At the ILTA annual conference in Nashville today, Microsoft Corp. announced the release of a preview version of a new document management and collaboration platform designed for law firms and legal departments.

Called Matter Center for Office 365, it works with Office 365 and allows legal professionals to securely find, organize and collaborate on files within the familiar Office environment.

According to today’s announcement, features of the new platform include:

  • Cloud storage using OneDrive for Business, providing 1 TB of individual storage, with automatic synchronization across all your devices and for both online and offline access.
  • Sharing and collaboration, allowing you to share files with anyone and work on files simultaneously with others, including the ability to track changes and versions.
  • Robust search, making it easy to search and find matters and related documents directly within Outlook or Word.
  • Integrated document management, allowing you to drag, drop and save emails and attachments from Outlook directly into a matter. Matter documents are automatically saved with the correct metadata, permissions and version control.
  • Access and permission controls, allowing users to be granted or denied access to a matter. All subsequent documents associated with the matter will inherit the same permissions.

The announcement said that Matter Center is well suited to firms beginning their migration to the cloud, with enterprise grade security, management and administrative controls.

Matter Center for Office 365 is available in a limited preview, the announcement said. Interested customers can learn more about participating in a beta program at http://www.microsoft.com/mattercenter.

Photo of Bob Ambrogi Bob Ambrogi

Bob is a lawyer, veteran legal journalist, and award-winning blogger and podcaster. In 2011, he was named to the inaugural Fastcase 50, honoring “the law’s smartest, most courageous innovators, techies, visionaries and leaders.” Earlier in his career, he was editor-in-chief of several legal publications, including The National Law Journal, and editorial director of ALM’s Litigation Services Division.