Matter Center’s main benefit is that it’s integrated directly into Office — once you purchase the add-on, that is. Microsoft is currently planning on making Matter Center widely available by the end of the year. To use it, you’ll also need a subscription to Office 365 and Azure, Microsoft’s cloud computing platform.
By Lawyers (and a Giant Software Company) for Lawyers
According to the marketing materials coming out of Redmond, Matter Center comes straight from the company’s legal team — all 1,200 of them. Apparently, MS lawyers were looking for a way to make document sharing and collaboration more efficient when they came up with the idea for Matter Center. The program was initially used only in-house until Microsoft released a preview version at last year’s International Law and Technology Conference. Since then, almost 200 firms have experimented with Matter Center.
Given the slow rolls-out, others have already had time to make improvements and add-ons for Matter Center. Take, for example, the LawToolBox Court Deadline SharePoint App. (That name just rolls off the tongue, doesn’t it?) LawToolBox works in sync with Matter Center and SharePoint, part of Office 365, to attach deadlines to documents.
