DocuSign supports transactions with document sharing and electronic signature, as well as automated and guided data collection and entry, record updating across disparate systems and payment collection upon agreement, as well as analytics and reporting.
$15
per month
Kira
Score 7.6 out of 10
Enterprise companies (1,001+ employees)
Kira, now from Litera (acquired August, 2021) is software that searches and analyzes contract text. Kira offers pre-built, machine learning models covering due diligence, general commercial, corporate organization, real estate and compliance. Using Kira Quick Study, anyone can train additional models that can identify any desired clause. Kira can be deployed on virtual data rooms and other large repositories of contracts, creating summary analyses.
I am going to speak of a personal experience- on multiple occasions: I need my husband to sign documents during the day and I don't need him here- physically. He sometimes works in different parts of the state as well at his own company. There is no problem at all, as long as he has access to his cell phone, email, and cell phone service- he can sign the documents I need him to. It is AMAZING- I can't speak highly enough of Docusign.
Kira is a great due diligence tool and can be well utilised on both large and small transactions. It also has good application if you are looking to compare multiple documents against a model form document or market standard templates. Kira is less useful if you are looking to review emails (e.g. as part of a disclosure exercise); or if your review involves non-Latin based script languages.
Tracking, particularly when collecting signatures through connected applications, such as an ATS, is not always clean or easily traceable.
Formatting documents to handle electronic signature types (signatures, initials, etc.) is not always easy, and highly dependent on the partner's technology.
It is not convenient to have to use DocuSign as a stand alone product if the signatures are required for 3rd party applications. It definitely excels on its own, but the scope of that usage, at least for us, is slim.
Inability to relabel smart fields to suit the review process means it is hard to align it to particular projects (e.g. it would be useful to relabel the "Assignment" smart field as "Is the contract assignable?")
Not enough non-English smart fields.
Needs the ability to resell user-trained smart fields in a marketplace.
Output is not customizable enough.
Built-in analysis tools are useful but a little basic.
I can't imagine doing business without DocuSign now. I would never want to go back to the way we used to do things. The "new way" is "the way" is "the right way." We can honestly be proud of a "one right way" process and not have to suffer through "5 ways for 5 days."
Generally user-friendly once you have command of the basics, but also has a lot of nuances that can make it difficult to train others on. DocuSign University is a helpful tool, but understandably a lot of content to get through to become a well-versed user. A lot of different functionalities but only a few I use on a weekly basis.
If our firm had more contracts in English, the usability of Kira would be rated higher. However, since we have to train clauses in Portuguese in order to use Kira, it makes its usability lower. We still are not able to fully use Kira for reading contracts in Portuguese. It takes a long time and many associate hours to make Kira usable in other languages.
I'd give them a 10, but there has been 1 or 2 small cases that seemed to fall to the wayside, but I was able to call them up and get them resolved. We were having a bad implementation night (after midnight) and we needed assistance from Docusign. They were able to get an engineer to help us in the early morning hours
Customer Support is excellent. The online help portal is probably the best I have ever seen. Great videos with content easily found. The HelpLine is staffed by knowledgeable people. The videos have saved us providing a lot of in-house training, which we would struggle to resource. The account managers really know the product and their law firm clients and share best practices and trends.
Docusign is super easy to use, and apart from a few administration details, there was really nothing to train on. Post implementation, there were issues with configuration of auto-filled documents with the integrating 3rd party. That training required some time, because the DocuSign expert took the time to walk me through the 3rd party's configuration (how often does that happen?) so I could see how DocuSign should be best used to overcome weaknesses in the 3rd party platform. 10/10 expert care.
Until you get the hang of it, I recommend doing several internal tests before sending a document to a client. As I mentioned earlier, you have to go through a bit of trial and error at first to verify that the workflow works as expected.
I would say that DocuSign's biggest competitor and a most similar product is Adobe Sign. They both offer almost identical features with Adobe offering a slightly better interface. Adobe Sign is also less costly than DocuSign while offering templates that can be useful for various activities. If you are looking for more branding options then Adobe offers a slight advantage but for corporate control, I would say DocuSign offers more security.
Kira offers a lot more out of the box than other providers and is also more flexible around integrations. This, plus the clear pricing structure, is why we went for it instead of (or as well as) others. Diligen, RAVN, Leverton, Della, Seal not in list.
