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OREM, UTAH – February 8, 2010 – NetDocuments, the leading Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) content management service provider announced today that the national law firm Nelson Mullins Riley & Scarborough LLP, with over 400 attorneys, has selected NetDocuments as its new document management service across its twelve offices.
Nelson Mullin’s conversion to SaaS-based NetDocuments liberates the firm and its IT team from the need to continue managing and maintaining server hardware and desktop software across its offices, resulting in more focused face time with users. NetDocuments also blends collaboration, and document, email and records management into a single, globally-accessible repository, as well as superior searching from what they had before.
“After 15 years of using the same document management platform, we feel we have the same old technology we purchased 15 years ago, even though we have gone through several expensive upgrades,” said David Worth, CIO, Nelson Mullins. “A move to NetDocuments gives us an instant boost in technology with a TCO reduction.”
The NetDocuments SaaS model services law firms of all sizes and after ten years in operation, it has the sophistication of powerful searching, two-factor authentication, ethical wall security, email and digital records management, and built-in business continuity with two redundant world-class data centers required for any prestigious national or international law firm.
“NetDocuments is pleased to welcome the Nelson Mullins firm and its nearly 1,000 users to our SaaS-based, leading next generation of document management and collaboration,” said Ken Duncan, CEO at NetDocuments. Ken went on to say, “David Worth, the firm’s long-time and progressive CIO, has been watching NetDocuments for years and is now excited to deploy the service throughout the firm’s many offices. NetDocuments is delighted to be attracting larger firms and we are particularly pleased to provide our SaaS DMS to such a prestigious firm as Nelson Mullins.”
About NetDocuments
NetDocuments is leading the industry trend for On Demand document management and collaboration services. Organizations of all sizes can save tens to hundreds of thousands of dollars by eliminating the hardware, system and client software, and ongoing administration of a legacy client-server technology model. With the NetDocuments patented service simply “turned on,” business professionals can immediately begin storing, managing and sharing documents throughout the world and on any Internet-connected service device. Founded in 1998 and based in Orem, Utah, NetDocuments has 90,000 users in over 144 countries. For more information about the company and management, go to www.netdocuments.com.
About Nelson Mullins Riley & Scarborough LLP
Established in 1897, Nelson Mullins has more than 400 attorneys and government relations professionals practicing from offices in Atlanta, Boston, Tallahassee, West Virginia, Washington, D.C., and throughout the Carolinas. For more information on the Firm, go to www.nelsonmullins.com , or call 803.255.9794.
All product and company names herein may be trademarks of their registered owners
This post was authored by Danny Johnson of the NetDocuments sales and marketing group.
The Fourth Amendment in the Bill of Rights protects against unreasonable searches and seizures and is a vital part of the United States Constitution. As data stored in the cloud continues to proliferate, the debate on how this law relates to the security of this data will become increasingly important.
Recently, a very in depth analysis on this topic was released in the June 2009 edition of the Minnesota Law Review titled, “Defogging the Cloud: Applying Fourth Amendment Principles to Evolving Privacy Expectations in Cloud Computing.” The article discusses how the fourth amendment relates to data stored in the cloud.  The article was written by David Couillard, who is in his final year at Minnesota Law School.
The Law Review article was brought to my attention by James Urquhart, who writes on cloud computing for CNET.com. Urquhart breaks down the law review article and provides a clear path for how the law should treat data stored in the clouds in an article titled “Does the Fourth Amendment Cover the ‘Cloud’”?
Urquhart sums up the discussion very nicely and lays a solid framework as to how this issue could be approached:
“Coulliard wraps up with a suggested framework for applying the Fourth Amendment to “the cloud” that is very much in line with my own thinking. Treat digital assets on third-party sites not as transactions (like phone numbers dialed), but in the same way you would treat physical assets kept in an apartment or storage locker:
‘[T]he service provider has a copy of the keys to a user’s cloud “storage unit,” much like a landlord or storage locker owner has keys to a tenant’s space, a bank has the keys to a safe deposit box, and a postal carrier has the keys to a mailbox. Yet that does not give law enforcement the authority to use those third parties as a means to enter a private space.
The same rationale should apply to the cloud. In some circumstances, such as search engine queries, the third party is clearly an interested party to the communication. But when content data, passwords, or URLs are maintained by a service provider in a relationship more akin to that of landlord-tenant, such as private Google accounts, any such data that the provider is not directly interested in should not be understood to be open to search via consent or a waiver of Fourth Amendment protection.’
Amen, Mr. Coulliard. Personally, I hope the courts note this framework, and begin applying it to Fourth Amendment cases arising from Internet-based computing immediately. Furthermore, I call for Congress to explicitly codify a similar framework with laws that clearly and unequivocally state the rights of users with respect to their data in the cloud.”
I would recommend reading the entire Urquhart article to fully understand the implications and possible approaches to addressing the issue of cloud data and the fourth amendment.
This post originally appeared as a TechnoRelease in the TechnoLawyer newsletter. Post authored by Leonard Johnson, VP of Marketing at NetDocuments.
At this time every year we find ourselves contemplating our shortcomings and using the New Year as an excuse to change our ways and better our lives. Everyone is sending out resolutions lists, so instead of shooting for the stars, test out these five simple and easy-to-do tips for enhancing your law practice and client relationships for 2010.
ENGAGE CLIENTS MORE IN THE SHARING OF DOCUMENTS
Social media technologies have built up steam recently for a reason; people want to participate and converse. So do your clients. Look for ways to involve your clients and there is no simpler way than to set up a extranet where you can provide them a place on the web to exchange documents securely, involve others on the case, and show your technology leadership to solve problems.
KITCHEN SINK ON THE CLOUD
Will desktop applications and computing become a thing of the past? While not completely, 2010 looks like the year that law firms of all sizes will truly embrace applications that exist online only. Hosted email, hosted practice management, such as Advologix, and hosted document management will give you a complete office on the web.
WORK MORE AT HOME AFTER DINNER
No, you don’t have to go back to the office. You can work from anywhere so easily these days compared to what it used to be like. Place your documents online with NetDocuments and make sure your bandwidth at home is good. Have dinner, spend time with people you love, and when the rest of them settle into their evenings, you can do that extra stuff you were thinking you’d do if you went back to the office.
PROTECT YOUR FIRM’S INTELLECTUAL ASSETS
When a lawyer is producing client documents, aren’t these documents the life blood of your business? Shouldn’t they be protected, accessible and managed? It is a given that every law firm should be backing up electronic data regularly,every day, if at all possible and storing backup data files offsite, preferably in another location. But remembering those backup disks is a hassle. NetDocuments does this for you transparently by simply using its service as it is hosted at LexisNexis’ world-class data center, plus a fully-redundant data center in a national bank vault. For the cost of a meal a month, you get the same technologies that the large firms have.
DEPLOY A WEB-HOSTED AND MATTER-CENTRIC DOCUMENT MANAGEMENT
Never before has the same functionality that large law firms enjoy become available to solo’s and small law firms than now. Get rid of the techie hat and the associated windows directory techie environment, and instead be client and matter-centric with a centralized, anywhere, anytime access, document and email management service. The ethical duties of lawyers to their clients are paramount, and one of the most important is the responsibility to protect and preserve client property. That is what a web-hosted document management offers.
CHECK OFF THESE GOALS IN LESS THAN 60 SECONDS
Sign up for a free, no obligation 30 day test drive that takes just 60 seconds and you can check off all these goals above in one swoop! What a way to start off a new year! And, if you like it, simply turn your test drive into a live account for $30 a month/user or less and off you go.
Get a service that innovates, continually improves and scales as you grow. The NetDocuments team has over 20+ years of expertise with law firms and is today’s SaaS leader in content management. NetDocuments is used by law firms of all sizes thanks to its per-user pricing, scalability, and Web-based benefits.
Post authored by Danny Johnson of the NetDocuments Sales and Marketing Team
It is hard to believe that 2009 is coming to a close. It was a great year at NetDocuments and one that saw much change and excitement. As we look forward to 2010, we appreciate all of our customers and anticipate another wonderful year.
Over the year, this blog attempted to cover what went on at the company, and although it did not capture everything, much of it was documented here. So to end the year, we’ve put together the nine most popular blog posts of 2009.
1. Ride a Wave Within NetDocuments: NetDocuments announces real time collaboration with a Google Wave integration.
2. Dreamforce Offers Glimpse into Future of SaaS and Social Media: How SaaS and Social Media are shaping, and will shape business communication.
3. Anticipating Legal Tech New York: Anticipating highlights for the LegalTech New York 2010 legal technology show.
4. NetDocuments Customer Appreciation : The two customer appreciation videos that were originally shown at our Ilta 09 customer appreciation luncheon.
5. NetDocuments #Ilta09 Twitter Contest: Announcement of the NetDocuments Twitter contest at Ilta 09.
6. NDConnect is Launched: NDConnect user community is launched with a Marketplace, Idea Bank, and Channel Partner page.
7. Document Management for Law Firms : Best document management practices for law firms.
8. A Look at the History of SaaS : How SaaS, as we know it, came to be.
9. Innovations in Document Management: 8 things that changed the history of document management.
Post authored by Danny Johnson of the NetDocuments Sales and Marketing Team
Every year Gartner, Inc. identifies the 10 strategic technologies for the year ahead. It released the 2010 edition in October and I found the results very interesting.
For Gartner to consider a technology, a “strategic technology,” it must have the “potential for significant impact on the enterprise in the next three years. Factors that denote significant impact include a high potential for disruption to IT or the business, the need for a major dollar investment, or the risk of being late to adopt.”
The number one technology on the 2010 list is one that we at NetDocuments are very close to and have been doing for the past 10 years — that is “Cloud Computing.”
“Cloud computing is a style of computing that characterizes a model in which providers deliver a variety of IT-enabled capabilities to consumers. Cloud-based services can be exploited in a variety of ways to develop an application or a solution. Using cloud resources does not eliminate the costs of IT solutions, but does re-arrange some and reduce others.” – Gartner
Listed below are the other nine strategic technologies for 2010:
- Advanced Analytics
- Client Computing
- IT for Green
- Reshaping the Data Center
- Social Computing
- Security – Activity Monitoring
- Flash Memory
- Virtualization for Availability
- Mobile Applications
It was interesting to note that many of the technologies mentioned are in some form related to cloud computing or SaaS. These include “IT for Green,” “Reshaping the Data Center” and “Mobile Applications.” I will highlight each one of these below, as well as “Social Computing,” as it has become even more relevant to the business enterprise with Salesforce.com’s announcement of Chatter.
IT for Green
There are many ways to move to a more environmentally friendly workplace. The last decade saw companies do this by moving to a less paper office with the help of scanners and document management systems to reduce paper waste. The next step for these companies is to reduce energy waste by getting rid of their servers and moving to SaaS and the cloud.
Reshaping the Data Center
Gartner talks about this point in terms of design principles and mentions how a pod-based data center design approach can save space and is more efficient. I propose to take that one step farther by suggesting that a cloud-based design approach can save even more space and is even more efficient. That is because much of the data center can be eliminated by going SaaS and storing data in the cloud.
Mobile Applications
This one actually surprised me. Not because it made the list, but because it was not higher on the list. Gartner states that by the end of 2010, 1.2 billion people will be using mobile devices capable of running rich web applications. Many software providers have already released apps for the iPhone and Android OS that provide rich functionality from anywhere in the world, and cloud computing companies such as ourselves and Salesforce.com allow users to access their entire DMS or CRM directly from the mobile device.
Social Computing
Social media is certainly on everyones radars with the popularity of Twitter and other social networks, and this point was made clearer at Dreamforce 09 when Salesforce.com announced their new Chatter feature. Chatter, which is billed as the “Facebook for the Enterprise” brings social networks to the business enterprise. To learn more about Chatter and social computing for business, read Marc Duncan’s recent blog titled, “Dreamforce Offers Glimpse into the Future of SaaS and Social Media.”
NetDocuments was recently reviewed in the t3 newsletter which deals with technology for financial services professionals. It was written by David Drucker who, along with Joel Bruckenstein, administer the t3 conference and newsletter. Along with running t3, David Drucker is also a journalist, speaker, financial advisor, pit bull rescuer, biker, classic car nut, gadget geek, and bluesman.
In his recent article titled, “A Sampling of Client Portals,” Drucker reviewed four different products that provide client portal functionality for financial advisors. The four products reviewed were Advisorsites, Family Office Network, NetDocuments and Make It A Good Day.
The term “Client Portal” is difficult to define as they can vary in so many ways, but Drucker defines it by comparing it to a virtual vault with a few differences. Drucker states, “A client portal goes beyond the concept of a client vault in that a vault contains documents, or raw material, and a portal includes tools for working with those documents.”
In the NetDocuments portion of the review, Drucker asked Leonard Johnson a few questions.
A client portal goes beyond the concept of a client vault in that a vault contains
documents, or raw material, and a portal includes tools for working with
those documentsA client portal goes beyond the concept of a client vault in that a vault contains documents, or raw material, and a portal includes tools for working with those documents.In his review of NetDocuments,
What are the various ways advisors using NetDocuments can interact with clients,I asked Johnson? “RIAs are telling us they use NetDocumnts as a digital portfolio binder, organized by tabs, from which email notifications are sent if new docs are posted or changes are made.” How does notification work? “If an advisor wants to notify a client of a new document that’s been uploaded, he rightclicks on the document and says notify client. If he’s using Outlook, Outlook will open and embed a link to the folder or documents uploaded, then send the client an email the normal way. If he doesn’t have Outlook, then a NetDocuments email dialogue box opens for him to use. It doesn’t have an inbox; just the ability to email out.”
Us at NetDocuments appreciate t3 for including us in their client portal reviews and found the review done by Drucker to be accurate and fair. To see the entire review, click here.
The t3 conference, which NetDocuments will be participating in, will take place on February 17-20, 2010 in San Diego, California.
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