In 2016, ShareFile was lauded as one of the premier products for secure document storage and sharing by law firms. However, there then came a period when ShareFile appeared to dim its presence in this market, showing little outward intent to market or sell to this industry. According to original observations made as part of a review in 2016, this may have been at least partly due to the company’s acquisition and restructuring. Earlier this year, parent company Citrix, which has owned ShareFile since 2011, was taken over by the private equity firms Vista Equity Partners and Evergreen Coast Capital, becoming part of the new Cloud Software Group.
Now ShareFile has reignited its aspirations for expansion within the legal industry, particularly among small and mid-sized firms. This week, the company unveiled ShareFile for Legal, billing it as a secure, collaborative client experience solution for law firms.
When last reviewed in 2016, ShareFile was a primarily a cloud-based platform enabling file storage, synchronization, and encrypted file and email sharing. While the fundamental core of ShareFile doesn’t appear to have changed, it has upped the ante with additional features targeting broader client needs and workflow issues in law firms. Moreover, it boasts enhanced security protections.
ShareFile for Legal’s new features include Security threat detection alerts, Task Management, and native integrations with QuickBooks and Salesforce. These features, according to this week’s announcement, empower law firm employees to mitigate security risks, manage assignments and tasks related to documents, and enhance client communication via task tracking and updates.
The company claims to have also upgraded several features earlier this year for law firms, including secure document management, collaboration, and automated workflows. With this enhancement, ShareFile now takes on the function of a client portal. Its more recent blog post emphasizes ShareFile as an ideal way for law firms to maintain remote communication with clients, facilitating the onboarding, agreements signing, documents upload and downloads, tasks tracking, contracts editing, signing and much more.
Whilst I have yet to experience this new ShareFile for Legal firsthand, a follow-up review will hopefully be in the pipeline. For a more in-depth look at these new features, a ‘How It Works’ video is scheduled to be produced in collaboration with ShareFile. Pricing for the new service starts at $50 a month for five users, with additional plans offering further features at $80 and $125 a month.
For more information on this development, check out the original story via LawNext here.