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DALLAS, TEXAS – November 5, 2021 – NetDocuments, the leading cloud content management platform where legal professionals do work, today announced the winners of their Inspire 2021 Partner Awards.
NetDocuments’ second annual Partner Awards recognize leading companies spanning the ISV network, implementation providers, international partner companies in Asia Pacific, EMEA, and Latin America, as well as partners across all NetDocuments business segments.
This year, the winner of the Inspire 2021 Partner of the Year Award was presented to Centerbase, a legal time & billing, accounting, and practice management platform. Centerbase is recognized for its relentless effort and understanding of the NetDocuments capabilities. Over the course of the partnership, Centerbase has been able to develop a superior integration with NetDocuments, supported by active and driven marketing of the integration, and has ultimately provided advertising of interactive updates and technical support to the thousands of NetDocuments customers. It is for these reasons that Centerbase was selected to be the recipient of this year’s award.
Rob Joyner, VP of Sales and Marketing at Centerbase, was virtually present to accept this prestigious award, “On behalf of the team at Centerbase, thank you to our friends at NetDocuments. Over the past five years, it has been an amazing partnership, we have been able to accomplish so much in the way of helping mid-size law firms. We are excited to continue the partnership and do great things in the future.”
Inspire 2021 is a virtual global conference designed for NetDocuments customers and partners. Tailored product and educational sessions; customer and partner case studies and innovation; and subject matter expertise are on display to showcase intentional innovation – innovation you can depend on and that’s inspired by legal teams around the world.
“The NetDocuments partner ecosystem has always been an integral part of our annual educational conference, and this holds true for Inspire 2021,” said Reza Parsia, VP, Strategic Partnerships, NetDocuments. “Our partners are constantly pushing the envelope to innovate and help our customers get the most out of their NetDocuments platform experience. Our second annual Partner Awards rewards this drive for “intentional innovation” and honors the ‘Partner of the Year’ across eight categories.”
The 2021 Inspired Award Winners, including all Partners of the Year, can be found online at www.netdocuments.com/inspire.
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About Centerbase
Centerbase is a cloud-based legal operations system that empowers midsize law firms to run their practice with confidence. It’s a highly scalable and configurable system that liberates legal teams from manual work by automating routine tasks and connecting them in a single collaborative workspace. Boasting a comprehensive feature set of billing, accounting, and practice management tools plus the ability to offer full-history data migrations, Centerbase has become the go-to solution for midsize law firms. For more visit centerbase.com.
About NetDocuments
Founded in 1999, with more than 3,400+ enterprise customers worldwide, NetDocuments is the legal industry’s most trusted cloud-based content services and productivity platform. Complete with state-of-the-art built-in security, compliance, and governance solutions, NetDocuments offers document management, email management, and collaboration technology complete with disaster recovery, enterprise search, and matter-centricity features. For more information about NetDocuments, please click here.
Centerbase, a legal practice management software company that provides mid-sized law firms with a cloud-based platform to streamline operations, is pleased to welcome Bob Freeburg as Chief Technology Officer.
The hire follows Centerbase’s recent growth equity investment from Mainsail Partners and underpins the company’s commitment to aggressive growth and strategic expansion. Following a banner year in 2020 and ongoing momentum year-to-date, Centerbase has continued to invest heavily in its core product and its people while exploring feature and practice area specific integrations.
Those investments and enhancements are what attracted Freeburg to Centerbase. “It’s an exciting time to be joining the legal technology industry,” says Bob. “I look forward to learning more about the customers that trust Centerbase to run their firms, learn from them how we can do better, and continue moving the current Centerbase product features to the next level to serve our clients more efficiently.”
A performance-driven leader with over 25 years of innovative technology experience, Freeburg comes to Centerbase from Curantis Solutions, where he started as Chief Technology Officer in March 2017 before being promoted to Chief Operating Officer/EVP of Technology earlier this year.
At Curantis, a cloud-based hospice and palliative care management platform, Freeburg was responsible for technology, product delivery, operations, and account management functions. Bob was involved with filing four patent applications for newly developed technology. In the role, he implemented key processes gaining significant experience working with sensitive information in a cloud environment.
Similar to the legal industry Bob will be serving at Centerbase, he worked with clients at Curantis to deliver a modern cloud platform solution. “Although this can be challenging, (it) presents an opportunity to help clients achieve operational efficiency when this transformation is done right,” says Bob.
Prior to Curantis, Freeburg spent the majority of his career at Parago, a rewards-based incentives company. He served as a key member of Parago’s (Blackhawk Engagement Solutions) executive leadership team and was instrumental in growing the business from a startup to acquisition by Blackhawk Network in October 2014.
As Chief Operating Officer and Group Vice President for Technology at Blackhawk Engagement Solutions, Bob managed a technology and operational scope encompassing four incentive companies acquired by Blackhawk Network.
Parago was included on the Dallas Business Journal’s “Best Places to Work” list in 2009, in addition to the “Fastest Growing Businesses” list in 2010.
In 2010, Bob was also named a CIO 100 award winner for his achievements in delivering innovative technology solutions while improving client satisfaction.
Freeburg graduated from Baylor University with a B.A. in Computer Science, working in consulting and technology delivery roles at Arthur Andersen LLP, Excel Communications Inc., and Teleglobe Communications prior to joining Parago’s executive leadership team in 2000.
Centerbase, a legal practice management software company that provides mid-sized law firms with a cloud-based platform to streamline legal operations, has acquired Family Law Software, the leading workflow software for family law legal practices.
Used by thousands of family law professionals, Family Law Software automates financial forms and calculations related to divorce proceedings. With this acquisition, Centerbase expands its already robust practice management, billing, and accounting product to better serve the complex workflow of family practice attorneys.
“Our aim has always been to provide mid-size law firms with a completely configurable tool they can use to streamline operations, touching on everything from billing and accounting to timekeeping, document management, client communication and reporting,” says John Forbes, CEO and Founder of Centerbase.
“Currently, 40% of our customers have a family law practice, so we are acutely aware of the demands and complexities of the practice. Because of this, we know Family Law Software is the perfect complement and enhancement to Centerbase. It enables us to deliver more value to our combined client base of 5,000.”
Family Law Software was created in 1996 by Wendell Smith and Dan Caine, founders who also developed the income tax software purchased by H&R Block in 1993 that is still used by millions today.
“When we started Family Law Software, we wanted to combine our tax knowledge and software skills to build a platform that could simplify the family law case management workflow,” says Family Law Software President and Co-Founder Dan Caine. “For almost 25 years, we have expanded and refined that product, and we now offer robust planning and negotiation tools, as well as the financial documents family lawyers need. Now with Centerbase, we will be able to expand the footprint of who we serve, which, for a mission-based company like ours, is the ultimate measure of success.”
This acquisition comes at a time of accelerated growth for Centerbase. Following a banner year in 2020 and continued momentum year-to-date, Centerbase has invested heavily in its core product while exploring feature and practice area specific integrations.
“As part of our initiative to modernize the Firm’s infrastructure, we teamed up with Centerbase in 2019 and Family Law Software in 2020,” says Paul Kanjorski of Sessums Black Caballero Ficarrotta Family Law PA. Kanjorski continued, “We’re over a year on both platforms, and I can say that Centerbase and Family Law Software have helped us gain efficiency, capture more billable hours, and reach new levels of profitability. Most importantly, we were able to continue to service our clients at a high level despite the massive challenges of the last 18 months.”
This announcement follows Centerbase’s recent growth equity investment from Mainsail Partners and underpins the company’s commitment to aggressive growth and strategic expansion.
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About Centerbase
Centerbase is a cloud-based legal operations system that empowers midsize law firms to run their practice with confidence. It’s a highly scalable and configurable system that liberates legal teams from manual work by automating routine tasks and connecting them in a single collaborative work space. Boasting a comprehensive feature set of billing, accounting, and practice management tools plus the ability to offer full-history data migrations, Centerbase has become the go-to solution for midsize law firms. For more visit centerbase.com.
About Family Law Software
Family Law Software is the leading workflow software for divorce professionals. Thousands of divorce professionals and individuals facing divorce use Family Law Software to automate financial forms and calculations related to divorce proceedings. With FLS, clients may calculate and negotiate child and spousal support payments based on state-specific rules and tax rates; complete robust scenario planning; divide assets; and conduct financial projections. For more information, visit familylawsoftware.com.
[vc_row type="in_container" full_screen_row_position="middle" column_margin="default" scene_position="center" text_color="dark" text_align="left" overlay_strength="0.3" shape_divider_position="bottom" bg_image_animation="none"][vc_column column_padding="no-extra-padding" column_padding_position="all" background_color_opacity="1" background_hover_color_opacity="1" column_link_target="_self" column_shadow="none" column_border_radius="none" width="1/1" tablet_width_inherit="default" tablet_text_alignment="default" phone_text_alignment="default" overlay_strength="0.3" column_border_width="none" column_border_style="solid" bg_image_animation="none"][vc_column_text]Over the past couple of years, it has been exciting to see Centerbase grow so quickly. As CEO and Founder, I can tell you—it wasn’t always like this. The core ideas that evolved into Centerbase date back to 2003, and the journey from where we began to where we are now has been a long one.
Now, we find ourselves at an exciting moment in Centerbase history. Today, we announced a growth equity investment from Mainsail Partners, a growth equity firm that invests in bootstrapped software companies just like ours. I'm excited to see the potential this represents for our future: our customers, our employees, and our product.
I've been an entrepreneur for as long as I can remember. As a kid, I vividly remember going door-to-door selling plant seeds to anyone who would give me the time of day. I was born into a family of entrepreneurs and from that day on, I never looked back.
In 2014, I started Centerbase. From the beginning, we were laser-focused on developing a great product. As for picking a single vertical focus, that lesson came more slowly. However, it soon became clear that we had the opportunity to truly improve the lives of legal professionals and revolutionize the way they manage their firms.
2015 was the real turning point. We hired more staff, brought on more developers, we truly went all-in. That year we dedicated our efforts to building out a customizable platform. We met with dozens of law firms with the goal of trying to understand what their needs were and how we could possibly solve them. What we managed to do was take the best methodologies, practices, and efficiencies we found present in big law firms and discovered a way we could affordably package them up for mid-sized firms to capitalize on. We saw time and again that lawyers hated tracking time and we knew if we could automate that process, we could add tremendous value. Our agility and hunger to continue driving value even led us to launch a native accounting system. (In retrospect, that project was way over our heads, but we managed to complete it in just seven months.)
With that, we had a product that was truly a full system of records for law firms.
The 2017 ABA Tech Show was the first time we went “live” with Centerbase. By the second day, there was a line at our booth—not of law firms, but of legal consultants who were sick of selling legacy legal management products. Their enthusiasm was proof that our decade of research had paid off. We were on to something! We were offering the legal world something it had never seen before: a cloud-based, configurable management system that could revolutionize the way they practiced law.
The next three years were a time of torrid growth.
The growth was exciting, but it also made us realize how much work there was to be done. It wasn’t long before I started to notice that the resources I was long relying on were starting to hold us back. Our implementation team was at capacity; our product and marketing teams were asking for UX/UI specialists and content managers; our developers needed more resources to maintain our pace of innovation. Put simply, we were growing faster than we could keep up with.
I mentioned we've always had good timing at Centerbase. We launched our product just as the legal industry was ready to migrate away from on-premise, legacy technologies. We specialized in mid-sized law firms and discovered just how underserved that market was. Then, just before the pandemic, we launched two of our most innovative product features yet: Automated Time Tracking, which records and then converts any time spent texting and calling clients into billable time entries, and Electronic Pre-Bill Approval, which allows attorneys to review and edit paperless pre-bills without having to print and circulate stacks of paper. With the advent of the “new normal” working remotely became essential and attorneys were especially excited about these features.
In spring of 2021, another incredible opportunity presented itself. I have always been against the idea of outside investment because I've been so bullish on the potential of our team achieving greatness on our own. And I still believe that. However, when your great team starts to indicate they could be even greater with more resources, you start to wonder what that would look like. And that’s when I got a call from Mainsail Partners.
We had talked with several different growth equity firms over the years, but Mainsail Partners always stood out to me because of their reputation for preserving the “core” of the companies they partner with. Our company started small and grew organically, which has been fulfilling. I didn’t want to lose that connection to our success and with Mainsail, I’m confident we won’t.
Rather, I think we’re going to be able to do a whole lot more, a whole lot quicker. The team at Mainsail are experts in growing companies of our size. With them, we will have new resources and experience to draw from. We can make new investments in our teams and continue hiring great people and empowering them to make an impact for our customers.
I recognize this is just the start of the marathon. We have a long road ahead and to finish first, we will need to continue to innovate.
Connecting deeply with our customers has been crucial to our ability to serve them, and that practice will only deepen. Going forward, our primary focus will remain on the product and relentlessly solving the needs of our customers by bringing them the absolute best tools available.
Now with all that being said, we are hiring! We have a fantastic team dedicated to helping law firms capture more time, get paid faster, and provide the best client services possible. With the momentum and the support behind us, we are looking to continue growing and if you want to join us on this mission and come to work every day where you’re empowered to make an impact, join us.
I’m incredibly proud of what our team has accomplished to date, and I can’t wait to see what we can achieve in this next chapter.[/vc_column_text][/vc_column][/vc_row]
