Our Take
iManage is shipping real infrastructure for AI agents in legal (MCP Server, Threat Manager, granular policy controls), but the real question is whether law firms will actually use the governance layer or treat it as checkbox compliance.
Why it matters
As AI agents embed deeper into legal workflows, visibility and control matter more than feature count. iManage is betting governance-first will win over faster-but-riskier integrations.
Do this week
Security and knowledge management teams: audit your current AI agent permissions and check whether your iManage version supports the new granular client- and matter-level restrictions before your first multi-agent rollout.
iManage Ships Five Core Feature Groups
iManage released updates spanning AI governance, search, records management, and external collaboration. The centerpiece is expanded Model Context Protocol (MCP) Server support, which now integrates with Claude through Anthropic's partner ecosystem and Claude store. Claude can access governed iManage knowledge—matter history, documents, institutional context—in permission-bound, auditable fashion.
On the governance side, iManage Threat Manager now surfaces AI agent activity directly in user activity reporting, giving security teams visibility into what agents access, move, and modify. Security Policy Manager is evolving to support granular client- and matter-level restrictions for AI use, beyond the current ethical walls and permission checks.
Search infrastructure expanded with iManage Insight+ Multi-Region Search, providing unified search across jurisdictions. Native OCR makes scanned documents and image-based PDFs searchable and legible to AI within the platform. iManage Disposition Manager, a cloud-native records management app, now allows interventions and overrides when workflows encounter issues like unavailable approvers or checked-out documents.
A smaller feature: iManage Collaboration Links enables secure external sharing through simple links, with governance and Microsoft 365 co-authoring built in. External parties can view and edit documents without an iManage account.
The company reported gaining 90 new customer logos in 2026 and expanding its cloud footprint to 78% of global customers (company-reported). It claims 83% of the Top Global 100 firms and 79% of the Am Law 100 now use iManage.
Governance Tools Lag Behind Agent Adoption
Law firms are deploying AI agents without systematic visibility into agent behavior. iManage's Threat Manager and Security Policy Manager address a real gap: the ability to audit and restrict what agents can see and do. MCP Server integration with Claude is table stakes for any knowledge platform playing in the agent era.
But the gap remains structural. The new governance features are available "looking ahead" for Security Policy Manager (future roadmap) and described as roadmap items for Threat Manager. A legal operations team needs to know today whether their iManage instance supports granular AI restrictions or whether they are dependent on a future release cycle. The press release does not distinguish between shipping now and shipping later.
Native OCR is practical (years of scanned files become AI-visible) but incremental. Ask iManage playbook analysis for contract review is a use-case win, not a capability advance. Multi-region search is infrastructure, not differentiation.
Three Immediate Actions
First: if you use iManage and have deployed AI agents, check the version status of Threat Manager and Security Policy Manager. Roadmap announcements are not deployments. Audit what you can actually report and restrict today.
Second: if you have OCR-heavy legacy document libraries, request a scoping conversation with iManage. Native OCR unblocks AI indexing of content that would otherwise remain invisible to agents and search.
Third: if you are evaluating MCP-compatible knowledge platforms, test Claude access to your governed work product in a sandbox. The integration is now available; permissions model and audit trail matter more than feature breadth.