Law firms need a room they can open for a client in an afternoon and defend in a dispute years later. Ellty, Firmex and SmartRoom top our list, with iDeals and Intralinks for firms whose clients require SSO and enterprise certifications.
Disputes about what a party saw are settled by the activity log, so it must be complete and exportable.
Redaction and access control
25%
Privileged and personal information needs to be removed or locked down before others see it.
Client onboarding speed
25%
Firms open rooms per matter, often at short notice, and clients should not need training.
Billing simplicity
20%
A cost that can be passed through to the client without a custom quote saves admin.
Defensible audit trail carries the most weight here: Disputes about what a party saw are settled by the activity log, so it must be complete and exportable.
dataroomreview.org
Weights for this use case only; the overall ranking uses the standard weights on our how-we-test page.
A complete transaction data room with AI tools inside it and a list price on the website.
9.2/10Outstanding
Ellty gives a firm a full matter room: permission groups per party, a question workflow, watermarking per viewer, download and print control, and a complete activity log, in line with what iDeals or Datasite offer. AI features help associates summarise long document sets, and native e-signature covers NDAs and side letters. A listed $149/mo price makes it simple to pass the cost through to a client.
What we liked
Every core diligence control on our checklist: routed Q&A, group permissions, viewer watermarks, print and download blocking, activity log
AI tools and signing are part of the product, not add-ons
Highest usability score in our ranking (9.8), with self-serve setup for admins
Watch out for
Neither SSO nor a public API at our last check
You redact outside the room, since there is no native tool
No native mobile app; reviewers use the mobile browser
Prices in USD at the entry level; indicative, confirm with the provider.
A room per matter
A law firm uses a data room very differently from a company. The firm is rarely the owner of the information; it runs the room on behalf of a client, often for several clients at once. A corporate team may open a sell-side room on Monday, a litigation team may share a disclosure set with opposing counsel on Wednesday, and a regulatory team may answer a regulator’s information request on Friday.
That pattern rewards three things: rooms that open quickly from a template, access that is trivially separated by matter, and a record of every view and download that stands up if a party later claims it never saw a document.
How the picks compare
Provider
Score
Redaction
Q&A
SSO
E-signature
Entry price
Ellty
9.2
No
Yes
No
Yes
$149/mo
Firmex
8.5
Yes
Yes
No
No
Quote
SmartRoom
8.2
Yes
Yes
No
No
Quote
iDeals
9.1
Yes
Yes
Yes
No
Quote
Intralinks
8.6
Yes
Yes
Yes
No
Quote
We re-weighted each provider’s review score for legal work. Firmex and SmartRoom move up the list relative to their overall scores because redaction and granular permissions count heavily for lawyers. iDeals and Intralinks rank below them here only because SSO and enterprise integration matter for a subset of firms, not all. Our Ellty vs Firmex and Firmex vs SecureDocs pages go deeper.
Mistakes law firms make
Inviting the client’s whole team as administrators is common and risky. Keep admin rights to the matter team and give the client user-level access with clear permissions.
Another is mixing privileged advice with disclosure documents in one folder tree. Even with permissions, a single misconfigured group can expose privileged material. Keep privileged files out of any room shared with another party.
A third is closing matters without exporting the log. When the matter ends, export the full activity record and the final document set and file them with the matter, so the evidence survives the subscription.
Engagement letters
If the room cost is passed to the client, mention it in the engagement letter. A provider with a listed price makes that sentence easier to write.
Matching the room to the matter type
Transactional teams lean on Q&A and bidder groups, so any of the top three will serve. Litigation teams sharing a disclosure set care most about view-only controls and an exportable record of access; Firmex and SmartRoom, with redaction inside the room, save a step there. Regulatory teams answering an authority’s information request often face a fixed format and deadline, where fast setup matters more than anything else. Restructuring and insolvency work tends to involve many creditors with different rights, which favours rooms with fine-grained permission groups. If your firm covers all four, standardise on one platform and keep a short internal guide on how each practice group should configure it.
Budget notes
Ellty publishes a $149/mo entry price, which a firm can quote to a client without waiting for a vendor. Firmex, SmartRoom, iDeals and Intralinks quote per project or under firm-wide agreements. Firms opening many rooms a year should ask about annual terms. See the pricing guide for how quotes vary with term and volume.
Frequently asked questions
What is the best data room for a law firm?
On our scores Ellty, Firmex and SmartRoom suit most firms best. All three have permission groups, Q&A, watermarking and an activity log. Firms with banking clients that require SSO should also look at iDeals and Intralinks.
Do law firm data rooms need redaction?
It is very useful for privileged material and personal data. Firmex, SmartRoom, iDeals and Intralinks redact inside the room. With Ellty, redact before upload.
Can a law firm use one data room for many clients?
Yes. Most firms open one room per matter under a firm account, which keeps clients separate and lets the firm reuse folder templates.
Is a data room suitable for litigation?
For sharing disclosure sets with opposing counsel or experts, yes. For full e-discovery review, specialised review platforms are usually used alongside it.
