Prosperoware has launched a new software offering, Milan Email Import, designed to help firms that use iManage WorkSite as their document management system to import and categorize email more efficiently. 

It says many firms are scrambling to import years of legacy email associated with old, inactive legal matters into WorkSite. Because the number of legacy emails can number in the tens of thousands, current processes often create a system bottleneck that ties up the user's desktop or creates a backlog in the WorkSite Communication Server, preventing current email from being filed.

Users often have idiosyncratic folder structures for organising their email—by issue, by client, by type of litigation, for example. Milan Email Import allows users to preserve their organisational structure when they import email into WorkSite, relieving them of the time-consuming process of reorganising their email to fit current email filing protocols.

Because it works in the background as a web-based process, Milan Email Import enables users to concurrently work on their desktop while they import legacy email in bulk into WorkSite. Milan Email Import also helps firms manage and categorise email associated with lateral moves by their lawyers as well as file transfers and email associated with employees leaving the firm.  

By making it easy to import email, Milan helps firms reduce the strain on their email servers from both a cost and performance perspective. Milan also mitigates the risk associated with not keeping email, which is especially important to law firms, which can be held liable for deleting email associated with legal matters.

Lawyers and law firms around the world are required to categorise their email into matters. This duty stems from the fundamental fact that the client owns the file, including any external correspondence and most internal correspondence. Clients can request a copy of their matter file at any time. 

Not keeping email that is critical to the firm or to a client's defense can have serious ramifications, such as litigation over spoliation of data or absorbing the costs for reproducing the matter file in its entirety, including emails.

"Many of our clients are trying to make sure that email is filed properly with policies we call 'file or die,'" said Keith Lipman, president and cofounder of Prosperoware.  

"These firms are establishing a specific window of time, anywhere from 30 days to 120 days, for retaining email. Email that is not filed in the document  management system in that window is automatically deleted. The size and quantity of legacy email in people's inbox must be addressed before they can put those policies in place. Our Email Import product makes importing and categorizing legacy email a very straightforward process."

When a lawyer is hired laterally, they often bring with them their existing case files and legacy email (in Microsoft Outlook data files called PSTs). Milan Email Import allows end users or WorkSite administrators to map part or all of their email to WorkSite.

Import email associated with departing employees

Milan Email Import makes it easy for firms to move the entire mailbox of a departing employee into an archive workspace, which can then be shared with staff taking over the case load and which can also be searched for eDiscovery purposes.