There is much talk about Software as a Service (SaaS) being the “light” version of the traditional server-based networks that have been deployed over the past few decades. Time to think again.
NetDocuments, a web-based document management system by the Utah-based company of the same name, is a true SaaS document management system in every sense of the term. It is replete with all of the client/matter document profiling, rigorous security options, and technical sophistication of its server-based competitors, but sports a true competitive advantage in its ease of access and the collaboration options it offers to users, regardless of physical location.
If you can get to a browser via a desktop, laptop, tablet, iPad, iPhone, Android device, or who-knows-what-comes-down-the-road-next gizmo, you can log into NetDocuments to access your documents. Searching for documents in NetDocuments is lightning fast, literally, as it uses Microsoft’s “Fast Search and Transfer” technology to search by client, matter, document type, the doc name or comments, and/or by the text in the documents themselves. Or by virtually any other parameters you choose to define to facilitate your searches.
At the recent NetDocuments certification training in Provo, Utah, my partner Jack Schaller and I learned that NetDocuments was actually first launched way back in 1999, before “the cloud” was even a gleam in Bill Gates’ eye. Presently NetDocuments claims more than 120,000 users (with about 20,000 concurrent users in the system at any given point in time) representing over 700 firms, and over 120 million documents in storage for customers, with some of the nation’s biggest law firms as clients. They have seen almost a 200% increase in documents in storage since 2005, with double the number of users since then.
Besides law firms, which make up about 50% of the NetDocuments customer base, there is a natural fit between the NetDocuments service and financial institutions and brokerages, government agencies, and medical institutions; in the medical arena, NetDocuments security is fully HIPAA compliant. The NetDocuments data store is housed at the main LexisNexis data center in Dayton, Ohio, with a secondary data center at Zions Bancorporation, where replication occurs for all data at the primary site on a regular basis. NetDocuments claims uptime of 99.997% in its most recent years of operation, a pretty impressive track record.
NetDocuments has offered document integration with the Salesforce.com CRM application since 2006, and more recently has provided integration with Advologix, the new practice management system based on the Force.com platform. Additional cloud-based legal software integrations are planned. There is presently an integration add-on for LexisNexis Time Matters, and with Workshare for document comparison.
NetDocuments works seamlessly with the document-oriented applications typically installed on your computer: Microsoft Office, Adobe, and Outlook email. When you save a document or email in any of these apps, you are automatically prompted to save it to a document “profile”: either the conventional client/matter/doc type/author profile, or a profile of your own design. Once saved, your documents are in the cloud, and accessible only to people whose security rights enable them to access those specific documents (usually based on the document profile).
To reduce the burden of profiling every Outlook email message sent or received (yes, it tracks your email, too!), a recent capability allows for mass profiling of emails via “drag and drop”, placing messages into folders automatically placed in Outlook based on user defined “workspaces”. All other documents may also be easily stored and viewed in these “workspaces” which are analogous to file folders, organized by client/matter/doc type, or whatever other categories make sense for your organization’s filing needs.
Collaboration with colleagues or clients when using NetDocuments is independent of physical location, an obvious advantage for multi-office firms. Instead of emailing documents back and forth, and trying to track and integrate changes made by each reviewer, users can set up secure “NetBinders”, giving designated individuals, whether or not they have a NetDocuments account, access to selected files. Real estate closing documents stored in a NetBinder, for instance, could be made accessible for review and approval by both buying and selling parties along with their legal representatives and other key parties, with audit tracking and automatic notifications when any document in the NetBinder is viewed, changed, or approved. This collaborative feature is used extensively by financial services firms who often need to share highly confidential information with clients in a secure and compliant environment.
Since it is in the cloud, setting up NetDocuments does not require a hardware commitment, making it a logical choice for small law firms just getting started, as well as for large law firms who operate in offices around the world. NetDocuments can be deployed very quickly, without a long lead time for hardware procurement and systems planning. There are various tools available to ease the pain (somewhat!) of moving your present server-based document library out to the cloud.
My own “aha!” moment came when sitting at O’Hare on the return flight back from Provo. I checked my email and saw that Jack had sent me a link to his blog draft stored in NetDocuments, which he had drafted and stored in NetDocuments while airborne en route to Philadelphia. From my Android phone, I clicked on the link, signed into NetDocuments and pulled up his draft. Welcome to the cloud.
Jack Schaller has been active in the field of law office technology since 1989, and has worked with a variety of commercial accounting, legal billing, practice management, and document management software products during his twenty plus years in the software consulting field. During his tenure as a software consultant he has garnered many sales and service awards for his work with legal software products. Jack is a frequent presenter at legal conferences and seminars, and is a regular contributor to TechnoLawyer and other technology publications.