Harwood Andrews is the largest regional law firm
in Victoria, Australia and is home to a diverse
team of 170 talented individuals, including
lawyers, special counsel and support personnel.
Harwood Andrews is recognised as a progressive
legal firm, striving to provide positive commercial
solutions to their clients. As testament, they have
received numerous nominations and award wins
in 2016, 17 and 18 for the Regional / Suburban
and State firm of the year by Lawyers Weekly and
Australasian Law Awards.
After being awarded the 2017 Lawyers Weekly
Regional/ Suburban firm of the year, CEO Andrew
Barnes commented, “it was largely due to the
implementation of digital products that give our
clients a new way to connect with us.” Harwood
Andrews had developed a range of online services
in 2017, as well as our interactive client portal,
Hubshare.
THE OBJECTIVE
Client retention is forever growing increasingly
important to law firms and Harwood Andrews
wanted to ensure their clients were receiving
the best service. Harwood Andrews decided they
needed a centralised area where clients could
access information and documents whenever
suited them. With their current system, clients
would have to wait until their lawyers were
available to send them a document, which was
causing frustrations.
Having a centralised area where they could share documents with
clients, would mean greater transparency, thus
improving client relationships. They also needed a user-friendly platform, “We
have a multi-generational organisation and so
needed something that was going to be as easy for
our users to create hubs or portals for their clients
as possible,” explained Dana Lunn, Manager of
Digital Solutions at Harwood Andrews.
We are excited about the possibilities to do more
with Hubshare. It serves client needs across
multiple practice areas and we are so impressed
with the integration capabilities that our vendors
are able to imagine, create and deliver
THE SOLUTION
Hubshare was selected as their client extranet
portal and implemented in April of 2017. By
selecting Hubshare, their users could create
personalised client portals where they can
securely share files and provide clients with up
to date information regarding their matter.
CREATING HUBS
Unlike other solutions, little training is required to
create hubs, thanks to Hubshare’s user-friendly
interface, templates and wizard tools, which
takes you step by step through the process. As
Dana pointed out, this was very important for
Harwood Andrews and their multi-generational
organisation.
“The wizard is straightforward, they just input the name they want to call the hub, they can
personalise it by adding the client’s logo and
within a few clicks they can have it created. Then
they usually upload whatever documents they
have and invite the users who all automatically
get a notification saying you’ve been added to
this hub,” explains Dana. Not needing to rely on
IT to create the hubs, means users save time, no
longer waiting for problems to be resolved by IT
or for hubs to be created for new clients.
Dana used an example of the litigation team, as
she has created a template hub for them with the
calendar module, allowing them to manage key
dates. “When they need a hub for a client they
can easily create one from that template. They
can manage multiple hubs, adjust the content
that’s on the dashboard and tailor each one to
suit their clients.”
“We did a lot of research
and tested all of the best
platforms at the time,
and for us, we found
Hubshare was the most
user friendly.”
BENEFITS OF USING HUBSHARE
With one centralised portal, large files are easily
shared with clients and colleagues making it
effortless to collaborate.
“For us it eliminates the need to have huge email
chains and not know where the most recent
version of a document is. Also, the documents only needed to be added to one place and
everyone that has access to that hub gets an
email notification alerting them to the change,” says Dana.
She continues to discuss the benefit of real-time
updates, “A lot of our lawyers get emails purely
asking for the latest version of a document
because the client can’t find the latest, so it
alleviates those sorts of administrative tasks
from the lawyer’s plate.”. Real-time updates
mean clients and lawyers, have access to the
latest version of document or file, providing their
clients with complete transparency.
LOOKING FORWARD
Hubshare is constantly developing and expanding
our integrations. Dana notes Hubshare’s
integration with iManage, which allows users to
upload files straight from iManage into Hubshare.
They plan on utilising this feature, having just
completed their iManage cloud migration.
Dana and the team have exciting plans in the
future. “Our next phase is to have the iManage
cloud integration with Hubshare, so that we can
create hubs direct from iManage. The DocuSign
integration, is also on the cards for us.
WHAT TO LOOK FOR WHEN SEARCH FOR A CLIENT PORTAL
What do your employees and clients want?
Does it have the right intergrations?
Is it flexible and easy to use?
A collaborative and secure file sharing platform that empowers professionals to collaborate more effectively and efficiently. Hubshare maximises your business’s productivity and helps increase client engagement.
Developed with the user in mind, Hubshare
is a secure digital workplace portal that
enhances user and client engagement through
collaborative working, secure file-sharing and
project management.
Hubshare provides clients and internal teams
with a branded and customisable portal, helping
businesses to stay better connected whilst boosting
productivity.