PBwiki, the popular, hosted wiki service is changing its name today to PBworks. The company wrote about the forthcoming change last week, and officially unveiled the PBworks name today.

Chris Yeh, PBworks’ Vice President of Enterprise Marketing, explained the rationale behind the changes in a phone call yesterday. He says the company wanted a name that reflects both the idea that its main product is heavily used at work, and that it contains more than just a wiki. The latter fits with the trend toward Wiki++: software suites with wiki at the core that Bernard Lunn of ReadWriteWeb discussed in December 2008.

PBworks also announced the availability of an edition of its product designed with law firms’ needs in mind. PBworks Legal Edition combines a wiki with case management capabilities, a customizable legal knowledge base, and an electronic deal room to manage files that require legal review, input, and approval. It also includes full encryption of all pages and files, and a comprehensive audit long that tracks all activity in the wiki. Data can be filtered by page/folder, user, or IP address, and can be downloaded for further analysis.

Legal Edition demo: https://legaledition.pbwiki.com/