As my readers know, my practice has focused exclusively on Worldox for the past several years. With NetDocuments' acquisition of Worldox a little over a year ago, that is drying up as clients start to move to NetDocuments or some other program.
So it's time to close up shop and retire.
Thanks for all the years of support.
I recently got an invite from Google to try out its new Bard GPT. Mainly it refused to answer various questions about state laws and regulations. But I got a fairly interesting answer to “What are the main characteristics of a legal document management system?” At first glance it seems like a pretty good summary. But when you look a little closer, it gets more complicated.
My comments are interspersed in brackets:
Document storage: The system should be able to store and manage a large volume of documents, both electronic and paper. [A computerized system should be able to manage paper documents????]
Security: The system should be secure, with features such as encryption and access control.
Compliance: The system should be compliant with all relevant regulations, such as HIPAA and GDPR.
Auditing: The system should be able to track all user activity, including document access, changes, and deletions.
Version control: The system should be able to track changes to documents and allow users to revert to previous versions. [It is unclear whether this means automatically, which would be gross overkill, or by designation to create versions.]
Search: The system should be able to search for documents by keyword, date, and other criteria.
[The obvious missing item here is full-text search. “Other criteria” is meaningless.]
Collaboration: The system should allow users to work on documents together in real time.
Electronic signatures: The system should allow users to sign documents electronically.
Mobile access: The system should be accessible from mobile devices.
Cost-effectiveness: The system should be affordable and easy to implement.
[Again, this is meaningless. Cost should be judged by ROI, not price, and while ease of use is an issue, implementation is not.]
These are just some of the key characteristics that a legal document management system should have. When choosing a system, it is important to consider your specific needs and requirements.
[More blah blah blah]
This pretty much illustrates my a priori prejudices concerning the various Chat GPT offerings. They can offer a good point of departure, but there are glaring errors and a lot of generic platitudes that don’t mean very much at all. So while GPT can offer a good start, it can also probably stunt any serious consideration of a topic by encouraging lazy thinking. I expect GPT will perpetuate the “it’s on the internet, it must be true” syndrome. So... be suspicious, be very suspicious.
Occasionally a client calls complaining that there are a whole bunch of funky files showing up on their Worldox screen. Most often, this is because a user has tried to download an entire web page (as opposed, say, to a PDF page on the web) to Worldox.
Web pages are actually made up of many individual files: each graphic is a separate file (*.jpg or *.png); the page is held together by a java script (*.js) or other mechanism, etc. Worldox downloads each of these little individual files, which then show up as assorted garbage.
The files themselves are stored in subdirectories under the Worldox matter (typically 123456 files) and have to be deleted manually from Windows Explorer.
The moral of the story: Don’t try to download web pages to Worldox!
With NetDocuments' acquisition of Worldox, firms are considering their next steps. Obviously firms should be performing a due diligence review as to their options: what their needs are and whether to switch to NetDocuments or some other product.
Whatever the result, this would be a good time to do some cleanup. Many firms don’t maintain their data very well and systems are cluttered with closed matters, excess doc types, etc. Here are some basic things to do.
Archive Closed Matters. Firms should periodically archive closed matters and mark them as “inactive” in Worldox. This reduces the number of matters that appear on your screen (“inactive” matters don’t show up) and makes searches and routine operations more efficient. You can archive either to the main Worldox repository or to a separate hard drive. Archived matters are still available and searchable if desired. It does take one extra step, but since this will be very infrequent the time savings are considerable.
Review and possibly consolidate DocTypes and Cabinets. If the firm has a large number of doc types, this is a good time to review them. For example, I did a survey for a 50-user firm of the last 3 years (about 500,000 documents). They had almost 20 doc types with fewer than 20 documents (one-one hundredth of one percent) assigned to them. This is counter productive. Some firms have also multiplied cabinets. It may be desirable to consolidate them prior to trying to convert from Worldox to NetDocs or some other program.
A number of clients with new machines or new installs have been reporting problems with the Adobe-Worldox integration recently. There are two versions of these issues.
If you are running 32 bit Acrobat you may see any error message that says “Unable to load Worldox integration for “ACROBAT.EXE-22" Worldox integration for Acrobat will not be enabled.”
By default, Acrobat enables “enhanced security” – i.e., it won’t let Acrobat integrate with any other programs. The solution for this is pretty simple. In Acrobat, go to Edit | Preferences and scroll down to Security (Enhanced). The screens may be slightly different for different versions but there are two options you need to turn off.
– UNcheck Enable Protected View at startup (and check the “OFF” radio button for “Protected View”)
– UNcheck Enable Enhanced Security
This will turn off these options and let Acrobat work with Worldox.
If you are running 64 bit Acrobat the solution is more complex and involved adding “hooks” to the Worldox integration files. You will need to contact your consultant or Worldox tech support to do this.
I had a very productive discussion with senior NetDocs representatives last week. They vigorously assured me that NetDocs plans to support Worldox for the foreseeable future. That is certainly positive.
In light of that, why would current Worldox clients want to consider switching to NetDocs? There are several main reasons.
1. The Cloud. With hybrid work patterns now apparently firmly entrenched, cloud availability (as opposed to remote access to a firm’s servers) may be advantageous. In addition, firms with multiple offices may find the cloud structure attractive. Note that SaaS applications like NetDocs deal with a single application at a time, whereas the “desktop in the Cloud” approach has all your apps in one place in the Cloud, and not each one accessing the cloud separately.
2. Firms typically have three core products: Document Management, Time and Billing, and Practice Management. In addition, there may be specialty products for boutique firms or particular practice areas (Contract software, e-discovery, etc.). As firms migrate to cloud versions of these products, they may find that integration with NetDocs is superior to that with Worldox, which does not integrate well with cloud products.
3. NetDocs superior ability to provide collaboration features in terms of client portals and document collaboration may be important to many firms.
4. There will come a time when firms have to replace their server infrastructure. At that point, rather than a major investment in new hardware, NetDocs may be an attractive alternative.
Why stay with Worldox?
1. The firm is happy with Worldox and has no felt need to replace current remote access functionality.
2. Switching to NetDocs might mean the loss of important functionality. For example, firms using the Symphomy Profiler system which dramatically increases the efficiency of scanning documents or the Worldox Email Agent. I have one client that automatically processes over 10,000 emails a month into Worldox from their debt collection system. That would be a major issue if they switched to NetDocs. On the other hand, NetDocs is developing functionality at a significant rate and missing functionality may become available in a year or two.
3. Financial. NetDocs is more expensive than Worldox on an ongoing basis by several orders of magnitude. In addition, the conversion process will be a very expensive one-time charge. Firms may not want the expense or may need time to plan for it.
Imponderables. NetDocs has a dramatically different “look and feel” from Worldox although the basic functions are similar in both products. Some people will love it; others will hate it. I would recommend that as part of their “due diligence,” firms have one of their senior power users look at one of the NetDocs on-line training offerings to get an impression of what using NetDocs would be like. The one I prefer is DoxAdvisor’s NetDocuments Academy, available here
If your firm uses Worldox, there are a number of hard decisions that need to be made now that Net Documents has acquired Worldox. Within the foreseeable future (maximum 3-4 years) NetDocs will probably sunset Worldox and it will simply stop working. That has been the lesson of the history of software acquisitions over the last 15 years or so.
NetDocs officially says that its “focus will be integrating Worldox customers onto our cutting-edge platform at their own pace.” As a practical matter, however, sales people have quotas to make and their income is at least in part based on commissions. So you can expect intense pressure from sales people to move to NetDocs sooner rather than later. Originally NetDocs said that while it would not sell new Worldox implementations, existing firms would be able to add users. However, it is not clear that that will still be the case, at least not after an initial period of time.
What is it going to cost? This will depend on a number of factors, but you should count on paying 5 or 6 times your current cost with Worldox on a yearly basis. This depends in part on whether the firm is using Symphony OCR with Worldox. NetDocs includes an OCR function, so you won’t need Symphony any more. That said, NetDocs is softening the pain somewhat by offering a 3-year buy-in with the first two years at sharply reduced prices (approximately 25% and 50% of the full price in years one and two respectively). It is not possible to put hard numbers to this, because NetDocs tends to negotiate prices individually with each firm. But the “standard” full price for a 20-user firm will probably be around $50-75/user/month. The per-user price would go down for larger firms, etc. In addition, NetDocs offers a delayed implementation feature. So if you sign up for NetDocs today, you can defer installation for a period of time (6 mos., a year) and defer paying as well. NetDocs wants to lock people in so they don’t start exploring other options.
What Are Your Options? The answer is, there are not many. Most practice management programs have some sort of primitive “document management” features but these are frequently not more than windows explorer on steroids, and firms have rejected them in favor of Worldox. The only other full-fledged DMS on the market at this point is iManage. This has traditionally focused on larger firms but they have recently brought out a cloud version. It may be worth checking out.
In any case, everything is up in the air right now, and I would hold off on making a quick decision. It is doubtful that anything bad will happen to Worldox within the next year or so, so the firm has some time to see how things sort out. The down side on waiting is that you may get a better deal if you convert to NetDocs sooner rather than later.
NetDocuments announced this week that it has acquired Worldox, ending a protracted period of rumors and negotiations.
For the time being, nothing much will change. Officially, NetDocs position is that its “focus will be integrating Worldox customers onto our cutting-edge platform at their own pace.” What this means, I expect, is that within the next 3-5 years (or possibly less), Worldox will cease to exist as a viable option.
So current users will be fine for the immediate future, but it is time to think about what comes next. At this point, there are only two options: NetDocs or iManage. It is worth looking at both of them (iManage has announced it will be winding down its on-premise version in favor of the Cloud).
As a first step, firms might want to purchase an online training package. The one I prefer is from Peter Branningan’s DoxAdvisors (https://www.doxadvisors.com). It is a bit more expensive than some of the others, but worth it. This will give you a feel for how NetDocs works. My basic feeling after going through courses from a couple of vendors is that NetDocs is designed to be “windows-like” for middle level users and Worldox is designed for maximum productivity by high volume power users. NetDocs also generally has a more “do your own thing” approach (although this is configurable) whereas Worldox wants to centralize everything for a given matter (documents, scans, emails, etc.) into a single electronic searchable repository.
NetDocuments main attraction is the Cloud and functionality associated with it. In addition to the “work from anywhere” issue, NetDocuments can provide a portal for a firm’s clients to access specified documents and/or collaborate with attorneys on specific documents. It lets you send large files as a link (and you can control what sort of access the recipient has) as opposed to an actual file. NetDocs also has some nice features that Worldox lacked, such as the ability to create a PDF from a Word document when attaching it to an email or create a PDF as a version of a Word document.
Several clients have expressed interest in the Worldox Email Agent recently. After it is configured, the Agent automates copying or moving emails from a sub-folder in Outlook to Worldox. Simply drag and drop an email to a sub-folder and it is automatically sent to Worldox. If you copy the email, there is an indication within Outlook that it has been copied to Worldox. You no longer have to fill out or verify profile information.
To my mind the most significant advantage of the Agent is that it lets you copy/send emails from a smart phone, iPad or other mobile device that runs Outlook to Worldox. Drag an email to a sub-folder on your phone and it goes to Worldox. You no longer have to be in the office and have Outlook and Worldox running. The Agent does this by shifting the processing of emails from the local PC to the Exchange server.
The Agent comes with Worldox, there is no additional charge. There is, however, a fair amount of setup, including editing the Admin account in Exchange. In Outlook, the Agent only works with sub-folders, it does not work with your main in-box. So if you have a very large inbox with only a few subfolders, you may have to create 20 or 30 sub-folders and link each one to Worldox. Once that is done, however, the drag and drop process is automatic.
When emails are sent to Worldox, the subject line becomes the description in Worldox. Many people make adjustments to the description to make it more closely resemble the actual content of the email. This is not possible with the email agent (you would have to change the actual subject line, thus changing the content of the email, which is never a good idea).
Worldox’s goal has always been to develop Worldox Web from an app most appropriate for part-time use to a full-fledged client. With the recent updates that fixed various glitches, and the addition of management capabilities to the web client (assuming you have rights), I think this goal is pretty much attained.
So the question is, what is the best use for Worldox Web? Most firms already have in place some sort of remote work scenario, whether it is logging in to their office workstations or accessing Worldox from a terminal server. These solutions provide access to the firm’s entire suite of products, whereas Worldox Web only gives you access to Worldox. So other solutions will be more full-featured.
The first thing that springs to mind is for people who use iPads. Worldox Web has an iPad client (which the heavy Worldox client does not). So you can access Worldox with your iPad using Worldox Web.
A second use is a variety of remote access when all you need is Worldox and the main access is not practical. Some people find this useful in court, for example, just to check some documents. Web can also be useful in scenarios where a firm has a number of part-time users in a high-volume transactional practice that just need Worldox access. Note that using Worldox Web does not use a license, so you could have users in addition to your Worldox user count (however, the number of Web users cannot exceed the number of licenses the firm has).
There are a number of other possibilities. For example, I had one person at a firm tell me that they use Worldox Web as a third screen when accessing Worldox.
It is worth giving some thought as to whether Worldox Web might be a good option for your firm. While you will need some additional hardware, there is no charge for the software itself.
John Heckman is a consultant for legal software.
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