A branded intranet that passed the records audit.
A 60-person law firm's "intranet" was a bare SharePoint 2013 team site nobody opened, while client files lived in folders with no versioning. Their records compliance review flagged exactly that — this is how it got fixed.
An intranet nobody opened, and records nobody could prove.
On paper, the firm had an intranet. In practice it was a bare SharePoint 2013 team site — default look, stale links, no reason to visit. Firm news traveled by email, policies lived in attachments, and the site itself was where documents went to be forgotten. Nobody opened it, because it had never given anyone a reason to.
The work that actually mattered — client files — lived somewhere worse: plain folders with no versioning. When a document changed, its previous state was simply gone. There was no history to consult, no way to show what a matter file looked like at an earlier point in time, and no answer to "which one is current?" beyond whoever edited it last. For most businesses that's an annoyance. For a law firm, whose files are the record, it's a structural weakness.
Their records compliance review said so out loud. Reviewers wanted to see how matter records were kept, how changes were tracked and how long documents were retained — and the honest answer was folders and habit. The flag turned a someday project into a now project: the firm didn't just need a nicer intranet, it needed one whose structure could stand up to the next review.
An intranet organized by matters — with records discipline built in.
A fresh coat of paint on the old site wouldn't have passed the review. We treated the intranet and the records problem as one build: the structure lawyers navigate every day is the same structure that keeps the records straight.
We designed a modern SharePoint communication site in the firm's branding — a home page with news, policies and quick links that gives people a reason to open it, replacing the 2013 team site for good.
Navigation was rebuilt around how the firm actually works: by matter. Lawyers and staff reach a matter's workspace directly from the intranet instead of spelunking through a departmental folder tree.
The loose folders became structured libraries where content types identify what each document is. Metadata does the filing, so a matter's record is organized by what documents are — not by where someone happened to drop them.
Every matter library now keeps full version history. Each change is recorded, earlier states are recoverable, and the firm can show how a matter file evolved — exactly what the review found missing.
We applied retention labels that satisfied the records requirements: documents are kept for as long as policy demands and disposed of on schedule — behavior the firm can demonstrate to a reviewer rather than describe.
Live in three weeks. Clean on re-review.
No vanity metrics — these three numbers are the ones that mattered to the partners, and they're the whole story.
From kickoff to a branded, matter-based intranet live for the whole firm in three weeks — no long transformation program.
Every matter library keeps full version history. No client file sits outside versioning anymore.
The records review that flagged the old setup returned zero findings against the new one.
The service behind this project — and similar stories.
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