Two Step's Private Company Equity Management Blog

OK. We can all agree that organizing your files is no fun. In fact, if it doesn’t affect your work, you might want to put it off as long as possible (like cleaning your closet, flossing your teeth, or losing 5 pounds). But if you’ve already determined that getting organized is essential to your success, how do you take that first step - especially when there’s really no end in sight?

The lawyers who use Corporate Focus have not only taken the first step; many now have every minute book document and stock ledger record fully organized in a centralized system - and it’s paying off in greater productivity, better client service and fewer headaches.

If you didn’t spring to action when you heard it was National Organize Your Files Week, let me take this opportunity to give you a little nudge in the right direction. Whether you think of it as the first of 12 steps to recovery - or just choosing an apple instead of chips - here are three simple things a corporate paralegal can do that will start you on the path toward having your minute books and ownership records meticulously organized.

Organize Your Way to Better Productivity - Step 1

Warning: Any one of the following activities may cause you to be more efficient and effective in your legal work.

1) Inventory Your Minute Books: Use a spreadsheet and make a list of the name of every company for which your firm has the minute book. List the name, the date you located it, its location, and who is the primary contact at your firm for the minute book. Also, note (for Item 2 below) whether the stock ledger records are kept in the minute book or kept separate.

Tip: If that seems overwhelming, try to make a list of just 25 minute books. Now that you have the process, another 50. Then, another 50...you get the idea. 2) Inventory Your Stock Ledgers: Same process as above, but this time, make a list of the stock ledgers for each company where the stock ledger records are kept separate from the minute book.

2) Inventory Your Stock Ledgers: Same process as above, but this time, make a list of the stock ledgers for each company where the stock ledger records are kept separate from the minute book.

Tip: Keep in mind that you need to know where a ledger is and who is responsible for it, since you will need to look through the stock ledgers later on and fill in gaps.

3) Inventory Your Capitalization Tables: Same process as above, but this time, make a list of those companies for which your firm maintains a capitalization table in a spreadsheet file. This may be a small percent of those companies for which you have the minute book or stock ledger. Only those companies with more complex ownership records or different classes of stock or options will typically have a cap table.

Once you’ve completed these small tasks, let us at Two Step Software know when you’re ready for Step 2. Getting organized might seem challenging, but it’s just a matter of taking it one step at a time.

Imagine what you might get done before July 4th, when we’re encouraging everyone to stop organizing their files for the entire summer. And how great would it be if you could be more productive, organized and effective when you get back to the office after Labor Day. Before you know it, you’ll be ready to transition to an online system like Corporate Focus. Once you do, you’ll be spending National Organize Your Files Week on vacation.

Watch the Corporate Focus video to learn what it would be like to have all your entity, ownership, minute book and compliance information and documents in a centralized, online repository.

My knee-jerk response to this question is an emphatic "yes."

This year marks my 10th year at Two Step Software, and it's amazing to see how legal software products - including our own product, Corporate Focus - have evolved during this period. Let's take a quick look back at a few of our technology milestones over the past decade.

• 2000 - Corporate Focus transitions to a new version of the Windows Microsoft Access database system (Version 2.5 to 97). Law firms are still using Word Perfect - remember that dinosaur?
• 2001 - Corporate Focus is released in another Windows version (Access 2000).
• 2002 - Corporate Focus adds a more powerful database back-end, SQL 2000, and Two Step releases its first Web browser front-end, Corporate Focus Connect. Our law firm clients who adopted this release were able to give read-only access to their clients, although the system was still a client-server model.
• 2005 - Corporate Focus is released as a complete, browser-based system without any Windows or client installations. The system is offered either customer-installed or as a hosted system. Corporate Focus was one of the first legal software applications to be offered as a hosted system. At the time, many firms preferred to manage their own infrastructure: IIS servers, SQL database servers, and firewalls.
• 2008 - Equity Focus is released. It is used by private companies to perform their equity accounting under FAS 123R. The system is only offered as a SaaS model and companies loved it, since they didn't have to install anything.
• 2008 - Corporate Focus is no longer offered as a self-installed application. All new law firms are using the hosted system, delivered from Two Step's world-class hosting facility.

During this time period, Two Step released many upgrades, but only a fraction of our customers were able to keep up with the latest software release. This was largely due to the hard work required of their internal IT departments to upgrade all of their machines.

Jump to 2010, and the software applications landscape has forever changed. When I look around, I see companies like FirmEx, NetDocuments, Rocket Matter, and a host of others all offering legal "software-as-a-service." This doesn't even include all the cloud systems we use every day, like Facebook, Twitter, Google Apps, Salesforce.com, and many more.

All that said, I believe that a point has been reached where SaaS, hosted applications have become the gold standard. The advantages of using hosted systems are crystal-clear, the highlights being that a) internal IT departments, particularly in the recent downturn, don't have to waste precious resources on software upgrades, b) users are always in the most recent software releases, and c) IT infrastructure budgets can be drastically reduced. Plus, if law firm clients are confident with using SaaS and cloud-based applications for their own data, why shouldn't their law firms be comfortable with it as well? At Two Step Software we see our law firm customers, both new and existing, using our SaaS offering not only because it saves them money every day, but also because it's faster and more secure in most cases.

So should law firms still check out their vendors carefully? Of course they should. SLAs should be checked, questions should be asked, and data confidentiality should be strictly enforced by both the customer and the vendor. But, that's also true if the data is hosted internally.

No one can tell what tomorrow will bring. Will everyone use touchscreen computers (à la the iPad)? Will everything be in the cloud and individual servers be obsolete? Will we all be touching some interface in thin air (à la Minority Report)? I certainly don't know.

What I do know is that in 2020, Corporate Focus will still be here. Lawyers, stock plan administrators, and other legal professionals will be printing stock certificates, generating capitalization tables, and doing whatever other work their clients need done faster and more self-sufficiently than ever before. In 2020, we'll all look back on the "old days" and say, "I remember SaaS and the cloud..."

Alas, the future is...well, it's in the future. If you would like to see how Corporate Focus can work for you today, sign up to see a demo.

And of course, please feel free to add a comment about this post; all thoughts are welcome.

When Brenda Johnson was taping together the burned and tattered pages from a client's many minute books - after a fire destroyed the building that housed the client's business records - she thought, "Thank God this can't happen to our other clients." This is because her law firm, Bingham McHale, now has over 1,500 client minute books stored safely online in Corporate Focus.

For more than 10 years, this 140-lawyer, Indianapolis-based firm has been using Corporate Focus to centralize and standardize its corporate client records. As Brenda puts it, "It makes our attorneys more efficient and responsive to our clients, since from any one of our five offices, an attorney can pull up the minute book online right from their desk."

For Brenda and her fellow paralegals, Corporate Focus eliminates the need to have to first find the minute book - and then go through the tedious process of taking the document out, removing the staples, copying it, sending it to the client, re-stapling it, and putting it back in the minute book. Now, they can just open the document in their browser and send it to a client in a few clicks. Without a doubt, Bingham McHale's attorneys and support staff can work faster, smarter and more accurately as a result of having centralized their minute book records.

Some Bingham McHale clients have direct access to their minute book information and documents - and some do not - but they all understand the numerous advantages of using Corporate Focus. Recently, the firm sent out a letter to every client along with a copy of the Corporate Focus data sheet. The letter notified clients that their data had been centralized in the firm's system, and asked for any updates for the purpose of keeping the information current. Corporate Focus not only impresses clients with its productivity benefits; it also encourages them to take on the responsibility of advising their attorneys about any changes in their legal status.

In advance of her annual review at the firm, Brenda checked her statistics related to how much she had accomplished with Corporate Focus over the past year. She found, to her amazement, that she had entered almost 100 new companies, updated more than 400 companies, and scanned in more than 7,000 documents.

We at Two Step Software are equally impressed. That's why we've made Brenda Johnson one of our Corporate Focus Superstars.

Our friend Brenda is only one of the many Corporate Focus Superstars out there who are using this system to make their lives (and those of their clients) a little bit easier every day. Let us share your success story with others - and of course, we'll add you to the roster of Corporate Focus Superstars.

Great work, Brenda!