight into legal data? What ways can it provide new insights? 

With the Insight Knowledge Graph, professionals can secure a visible representation of experts and expertise their firm on a certain subject. For example, if a professional used iManage Insight to search for “Mexican Property Law” they would not just secure results on the most relevant documents related to property law in Mexico, but could also see in the Insight Knowledge Graph who in the firm has the most knowledge and expertise in this area, based on the iManage RAVN AI engine’s analysis of the firm’s documents and user behavior.

Clearly this is another benefit delivered from the merger, how important has the merger been to the development of such new products? 

The merger has been extremely helpful in the development of new products that combine iManage’s powerful document management platform with the iManage RAVN AI-engine. In particular, what the merger has revealed is that there a significant benefits to be found in tightly integrated an AI engine and document management system. It might seem like you can easily “plug-in” AI into a document management system, but in the real world it does not work like that. Tight integration enables you to move from AI hype to practical products that solve real-world problems – like finding experts on a particular subject, as Insight does.

Without close integration you also end-up with an inconsistent user experience, which decreases in user adoption – and you will not see value from a solution if professionals do not use it. In addition, law and other professional service organizations do not want to have to rely on a bunch of different solutions for information extraction, or document classification, or enterprise search – it is confusing and detracts from agility, rather than adding to it.

With the merger, iManage can now deliver to lawyers a single platform that integrates the iManage RAVN AI engine with the entire iManage document management product suite – not just iManage Work 10, but iManage Share, iManage Threat Manager, etc. This offers professionals a comprehensive solution with a consistent user experience, lower total cost of ownership, and AI capabilities that truly transform the way they work for the better.

Thanks! And congratulations on another successful post-merger development.