Filevine is well suited if you want to have a practice management program that is not Clio and that is difficult to use, lacks essential features, and is overpromised. It is not suitable for heavy litigation. What kind of legal practice system refers to the core elements as "projects"? Not matters or cases?
It is ideal where security is your number one concern or where there is a need to share securely across different physical locations. Speed is less than ideal in certain usage scenarios. It is limited by the speed of the internet and it can be difficult to pull large quantities of documents when researching or answering discovery requests, although, that being said, it can be addressed by maintaining your own secure server to contain a mirror of your online documents. But then the security for a mirror falls back on the organization.
In my opinion, customer service is as bad as I have ever experienced anywhere. Even the IRS is more responsive than Filevine.
In my experience, their staffing and personnel changes so frequently that even if you do find someone who is responsive they either leave the company or are reassigned.
Delay. At times, there is a delay between saving a document into Netdocuments and actually seeing them in the appropriate workspace. Such a delay is caused by the system indexing the newly added file.
Netdocuments' servers slow down at times causing users to receive error messages. This can be quickly remedied, but can become a nuisance.
I think the layout is easy to navigate. There are just a few small things I wish were easier, like making contacts directly from the app, or utilizing the search bar for a specific case rather than all cases
The product is simple to learn and adheres to well-known web user protocols. The NetDocuments team spends a lot of time talking to customers regarding how to improve their interface, and are pretty quick about implementing good ideas. The system is reliable and repeatable, and similar functions are laid out consistently and in formats that users are used to.
NetDocuments is a performant web app. It is reliable and provides all the functionality of a sophisticated document management system. It also can serve, through its APIs, as a base system for other applications, which enhances its value. Other vendors find the company easy to work with, and it consistently seems to be the first to offer new features and technologies to its customers.
I've never had to contact support, but I won't give it a ten. We've had a few hiccups along the way, but nothing that couldn't be fixed within 24 hours.
Filevine is much easier to learn and use, the user interface is more appealing (with bigger fonts and easy-to-understand icons), and its customization feature is easier to use and understand.
We switched to NetDocuments 11 years ago. So, to be fair and accurate... the OpenText product at that time was called PC Docs and the company (that OpenText acquired) was Hummingbird. I can't remember who owned iManage at the time. Anyway, NetDocuments was a superior product at the time, in general, and more specifically because the search and remote access features\functions were superior (and still are).
