Filevine

Best thing to come out of 2020…

Opmerkingen: Overall, I could not be happier with our experience with Filevine. It has exceeded our expectations and truly helped our firm in the last nine months. We were worried about transitioning with our staff, but the process went very smoothly given that we were working remotely at the time. The customer support that we received during our onboarding and integration could not have been better.

Pluspunten:

My most loved feature of Filevine is the flexibility to customize it to fit your firm’s needs. It was extremely important to us to pick a case management software that allowed us to customize features based on all Case types that we handle. Filevine was extremely easy to learn and use to fit our firms needs. Additionally, the report writing and Filevine can be used by almost anyone. It is very easy to pull the information that you need in a very short amount of time.

Minpunten:

There are a couple of newer features in Filevine that could improve. For example, the calendar section in Filevine is something that we currently do not use because of confusion on its integration with outlook. Additionally, I wish that Enterprise automation was a little easier to use.

Best Bang for your Buck

Opmerkingen: I am very happy with Filevine. The support staff is one of the best of any company I have ever used. Not only are they tremendously patient, but they are very knowledgeable and happy to help you with any problem that you or your staff are having. They listen to their clients and try to improve the features that the clients are requesting most. If you are considering the change to Filevine, I recommend that you do it - you won't regret it.

Pluspunten:

Filevine is very easy and is an ideal program for personal injury, especially mass torts. It allows for full customization and you can make different projects for each litigation. It allows you to text directly with the clients, both for their convenience and yours. The information can be placed in multiple sections and it makes it very easy to put pertinent information for your attorneys to use for the cases. You can keep track of all types of information with reports, from which intake sources are working best to what type of cases are currently in your inventory. In addition, I have never had a software that is constantly innovating & improving the way that this does.

Minpunten:

I did not have to integrate from another software, but there are hiccups and delays when that becomes necessary. However, that is true any time you switch from one to the other. The new Docs Plus is very useful, although you will still need to keep at least one account for Adobe Acrobat, as all the features are not there. I wish there was a way to delete comments or tasks (for the administrator), as sometimes these are made but there is no way to clean it up.

Filevine: The perfect system for hands on users that want flexibility in their system

Pluspunten:

Filevine is designed for hands on users that want flexibility in their system. The shipped product is rough, but fully customizable for your work flows. Plan to invest significant time on the front end determining how you want your system to work

Minpunten:

Initially, the data import from a prior system did not go well. I was an early user and the company had "growing pains." Since then, my system works well.

Caution! Watch for undisclosed glitches, especially with DocsPlus.

Opmerkingen: One of primary reasons we chose this program over others was because the add-ons Docs Plus and Vine Sign would replace Adobe. It was a little more expensive to do this, but the convenience of doing everything within one program and having it automatically save to the client's file seemed to be worth the added expense. However, it has not worked that way and now we are paying for both. Most notably, DocsPlus does not correctly convert Word documents to pdf, the editing feature is lousy, and it bates stamped our documents correctly on some pages, but upside down an in the wrong place on others. I have asked for a refund for this portion of the program because it is useless, but FileVine claims that it is somehow my fault that these features do not work. They have yet to show me what I am supposedly doing wrong. In the last meeting with the account manager, we had to tell him how to open a locked document and which icon to click on for editing. I have demanded arbitration over this issue, but they still have not responded. VineSign is useable, but it does not date/time stamp the signature-it only puts a header on the first page of the document. As a result of these deficiencies, we have to convert and manipulate pdf documents using Adobe, save them into our client files on our server, then move them into FileVine. This has created considerably more work.

Pluspunten:

It is extremely customizable. There is a suggestion feature for changes to the software.

Minpunten:

There are many glitches that were not evident until we started using the program. There is no way to try out the program before purchasing it-you have to rely on the representations made by the sales staff. The only trial offered is for the sales rep to guide you through some of the features for 45 minutes or so. The add-ons for DocsPlus and VineSign are much lower quality than using Adobe. The "deadline chains" cannot be modified in the client's file and you have to turn off automatic calendaring for many events because you cannot add a time for the event. The calendar syncs with Google, but we do not get the calendar notifications that we get if the event is calendared on Google itself. But if you do that, it does not show up in the client's file. There is no way to set up automatic reminders that take include both calendar days and court days-it counts only one or the other. We often have deadlines that are based on calendar days, but are extended by a certain number of court days due to the manner of service of the initiating document. There is no way to assign work that is not associated with a specific project. There is no way to have interoffice communications about phone calls, messages, etc. unless it is set up as a "task" and associated with a specific project. So phone messages that are not specifically related to a particular existing client still have to be handled manually.

Overall Thus Far...

Opmerkingen: I really enjoyed the training. I'm looking forward to learning more about utilizing FV to its full potential, tips and tricks to help in customizing our firms FV to make it work more conveniently and effectively for our team and our firm.

Pluspunten:

FV seems very user friendly and efficient. So many capabilities allowing you to stay w/i FV and ie share folders, send out for electronic signature, PDF edit, combine, etc. All really cool features to be more effective and efficient.

Minpunten:

Surprised that when saving a document into a companion case that is already linked to the primary case that you would have to search each case to also "copy" the document there as well instead of a "copy to all companions" option. Like you can save a "note" across the board to all companions attached.