Now here is a feature which I think will be rather well used in the drafting of legal agreements. You create the document in MS Word 2010 and then when you normally would save the document, you now “Share” the document.
The document is either shared on the internet via “SkyDrive” the file repository on your Windows Live account, your Sharepoint server, send it via email or save it to PDF or XPS for sharing with others.
“Aaahh, big deal – you can do all of this via Google Apps.” Although this is true and somebody like myself who hacks documents together could use Google Docs, I doubt that document creators use Google Docs and would really battle to adapt to make the change.
This allows the secretary/partner/legal associate/consultant to use what they are used to for the initial creation of the agreement and then “share” the document to an area where the other parties can get to it and make their changes. The document obviously stays in the “shared space” until finished. For people with Sharepoint the documents can be shared without leaving your internal network.
There are standard tools to check the document for meta-data that you would rather not share. So with a press of a button to correct the offending data, the document is ready to share.
Once it is there and email can be sent to the other party to notify them of the document being ready for collaboration and your do not have to be a Windows Live account holder o access the file.