System Integrity: Worldox vs. iManage

I recently acquired a couple of clients who came from an iManage world. One of the first things they asked was “can you save documents outside the system? iManage had a ‘save to local drive’ option.” The answer is that although Worldox has a “back door” that allows you to bypass the system, I recommend against telling clients about it. The function also can be passworded so even if you know it exists, you can’t use it unless you know the password.

But the question raises the more interesting issue of system integrity. Worldox is designed to function as a closed system: everything goes through Worldox. Thus if, say in the process of discovery, the firm is asked: “can you guarantee that this is the totality of the documents on your system?” you can reasonably assert that this is indeed the case.

Once you open a loophole, there is no way to restrict what might pass through it. With iManage, you cannot assert that all your critical documents are saved within the iManage system. Anybody can choose to save anything locally at any point in time.

A related issue is the question of personal documents: “what about my personal documents that don’t belong on the system?” The hardline response is that any document created on the firm’s computers belongs to the firm. Technically there is no such thing as “personal documents.”  However, this principle is generally honored in the breach.

With Worldox, there are three ways to deal with “personal documents.” First, by default Worldox ships with a “Personal” profile group that lets users save documents locally, but still within a Worldox Profile. The disadvantage to this system is that the documents are not indexed and not backed up, and if the user changes computers, or if the computer crashes, they are very likely to be lost.

The second option is to redirect the “Personal Profile” to the user’s home directory on the server. These documents are still not indexed but they are backed up.

The best option, in my opinion, is to create a Personal client/matter structure with security rights so that each user sees only their “own” matter. This is a little more work, but has the advantage that the documents are indexed, backed up, and in the event of necessity can be examined by a system administrator.

So Worldox addresses the massive security loophole in system integrity that seems to be the default for iManage.

Comments

[Aaron]

The "save local" option in iManage is just that - an option. It can be disabled.

[holiday rentals london]

Probably you are right that the last option will work the best but I am not sure how it will be if you put two hundred accounts there?