Legal document management software comparison
Legal document management software comparison is something every law firm has to do before diving into using one of them. Because each of these legal companies know, that every task can be done in several different ways. There’s no one road to success. With legal records management you can, for example, store the files physically in your drawer or a file cabinet. As packs and packs of papers and folders… Doesn’t seem like a very sane thing to do nowadays. Not safe, not efficient, not environment-friendly.
OK, so next up is having the documents on you computer, where another kind of problems await. You can lose the computer with everything in it and how do you give access to you associates to the files they need? The answer is rather obvious and you definitley thought about it already. The cloud! If a legal document management system is not part of your local computer systems, it is independent from the local risks and easily accessible all around the world by the people you choose.
So let’s take a look at some of the best known cloud storage and DMS providers.
Box
Well-established cloud storage provider that even includes metadata to their offering, although it is very limited with no option to add due dates, signers or custom fields that are a necessity when managing legal documents. They are also, unfortunately, priced per user and for 4 USD per user you only get 100 GB of storage. With a separate app you can use Box as a a “regular” folder in your OS, which is convenient, but also means you don’t get the benefit of freeing up room on your harddrive, when using a cloud storage service.
Dropbox
Another well-known brand in cloud storage that offers more room for your files for the same price (although also per user) but it comes with a price of its own — if you share a larger folder or a file with your co-worker, the storage room it takes is counted against both users’ accounts. So if their account is almost full, you just can’t share the data to them. Or if you do share something larger, their account might become full, making them unable to store their own data on their own account. Also, vital metadata options and approval workflows are lacking in Dropbox.
Folderit
A true cloud document management system that is easy to use, secure and affordable, while giving you 250 GB of storage (plenty for documents!) or even 1 TB, and those special DMS features like metadata with custom fields, reminders, approval workflows, versioning, file/folder notifications, previewing documents without downloading them and much more. It does not have the desktop client, everything is online, but it therefore also frees up your local storage and makes all updates instantaneous. You are always using the latest and most secure software. Prices are not per user, but one fixed fee for your whole organization, with unlimited users. You can give access to selected folders to your partners and clients too! Try it for free!
As you can see, there are several alternatives for a legal DMS, but as it mostly is, something that is made for the task, suits better for it.
