Keep Tabs on Your Legal Documents

A legal agreement may be the start of something wonderful in a business. But keeping track of all the details in a large number of contracts can be a record-keeping nightmare.

Mumboe's main dashboard shows upcoming and past-due tasks, along with their deadlines. Prominent icons allow you to create, view, or find an agreement you've stored in Mumboe's online database. A new service called Mumboe takes legal documents out of dusty file cabinets and puts them into a secure and searchable online database. It can help a business create and track both its legal agreements and any deadlines or other key information related to them.

Mumboe is a Web-based alternative to desktop software for document management, such as Docsvault. Other online services, such as Microsoft Office Live Small Business, make it possible to store and track documents. Mumboe, though, is particularly suited to managing a raft of legal agreements since it also tracks related tasks and data that can be important, such as a contract's expiration date.

I suspect the very fact that it's an online service will dissuade certain potential users. Some lawyers, for instance, wouldn't entrust sensitive documents to any database on the Internet, no matter how secure. But, assuming you select a strong password, online transmission of your documents should be well protected by the service's 256-bit encryption.

After creating a user account, you log in to Mumboe via your Web browser to find a spare yet elegant user interface. The main dashboard shows upcoming and past-due tasks, along with their deadlines. You also see prominent icons that allow you to create, view, or find an agreement in your online database.

A menu bar across the top provides one-click access to manage agreements, tasks, and contacts. Other menu options include bookmarks and recently viewed items.

Mumboe lets you create various types of contracts, such as a lease or a nondisclosure agreement, using Microsoft Word templates that you can download from Mumboe.com and then customize in Word or any Word-compatible application. The service's main value, however, lies in its ability to track legal agreements.

You may upload agreements to Mumboe in .doc (Word), PDF, or TIFF formats. Once the document is entered into the database, access to it can be shared with other users you authorize. The service supports several different ways to search for an agreement, such as by the names of parties to the agreement, or by contract renewal and expiration dates.

Mumboe also provides you with a database for tracking key provisions of these documents, such as payments required, purchase order numbers, and territory covered. It also tracks events, such as new versions of the agreement. Right now, you must manually fill out most of the applicable database fields for each contract, but Mumboe plans to automate more data entry in future revisions.

Integration with customer relationship management service Salesforce.com is planned for later this year, so that you'll be able to link Mumboe data to Salesforce.com's database.

Mumboe is aimed at a range of businesses--small to enterprise-size--that need to keep close tabs on their legal agreements. The service could prove useful for both in-house legal counsel and outside legal advisors who need to review draft agreements and keep tabs on a business's existing contracts.

Mumboe is currently in beta testing. The full service will debut March 20 with three versions. Mumboe Express is free and includes storage for up to ten agreements (50MB) and shared access for up to three users.

Mumboe Standard includes storage for 250 agreements (500MB) and costs $24 per user per month with no limit on the number of users. Pro can store up to 1000 agreements (2GB) for $48 per user per month. Organizations that require more than 2GB of storage should contact Mumboe for enterprise pricing.

Assuming you require more than what's offered by the free Express edition, Mumboe will cost more than a filing cabinet, the traditional repository for legal agreements. However, many organizations should find that the ability to share documents, track revision history, and keep tabs on deadlines is worth paying for.

Richard Morochove is an IT consultant and writer. Send him questions about using technology in your connected small-to-midsize business via e-mail . PC World may edit your query and cannot guarantee that all questions will be answered.