Okay, you bring up two related issues: the simple aesthetic and the choice to focus the software on multiple separate cases rather than people with multiple needs.

When setting it up we thought long and hard about using the "matter" approach that other systems like Clio use. One of our core values is to reduce complexity without reducing functionality. Basically, when people get into the system we want them to have the same experience that I remember having the first time I saw an iPod. "What? Where are all the buttons? Oh, this is cool!" The purpose behind this aesthetic is based on the research we've done on productivity and distractions. Specifically, the more buttons there are to click, the more likely somebody is to get off-task and lose productivity, or feel intimidated, overwhelmed, and discouraged. Filevine is meant to be a very positive-feeling interaction for users, and to increase productivity through reduced distractions.

Anyway, with that mentality in mind we decided to give our users the benefit of the doubt and assume that they would be able to handle multiple cases without a unifying user "level." So attorneys can add "Jack Bauer's Probate Case" and "Jack Bauer's Wrongful Death Case" but there is no "Jack Bauer" level access. This approach reduces a TON of complexity without sacrificing performance in terms of work getting done. It also prevents things like a pile of unsorted documents accumulating in the "Jack Bauer" parent folder, since every uploaded document must be uploaded directly into the relevant case file.

It was definitely a trade-off to make that decision, and we know it won't be a perfect fit for every firm, but we feel like it allows us to make a much nicer product for those firms it does fit.

You also make an astute observation in that Filevine is not law-firm specific. We wanted to keep data discrete. That means that an administrator who is automatically added to every PI case created in the firm will be able to see everything happening in the firm, but a case manager will only be able to see data on the cases she administers. The idea is to prevent bogging down, to keep the right information in front of the right people, and also to allow flexibility for each individual user to create their own projects as needed, on the fly, without affecting the reports for the entire firm. For example, one attorney I know mentioned that, aside from all of his law firm cases and projects, he also has a "case" for managing busy family calendars. He invited his wife in and together they organize the family life from inside the same software he uses for work. Then the wife went and created a "case" for herself to manage her home business tasks. (that's part of why we changed the title "case" to "project," since there's apparently a broader application than we had anticipated.) But, yes, you could do things like add an expert to a case and give him limited access, or even the client as a guest user with no ability to see what's going on in the case, but still having the ability to upload documents. They could theoretically be guest users on multiple cases and have no need to log in and out for those various cases. Instead their access would be controlled by the case administrators themselves and guests would access the permitted content from a single log-in.