Does It Compute?

Keeping Google Docs in Synch with Worldox

I have a solo practitioner client who tells me he is able to keep his documents in Worldox in synch with the same documents in Google Docs.  It works like this.

First, you load the Google Word add-in that keeps Word documents in synch with Google Docs.

You create a document in Word, which synchs with Google Docs. You save it and it is profiled in Worldox. The two are in synch.

You open the document from Worldox in Word. It synchs with Google Docs and is saved to Worldox. The two are still in synch.

From a different terminal, you edit the document over the web Google Docs. Now the two documents are different. But when you open the document in Word/Worldox and it synchs up from Google Docs. When you save the document to Worldox, everything is back in synch.

Where this system would break down would be in a larger firm if a single user did NOT have the Google Docs add-in to Word loaded. When that user opens the document and saves it in Worldox, the changes only go to Worldox. If meantime someone opens the document in Google Docs and changes it, you have two conflicting sets of changes and it is unclear which one would “win” the next time it was opened from Word with the Google Docs add-in.

So this is a system that could work on a small scale, but might be iffy in a slightly larger firm if everything was not configured exactly right.

HP Acquires Autonomy/iManage

So HP has acquired Autonomy, including iManage document management for some $10 billion.  What does this mean?  Historically, when hardware/networking companies acquire software companies, the results have been fairly disastrous. This goes all the way back to Novell’s acquisition of WordPerfect. And of course, more recently LexisNexis’ acquisition of TimeMatters, PCLaw, Juris, etc. 

The reason is basically simple: the acquiring company knows nothing about the legal/software industry (the acquiree).  This was already true when Autonomy acquired iManage. An article by Evan Koblenz in Law Technology News quotes an anonymous law firm source close to Autonomy as saying “"iManage took a nose dive when Interwoven got bought by Autonomy. Their customer service was top notch, and it was painful when it got bought.”

Over the past 10 years or so and multiple sales and acquisitions, PCDocs, now OpenText, has similarly gone downhill.

So there is no reason to expect things to be different this time around.  If I were at a firm using iManage, I would start looking around.  Judi Flournoy, chief information officer at Loeb & Loeb was quoted in the same article as saying: “I don't think it is HP's area of expertise, software specifically, and software that we rely upon for document production. It will be very interesting to me if they do keep the document management.” If iManage gets spun off again, things could get even worse.  There has already been what could be the beginning of a brain drain at Autonomy with the departure of it’s vice president for e-discovery and compliance to Google.

What this means is that the remaining players, primarily Worldox and NetDocuments, will start picking up slack from dissatisfied customers (this has already started happening, in fact). It also, once again, raises the issue of cloud-based document management. I addressed this issue in a recent blog but will no doubt be returning to it frequently, since it will be a critical issue in the next year or two.

KnowledgeTree and Document Management

Knowledge Tree is a newcomer to the collaboration and cloud-based document management field. Based on their web site, they have mostly non-legal clients.

Like many “store and forward” products, saving a document to Knowledge Tree is based on a windows explorer model: “click upload, browse to the right location, and save” as one of their demo videos says. This simply replicates the error-prone model of saving to a physical location.

KnowledgeTree seems to focus on being an industrial-strength cloud-based file sharing program, a step up from the DropBox family of programs. Thus it lets users add one or more “tags” as searchable metadata. It also features a variety of workflow options and document alerts to notify users when documents have been changed. The document store is searchable (including with some boolean operators).

However, it lacks critical document management features, in particular the ability to “lock down” the system and oblige users to actually use it. It’s claim to simplify the uploading of documents with drag and drop technology actually illustrates one of the program’s core weaknesses. Furthermore, it integrates only with a vary limited range of products. So with KnowledgeTree you would constantly have to switch back and forth between the documents (probably a minority) stored in the cloud and everything else. Not a model of efficiency.

So if you are looking for a more industrial-strength version of DropBox, KnowledgeTree is worth checking out. If you are looking for a full-featured document management system, however, you would be better off looking elsewhere.  As a rough estimate, KnowledgeTree is about where NetDocuments was 4-5 years ago, so it might be worth checking back in a few years.

Collaboration, Document Management and the Cloud

The growth of online collaboration tools presents a conundrum for law firms: both an opportunity and a problem.  First, the structure of the problem. 

The leader of online collaboration is probably Google Docs. Google has also released a plugin to Microsoft Word that lets you sync your Word documents with Google Docs. You can give other people rights to view/edit specified documents. However, you have to manually upload selected documents to Google.

Alternatively, using one of a variety of products – DropBox, Smartsync, Sugarsync, SpiderOak, etc. (and new products are popping up at a rapid rate) – you define a directory on your local hard drive and synchronize it with the directory in the cloud. So if you make a change to a file on your hard drive, it is changed in the cloud and vice versa. You can also share the cloud location with other people, so that multiple users can make edits to the same file. The features and functionality of these programs is expanding rapidly to meet competition. Dropbox is probably the leading program, but has been plagued with security issues that have made many people leery of it.

So if you want to create a “extranet” where you can park selected documents for a given client, you could easily use one of these programs or Box.Net (which I use for sharing files with clients).  Similarly, a “war room” for litigation could be created so that various parties to the litigation would have access.  The advantages of sharing files across platforms (PC, phones, Mac, etc.) are obvious.

From a document management point of view, what’s wrong with this picture?  Just about everything. First, it is based on a single individual.  The files reside on your local PC (not a network). So if you wanted somebody else in your firm to work on them, you would have to give them rights to the cloud-based repository. Second, everything about the system is manual. There is no automated save, no indexing, no searching, no “management” features at all. Josh’s trip to Africa is not an adequate model for law firms.

Some more business-oriented programs, such as KnowledgeTree, at adding more “document management” type features, including searching, adding “smart tags” that are searchable to a document, and so on. These will no doubt evolve rapidly (as did NetDocuments a few years ago), but right not they don’t measure up as full-fledged document management systems.

The key aspect of document management from a legal point of view, is the ability to lock down the systems so that use is mandatory: no manually uploading documents. The problem is that once the “synchronized” repository is in the cloud it is outside the reach of the document management system. There is no way to produce an audit trail, track usage, etc. Many of the DropBox-type programs do maintain an audit trail of what happens to documents in the cloud. So in theory, it should be possible to write an API link (as many practice management programs have done) that links the information about what happens in the cloud to the DMS. This has not happened as yet.

So a major challenge facing document management systems will be to develop the ability to establish a link between the DMS system and the “synchronized folders” in a cloud-based repository that otherwise resides outside the purview of the DMS.  Right know, the only way I know of to do this is a multi-step manual process (see my blog on Integrating Worldox with DropBox. 

Whatever company comes up with a solution to this problem will have a major step up on the competition.

Document Management White Paper Updated

Several people have asked me recently “What has changed since you wrote the Document Management White Paper two and a half years ago?

So I thought it would be a good opportunity to update the White Paper. The answer is that not a whole lot has changed.  The main players are the same, the central considerations are the same.

The main thing that has changed is a greater emphasis on the Cloud and web-based services, including Cloud-based collaboration.  These are the major areas in which the White Paper has been expanded.  Check it out at http://www.heckmanco.com/docs/DMWhitePaper.pdf

P.S.  Happy Bastille Day.

Technolawyer Published Document Management Buyers Guide

Technolawyer has republished my Document Management pieces published almost a year ago in its newly-launched “Technolawyer Library” which is supposed to be a “collection of helpful, in-depth research reports written by experts exclusively for TechnoLawyer subscribers.” Click for the Technolawyer Library.

The Cost of a Document Management System - More

A consultant from Baker Robbins (one of the major consulting firms in the U.S.) asked me to expand on the numbers in my Document Management Cost post last week, in particular “what broad cost elements did you model: HW, SW, network, maintenance, staff, configuration, training. What revenue elements did you include: quality of search, time required to file email, time required to share document with client? I think if you look at cost + revenue you might have a different picture.”  Also, Erik Mazzone published a blog on “A Few Pro-Cloud Points,” which is worth taking a look at.

I took the numbers from a Technolawyer post. The breakdown for 25 users is as follows:

Item	Worldox	iManage	NetDocuemnts
Base Software Additional Server Maintenance (5 yrs) Implementation (Install + Training) Web module     (5 yrs maintenance) PDA module     (5 yrs maintenance) Local replication of data Document Upload	$10,000 N/A (not needed) 10,000 17,500 1,779 1,800 N/A (included) N/A N/A N/A	$9,950 5,092 15,090 25,000-35,000 10,383 8,860 4,385 4,385 N/A N/A	$64,410 (5 yrs) N/A N/A 1,800 N/A N/A N/A $7,500 (5 years) $0.2/page =$20,000 for 1,000,000 pages (or a firm could do this themselves)

Some of the imponderables that the user asks for are hard to quantify because they relate to ease of use and the ways in which a firm uses its DMS and its specific needs.  However, based on my experience and speaking with other consultants, some things are pretty clear: iManage is going to be by far the most expensive to maintain in terms of administrative time (not to mention the fact that the future of iManage is somewhat in question since its acquisition by Autonomy, NetDocuments probably the least expensive.  The same goes for training and other ongoing costs. However, it would be a mistake to think that NetDocuments has NO administrative costs.  Somebody has to do configuration, new users, training, etc.

The argument concerning the Present Value of the monthly sum vs. paying a big ticket up front is a reasonable one.  However, there are also leasing options by companies that specialize in leasing to law firms (such as Baytree Leasing), which let you lease the software (and consulting time) for a 3-year period and own it at the end of that time. This could have tax advantages (check with your accountant) and based on generic numbers I got will turn out to be less (possibly substantially less) than the NetDocuments cost over a 3-year period, especially given current interest rates. This is something that a firm would need to investigate further.

Things like quality of search, email integration and various features are things that have to be investigate on a firm by firm basis. A feature that one firm considers an essential deal-breaker could be irrelevant to another firm.  Overall, my impression is that in terms of basic functionality, these programs are essentially a wash, but that specific firms will come to differing conclusions based on their needs. Firms that have specific detailed needs may find an advantage with one program over another.

Why Document Management - Technolawyer Articles

Last December I released a major White Paper on Document Management. The Technolawyer listserve – a primary source of reviews and information about software for lawfirms – asked me to condense the 25+ pages into two shorter summaries. 

Those have now been published as  “Document Management Systems: Why Bother and How to Shop for One,” published on March 17 and 24.  These two articles, as well as my original White Paper, are available on the “Document Management Issues” page of my web site.

Document Management and eDiscovery

Although I am not particularly knowledgeable about the details of eDiscovery, it has always seemed to me that a well-implemented Document Management system such as Worldox would give a firm a considerable leg up when it came to eDiscovery issues. I was therefore extremely interested in well-known technologist and eDiscovery expert Brett Burney's review of version of ISYS:Desktop 9 in Technolawyer. Brett noted:

    Since my career swirls around eDiscovery, I kept thinking of ISYS:desktop in that framework. While ISYS:desktop is amazing for everyday searching, I got excited about the possibilities of using the software to quickly review emails and documents for privilege and eventual production.

ISYS:desktop is no match for full-featured litigation databases like CT Summation, Concordance, or the online eDiscovery powerhouses. Those applications provide a platform for reviewers to enter information about each document, "tagging" relevant files and creating production logs, for example.

But ISYS:desktop absolutely has a place in the litigation support tool belt. Many times, litigation teams simply want a quick, easy tool to just get an idea of what documents they have, a sort of "lay of the land" if you will. You may not always need the full power of CT Summation or Concordance until you get a better handle on what kind of documents you have.

In this scenario, ISYS:desktop is an incredible tool for initiating a "quick peek" at documents. And in version 9, ISYS:desktop has improved indexing tools that does not disturb the metadata of files, so you can rest assured that your data is preserved.

ISYS is the search engine that Worldox licenses for indexing. Using Worldox, you can do a wide variety of searches with a full range of boolean operators, etc. Worldox lets you build a mark-up table for use in the comments field, so you could use the little-known feature to mark up search results for privilege and other criteria.

While it is certainly not a replacement for full eDiscovery (it will not deal with secured files, non-searchable PDFs, images, etc.), using a Document Management system such as Worldox could well provide a firm with an extremely valuable "first pass" and streamline the eDiscovery process.

Autonomy Acquires Interwoven - More

The Orange Rag recently had a post on Automony’s acquisition of Interwoven. In addition to speculation on possible reasons for the acquisition and the future/changes to Interwoven (including possibly renaming it back to iManage), one of the most interesting points it makes concerns the role of a Document Management System in the e-discovery process.

To the extent that a DMS can claim to be organizing ALL your documents, and has mechanisms for organizing them and performing complex searches, it can serve as a significant step up in the EDD process. This seems to me an important point which has been neglected.