Precedents from iManage, mail and old decks, with sources

The question this file answersHow do my people find what we did for a similar client three years ago — and what happens when the one who remembers leaves?

Fits: firms where past engagements, memos and decks sit in a DMS — SharePoint, iManage, NetDocuments — plus mail and shared drives, and every professional loses the playbook's 2–4 hours a week finding them.

Not for: small practices where the whole body of work fits in one partner's head, or firms whose past work is not stored digitally at all.

Typical day

What the desk looks like today

Typical, from the professional-services playbook — not a client's day. Finding past work is a daily task for every professional; the playbook puts it at 2–4 hours a week each. A consultant starting an engagement needs the precedent: the deck for a similar client. They search the DMS, then their mail, then ask around, then rebuild from scratch. It costs most in the first week of a new engagement, and it fails outright when the colleague who knew where things were has left — which, in a business that hires and loses people constantly, is often.

What changes

What Monday looks like after

First day of a new engagement. Instead of a morning in the search box and an afternoon of 'does anyone remember', the consultant types the question and gets the three engagements that dealt with it, the memo that settled the point, and a draft research file citing them — client, date, author on each line. The day is spent reading the right documents and judging whether they apply, not finding them. The engagement lead sees what was reused and where the firm had nothing. When a senior colleague leaves, what they filed stays findable. The advice — whether the precedent fits this client — is still written by the person who writes it now.

Typical, not a measured client result. Every figure here comes from the playbook source named below.

~30–50%

less research time — Accenture (2023)

Before: a precedent hunt crawls the DMS, mail and last year's deck. After: Accenture (2023) reports 30–50% less research time in professional-services pilots — whether it applies stays a person.

Where this number comes from

Accenture (2023) reports 30–50% less research time in professional-services knowledge-management pilots; McKinsey 'The State of AI' (2023) puts knowledge workers' time spent searching for information at around 19%. Neither is our measurement; playbook range 30–50%. Judgement on applicability stays human.

What we install

What we put in front of the systems you already run

No document moves: SharePoint, iManage, NetDocuments or the DMS you run remains the only place the firm's work lives. Over the top we add a search-and-summary step:

the DMS, shared drives and, where you permit, project mailboxes are indexed through their APIs, inheriting existing access rights — a person sees only what they could already open
a plain-language question returns relevant past work ranked, with client, date and author
a short research file is drafted from the results, every statement linked to its source paragraph, gaps stated as gaps
the file is saved to the matter in the DMS
what was actually used is recorded, so ranking learns what the firm trusts.

First scope: one practice area, three years back.

What stays human — and what this will not do

Whether the precedent applies. Creative synthesis. Adaptation to this client. Quality assurance before anything leaves the firm.

What can go wrong — and what we do about it

A DMS with loose access rights turns into a leak amplifier — so the audit checks the permissions model first and the index inherits it exactly; wrong rights are fixed before anything is indexed. Documents filed under the wrong client or without metadata are findable but mis-described; the research file always shows the source paragraph. Summaries can state a conclusion the source hedged, so every line is linked and applicability is a named person's judgement. The 30–50% range is search and assembly time; McKinsey's 19% is time spent searching, not a saving.

How long it takes, and what we need from you

Audit, about two weeks (€1.5–3K): we sit with professionals in one practice area, count where their last ten searches ended, and check what your DMS and drives expose — API, permissions model. Pilot, 4–6 weeks at €10–20K — medium complexity in the professional-services playbook, most of it access rights and indexing: one practice area, every research file read by its requester. Production: further practice areas, mailboxes if agreed, usage feedback. From you: DMS access, an owner for permissions questions, feedback on the first twenty files.

The path: free 60-second estimate → free 20-minute review → paid audit of this one process (€1.5–3K, typically two weeks) → pilot with your people in the loop (€10–20K, weeks, not quarters). No transformation programme. Prices are public, on the services page →

This is about you if…

Does starting an engagement begin with searching the DMS, mail and asking colleagues?
Do senior people spend hours a week re-finding work the firm has already done?
Is past work stored in a DMS a system could index with permissions?

What does this mean in euros?

That depends on your volumes and wage costs — this page will not invent the number. The free 60-second estimate runs that calculation from your answers, with every multiplier sourced.

Get your free savings estimate 60 seconds · no sales call Or write first → Map an ops process like this one — free, 60 seconds →

Not a named Aperanda client. Process file · Ops.

Deep-dive process file. Volumes, weeks and sources come from the industry playbook; nothing here is a named client.

All process files