Transforming Legal Workspace Management: How Blue Car Technologies’ Workspace Management Delivers Exceptional ROI Through Intuitive Modularity.

Law firms and corporate legal teams face unprecedented challenges in managing their digital workspaces effectively. Storage costs spiral upward, compliance requirements become increasingly complex, and the need for precise access control grows more critical with each passing day.  

Our newest solution, Workspace Management for iManage Work, emerges as a comprehensive solution that addresses these pain points while delivering remarkable return on investment through its inherent modular and cost-effective approach.  

The critical challenge: when workspace management becomes a costly burden.  

Legal professionals are inundated with digital documents, with the average law firm managing thousands of workspaces across multiple matters within a multitude of different libraries. The average lawyer only bills around 1,693 hours annually; that’s 507 below the high-end average requirement of 2,200. This is compounded as 48% of hours within a working day are spent on administrative tasks and 33% on business development. ¹ 

Workspace management has been pivotal in best practices for increasing firm performance and billable time, but the importance of document management extends far beyond simple storage challenges. 50% of mid-sized law firms are missing up to 50% of their important documents at any given time, with teams spending an estimated 6-11 hours trying to find them. To no surprise, this is a staggering productivity drain which impacts profitability and overall client satisfaction. ² 

As it stands, document management systems are one of the few back bones of the legal sector’s operational practices, with firms that integrate technology and move to a more harmonious relationship with technology maintaining a competitive edge within the legal landscape. Many of our clients we work with use the popular DMS system iManage Work, and it is by far the most adopted DMS within legal.  

So, what is the problem? Well, it’s the cost of integration.   

Document management systems are not always all-encompassing and require integration services to leverage the full potential of a fully automated document management system. But these are not cheap in any stretch of the imagination. And whilst they are modular in nature, the bare bones functionality and implementation of the service is normally quite an investment. Yes, these systems are worthwhile and offer unparalleled ability in document management. Blue Car Technologies DMS Archiver – our own archiving integration for iManage Work – is completely modular and configurable with many features being implemented to offer a one stop shop for law firms, all at competitive pricing. But we understand that not all law firms or corporate legal teams need a solution that does everything or has the capital to invest in such immediately.  

Modular Excellence for Maximum ROI 

Our solution to this dilemma is our Workspace Management for iManage Work, a modular approach in which clients can implement solutions incrementally while managing management of pain points without requiring wholesale system overhauls. After the successful implementation of a 2-step archiving process for Bech-Brunn which led to the creation of the DMS Archiver³, the benefits realized led us to develop an accessible module in which specific solutions that are often requested can be integrated with no need for larger commitments. Therefore, offering scalability which is directly symmetrical with your law firm or corporate legal teams' growth, instead of jumping straight to our workspace lifecycle management tool (DMS Archiver).  

Comprehensive Workspaces control through intelligent modularity.  

As has been repeated numerous times within the blog, the platform’s modular design is its biggest strength. The flexibility provided enables law firms and corporate legal teams to select and implement only the functionality they need immediately, expanding capabilities as requirements evolve. This approach significantly reduces initial investment while ensuring maximum utility from day one. The Key modules include workspace disposition, legal hold, soft delete, workspace move  and Workspace copy/export – each addressing specific operational challenges that legal firms and corporate teams alike encounter daily.  

Workspace Disposition: Storage challenges, costs associated with such, and adherence to destruction policies & procedures are all tackled within the function. When exponentially growing data volumes, the ability to systematically manage workspace lifecycles becomes essential for both cost control and regulatory compliance. This module provides automated workflows to ensure workspaces are appropriately archived or disposed of according to your predefined internal policies, dramatically reducing manual oversight.  

Litigation Hold: One of the more challenging elements of legal documentation management, this module enables organizations to remove access to users and groups for a period of time, or until requested to be taken off of hold. Once off hold, full access is granted to the workspace.  

Soft Delete: Similar to litigation hold but are permanent permissions and whilst they can be changed at any point, soft delete permissions do not change automatically due to any time requirements. The use case is to strip permissions, thereby removing them from general access.  

Workspace Move: Intuitive ability to move workspaces between iManage libraries or between other storage systems such as Microsoft Azure. Although current moves from iManage to iManage and iManage to Azure are the only supported moves, Blue Car’s bespoke software development services enable movement from other stores customers may be using or planning to use.    

Workspace Copy/Export: The process of external audits for matters can be a headache.  There are I.T. and compliance overheads on top of being able to locate all the content required for an audit.  Workspace Copy/Export allows you to copy the contents of your workspace to a separate location (iManage Work Library, or tenant,  or managed file system location) 

As Workspace Management uses our DMS Archiver as the foundation, any features implemented make its way to Workspace Management for iManage – making these two products mutually supportive. All Blue Car Technologies products and services are propelled by customer feedback and demand, so if there is not a feature present you need – let us know and we’ll get started! 

ROI Through Operational Efficiency and Cost Reduction 

A Study during 2019 found that legal professionals end up spending up to 11 hours a week dealing with document-related challenges within traditional office filing systems. The move to digital, legal document Management software systems, has brought about well needed time saving and risk management. ⁴ 

What Workspace management is designed to do is to push that capability further by offering enhanced automation and streamlining document management. When it comes to cost saving metrics, time and resource efficiency are the main drivers of Workspace Management for iManage Work.  Legal DMS systems reduce time spent on manual document search, but where those DMS falls short, our solution can implement integrations to tackle those challenges in a cost-effective manner.  

Scalability and firm growth 

It is required that modern law firms and corporate legal teams adapt and scale with the evolving ecosystem of the legal sector and legal technology. This ensures a competitive edge is consistently maintained, benefiting longevity and reactivity at any given point. Blue Car Technologies’ modular approach expands your capabilities without the disruption of existing operations or iManage Work DMS.  

Scalability has been discussed within this blog in the context of the product itself, and your options to adopt additional features as and when you deem necessary. However, the scalability of the system to handle increasing amounts of data, users, and workflow complicity without degrading performance is built into Workspace Management for iManage Work.  

The cloud-based architecture, inherent in many of our integration solutions, provides these exact scalability benefits. Leveraging cloud infrastructure to dynamically adjust resources based on demand, removing the requirement for an organization to manage hardware infrastructure themselves and still receive the flexibility to scale up or down as needed. 

Take Action: Your Next Steps  

Workspace Management for iManage Work represents more than just a solution to a myriad of challenges that law firms and corporate legal teams face; it’s a strategic investment in their future. With a modular approach, you can realize the benefits immediately with flexibility to expand when you evolve.  

Firms that implement sophisticated document management systems see significant ROI and improved operational standards, cost reduction, and compliance management. But from your experience, solutions need to start reflecting the need for workspace lifecycle management and simply not just where you hold your workspaces – and that’s where your first step lies with Workspace Management for iManage Work.  

Don’t let settle with just iManage Work, improve and evolve your process to un-chain your potential. Book a no-obligation demo today while competitive advantages remain for forward-thinking organizations such as yourselves.  

[1] LeanLaw, “How Many Billable Hours in a Year: The Complete Guide for Mid-Sized Law Firms”, LeanLaw, May 28^th 2025. How Many Billable Hours in a Year: The Complete Guide for Mid-Sized Law Firms - LeanLaw - Legal Billing Made Easy

[2] Strategic Technology Solutions, “10 Problems iManage Solves for Law Firms”, Strategic Technology Solutions, 2025. 10 Problems iManage Solves for Law Firms - Strategic Technology Solutions

[3] Christian Song, “DMS Archiver for iManage Work Bech-Bruun Case Study”, Blue Car Technologies, 2021. Copy of Bespoke Software Development Capabilities For iManage Work Providing tailored software solutions and integrations with your iManage Work environment 

[4] Jesse Wood, “How Legal Document Management Can Increase Your Firm’s ROI”, Association of Legal Administrators: Legal Managment the magazine of ALA, February 2019. How Legal Document Management Can Increase Your Firm’s ROI