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.
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