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Metadata: What It Is and Why Your Software Should Support It

If your legal clients produce substantial amounts of paperwork, the ability to add metadata during document processing can be invaluable. Without easily identifiable paperwork, law firms could waste hours trying to find one document out of one thousand. So how can metadata help?

Metadata helps legal firms describe content and organize thousands of documents. Learn why you should include in your software

Describe the Content

Clients can enter relevant information to quickly sort through documents to find the right file. Name, date, case number, and keywords can all be added in headers and footers to organize documents.

Organize Documents

Adding page numbers creates a structural framework that makes it easy to search for and find relevant documents. Metadata is also useful when preserving and archiving files within a searchable database.

Providing your clients with an easy way to add metadata to their documents helps streamline their document management processes. With the increasing demand for digital information sharing, metadata is an effective way to organize resources from various contributors. For example, if your client is a lawyer, they are likely receiving information from various sources for the same case. To stay organized, all of these documents can be tagged with metadata as they come in according to file types, case number, and description. Later, if the lawyer needs to find a specific document, they can perform a search for these metadata tags and recall all documents that fit the search parameters. Metadata saves time when searching for documents, allowing your users to spend more time with their clients and maximize their billable hours.

What if you don’t currently support metadata?

There are a number of third-party software providers offering metadata support, both for adding in new metadata and reading existing data on documents. If you plan on using a third party to incorporate metadata into your software, make sure to do your research. Factors such as security, versatility, and support should all be taken into consideration when shopping for software.
The key to making third-party code work for you and your business is setting and maintaining high standards. Make sure the code you choose to integrate into your applications is something you would be happy to see coming out of your own department.

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