On October 18th of 2022, Private Equity-backed NetDocuments announced its acquisition of the long-standing document management software publisher Worldox.

In the months since the initial announcement, we’ve had a chance to both interpret public statements made by both companies, as well as hear real-world accounts directly from Worldox customers.

In this article, you’ll learn:

• What this acquisition means for users of Worldox
• What NetDocuments/Worldox have been privately telling Worldox users
• The likely future of Worldox as a product
• What steps you should take now if you’re a Worldox customer

How All Users Will be Affected by NetDocument’s Acquisition of Worldox

To recap, NetDocuments announced its acquisition of Worldox on October 18th, 2022.   This announcement came not long after Worldox’s CEO was indicted on criminal charges, which both parties claim is unrelated.

As we serve hundreds of law firms in North America, many of which are Worldox users, we’ve had a chance to reconcile both public statements and messaging directly to Worldox customers.

Here’s what we know.

Mixed Messaging

Worldox has been around since the 1980’s, and is used by thousands of law firms across North America.  Naturally, the questions for all of its user base is:  What will happen to the Worldox product?

In multiple similar legal tech acquisitions, we’ve seen customers of the acquired software product pushed into moving to the acquirer’s own in-house product.  Will the same playbook be used in NetDocuments’s Acquisition of Worldox?

In public statements prepared by NetDocuments and Worldox, the companies state that they will continue to support the Worldox product “for the foreseeable future.”

However, in the same communication they indicate that “Going forward, our focus will be integrating Worldox customers onto our cutting-edge platform,” (referring to their own NetDocuments product).

We’ve had the opportunity to talk to some of our shared Uptime Legal / Worldox clients, many of which have been contacted directly by NetDocuments/Worldox sales personnel already.  Several Worldox customers have shared with us the NetDocuments/Worldox sales rep told them that “Worldox is going away soon,” and tried to convince them to move to their NetDocuments product.

We’ve seen this sort of thing play out before, and believe the writing is on the wall for the future of the Worldox product.

Should Worldox Users Move to NetDocuments?

Given that NetDocuments seems to want Worldox users to switch to their product, the next logical question is–Should Worldox users make the switch to NetDocuments?

Some Uptime Legal customers also use (or have tried) NetDocuments, and we’ve had a chance to hear feedback on the product.  Here are some advantages and drawbacks of NetDocuments as a replacement to Worldox.

What Users Like About NetDocuments

Here’s what some of our clients said they liked about NetDocuments.

What Users Don’t Like About NetDocuments

Here’s what our clients said they didn’t like about NetDocuments, and what in many cases made them look for alternatives.

What Should Worldox Users Do?

With everything we’ve seen and heard, publicly and privately, it seems that for any user of Worldox, “do nothing” is simply not going to be an option.

If you are a user of Worldox, we recommend that you start evaluating alternatives and options now, while there’s still some time.  The good news is that there are a number of very solid legal Document Management products in the market today.

The Future of Legal Document Management

Despite any pressure that users of Worldox feel, they should know that they don’t have to move to NetDocuments if they don’t feel it’s what’s best for their firm.

We invite and encourage Worldox users to explore LexWorkplace, our own document management system, born in the cloud and built for law firms.

• Related:  LexWorkplace vs. NetDocuments