The Intelligent DMS Vision: Highlights from the ALPMA + ALTACON Business of Law Summit
AI can’t be a tool that sits on the shelf — it has to be woven into the way legal professionals work every day. At its best, AI becomes a colleague: anticipating needs, accelerating output, and unlocking insights hidden in your knowledge base. That’s exactly how the role of the DMS is shifting. What was once a passive repository to store and find documents is now becoming a strategic platform that works alongside you, enriching your experience and helping you do your best work.
That transformation was on full display at the ALPMA + ALTACON Business of Law Summit in Sydney. Over three days, the event brought together hundreds of legal professionals and business leaders to explore how people and technology together are reshaping the profession. It felt like the perfect blend of technology and community — a recipe not only for great conversation, but for true AI adoption.
I was thrilled to share NetDocuments’ vision for the intelligent DMS across three sessions, each showcasing how AI, secure workflows, and enriched knowledge can turn the promise of technology into practical value for legal professionals.
From Storage to Strategy: The Evolution of the Intelligent DMS
For my main-stage presentation, I highlighted how legal professionals today are drowning in information. They don’t want to just find documents — they want systems that work alongside them, save time, and contribute to output quality.
Consequently, the DMS is evolving from a passive repository into a strategic platform that drives productivity and innovation.
Enter the intelligent DMS …
- Agentic AI lets assistants draft, edit, and accelerate work product, not just fetch documents and answer questions.
- AI profiling and enrichment transform static documents into living assets, structured so they can be reused and connected across matters.
- Secure workflows and integrations ensure that while AI and automation are brought in, compliance and governance aren’t sacrificed.
AI Readiness: Activating Your Content for Secure AI Adoption
For my side-stage presentation, we dug a little deeper highlighting how an intelligent DMS should act as a secure foundation for your AI strategy. In the next wave of legal AI, content will be automatically classified and profiled, with knowledge more accessible than ever through contextual search.
I highlighted how the unique nature of private legal data means it must remain secure with the appropriate ethical walls and access controls. Moving this content out of your secure DMS to leverage AI introduces risk — not just to data governess, but to confidentiality.
Here I demonstrated how by bringing together private data, enriched metadata, semantic search and interoperability, NetDocuments intelligent DMS creates an AI-powered repository of knowledge.
Evolution of the DMS from Secure Storage to Intelligent Platform
In my final breakout session, I had the opportunity to provide a deeper dive into some of the specific features of our intelligent DMS. Here I demonstrated some of the capabilities of our ndMAX Legal AI Assistant that provides a simple and secure way to leverage AI in a user’s daily lives. Our assistant goes way beyond simply answering questions, as its agentic AI capabilities mean it can also complete tasks such as document editing.
I also provided delegates with a first look at our AI search capabilities which are built to help legal teams unlock insights and expertise from their own documents. Instead of simply being returned links to documents that you need to dig through, legal professionals can leverage the power of AI-powered semantic search to get answers. Why search the haystack when you can ask for the needle? This promises to be a real game changer for many legal professionals!
One thing is clear: legal IT innovation continues to accelerate and at NetDocuments we are committed to staying at the cutting edge so legal professionals can do their best work.
