Last week, a member of our in-house community asked:

"Any suggestions on tools for corporate governance / secretary area document management? I do some resolutions by written consent, others in live BoD meetings, and then have various stock holder actions, corporate filings etc. I am not really happy with my manual folder system currently in sharepoint."

Management of corporate documents is a common problem faced by in-house law departments at both small and large companies, and there’s a wide range of company secretarial software to help streamline these processes. We solicited input from our community, and curated 10 suggestions we received from in-house legal professionals below (in alphabetical order).

Rather than an exhaustive list, this overview represents a snapshot of what some legal departments in our wider network are using to tackle the challenge of staying on top of corporate records.

Admincontrol

Founded in 2005, Admincontrol brands itself as a tech company that facilitates decision-making.

Admincontrol’s Board Portal is a secure and efficient tool for collaboration between the board, executive management and other key stakeholders. Features include document sharing and interaction, a historical archive and access to board documents, and e-signing of meeting minutes.

Admincontrol’s Data Room is a cloud-based solution designed to support due diligence and other similar business processes. Key features include document sharing, Q&A, reporting, commenting and drag-and-drop document upload.

Athennian

Athennian's legal entity management platform combines standard entity management functions with features like eSignature and document assembly. Athennian is designed for both in-house teams and professional services (registered agents, law firms, compliance vendors, etc.), and serves both mid-market and enterprise customers. As we covered in our weekly newsletter, the company recently raised a $8M Series A.

Carta

Founded in 2012, Carta started by helping private companies manage their cap tables. Since then, Carta has expanded its offering, which now covers board and compensation management, in addition to equity management functionality. Carta's board management software incorporates document and minute management features, e-signing and collaboration tools.

Corporation Service Company

A General Counsel noted using "Corporation Service Company primarily to handle all of our registered agents and corporate filings and documents. They also have an entity management and compliance module to assist with corporate governance. It’s not super pretty but it gets the job done at a very low rate compared to competitors. We’ve been happy with them."

While it indeed provided impossible find screenshots of their software offering on the web (to be continued), CSC is one of the major players in the space with a comprehensive service offering.

Corporify

Corporify provides a SaaS platform that “makes the legal management of companies more practical, more accurate and more trustworthy”. The platform is used by customers to centralize legal data and company information, to automate legal document drafting and to simplify associated e-signing processes.

Diligent Boards

Diligent Boards provides a platform for the delivery of informed advice to the board and executive leadership team. From managing board materials and decisions in a dedicated space to voting and administration, Diligent is one of the most used solutions in the industry.

HighQ

HighQ is a Thomson Reuters owned cloud-based secure file sharing, team collaboration and social networking platform for enterprise customers. Its features include contract management, legal intake and self-service, document management, matter management, vendor management, knowledge management and team collaboration.

KLEA

KLEA by Legal Studio is a legal entity management solution that helps reduce legal spend and repetitive corporate secretarial work. With a heavy focus on workflow automation, the platform handles officer changes, annual meetings, powers of attorney and many other corporate processes in over 80 countries worldwide. 

MinuteBox

MinuteBox provides a centralized system for all Company Secretarial Functions. The features of the platform include legal entity and cap table management, document and workflow automation, e-signing, compliance deadline tracking and document sharing with fine-grained permissions. 

Minute books (Yes, the paper ones)

Not everyone agreed that this problem requires a software solution. As one attorney put it: 

"Maintaining board files is not that hard and doesn't require software. If you're doing a shareholders consent, just export your cap table and do a quick if function to tally invites according to your charter. If minutes, just make sure your file naming convention drops them into chronological order and get minutes approved and signed at subsequent meetings. If you are organizing board decks, again folders are fine.

Corporate filings should be maintained in minute books for each entity divided as follows: articles, bylaws, foreign quals, FEIN, annual reports, Minutes (board and shareholder actions and minutes in chronological order).

You really don't need software for this." 

I'll admit that this one made me smile. 😂

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Are your corporate documents also stuck in Sharepoint folders? Are you using software to solve this problem or are you a fan of the good old minute book? Join our in-house community to add your voice to the conversation.