"I actually had my laptop stolen from my car a year ago," says Landon Locke vice president of business development at SealedMedia. "Fortunately, all the corporate documents on it were protected by our software, so they weren't at risk. My personal information, however, was."

Responsiveness is another benefit of working with SealedMedia, says Kesner. "All our dealings with them have been very honorable," he says. When Kesner first tested SealedMedia with eRoom, he found that the search capabilities for the protected documents were insufficient.

"SealedMedia was planning to add a strong search capability, but they hadn't done it yet," he says. "When I called them, they promised to provide the search capability we needed in 10 business days, or they would return our money. They actually beat that deadline by two days."

The addition of SealedMedia to eRoom and SharePoint gives Fenwick & West a competitive advantage in the marketplace for M&A legal services, Kesner says. "I have a great respect for what Merrill Lynch, Intralinks and Bowne do in terms of providing highly secure collaboration services," he says. "But we find that we can provide equivalent services and control to our clients faster and more flexibly and at a lower cost." In a highly competitive world, that gives the firm a leg up on the competition.