Embracing Legal Cloud Applications - Now is the time!

In my 20-year legal IT career, I have witnessed a common cultural trait across most law firms; embracing technological change is difficult. However, with the current pandemic, firms have been forced to reconsider how they operate at almost every level. One area of technology that the most successful firms have adopted is moving their core line of business applications to the cloud.

What is a cloud application?

Put simply, a cloud application is an internet-based computer application or service that is delivered through an internet browser or over the internet directly to your local computer. There are numerous benefits of this model, some of which include:

• Reducing server rooms;
• Server hardware refreshes, software licensing; and
• Most of all the disruption of keeping all of this up to date by performing upgrades every few years.

With most cloud applications, upgrades happen all the time, incrementally, which is an enormous advantage over the traditional methods. This has also allowed law firm personnel to work remotely with the same or similar experience just as if they were still in the office.

The cloud gives us greater redundancy.

The cloud also gives us greater redundancy. In the early days of networks and servers, the focus was on centralizing all data into one area of the network to streamline operations and efficiency. In today’s cloud environment, we are moving back to a de-centralized architecture, yet in doing so we are maximizing redundancy. In other words, if done correctly, your email will live in the Microsoft ecosystem (Office 365), your documents, time and billing system, marketing and so on would live with one or multiple vendors depending on your firm’s specific needs. The top legal cloud application vendors provide ways to have their applications integrate with others industry applications. So, just because it is not all centralized into a single application does not mean there is an increase in repetitive data entry. Actually they integrate so well, we have seen reductions in data entry and improved efficiency.

Microsoft Office 365 is a great example of a cloud application or service. With an Office 365 plan, you can have all your email within their cloud ecosystem thereby eliminating the internal email server at your firm. In this case, it can even be configured so that users do not even know they are using a cloud application; the technology has come a long way in a short period of time. Office 365 has become the gold standard in firm email and is very widely embraced. If we can embrace email in the cloud, there is no better time to look at the rest of your firm applications and see if there are opportunities for migrating these to the cloud as well.

When selecting a cloud application, make sure you do your homework.

There are many choices when it comes to selecting a cloud application for law firms. Talk to your IT team or consultant who specializes in law firms to help you focus on the top two or three applications for your specific need. Assemble a small internal committee to walkthrough a few demos and get feedback from those with different job functions. Keep in mind that by moving to the cloud, you may give up features for function. Again, you must embrace change for this concept to work. Look for solutions that have been around a while and are transparent about their security. By moving your data to the cloud, you are obviously placing a lot of trust with a specific vendor. Vendors that have a strong track record within the legal community, and place security in high regard (and back it up) should be where you focus your time. For example – every vendor should provide encryption in transit and at rest, as well as multi-factor authentication as part of their solution.

Embracing change is the fundamental requirement when selecting cloud applications for your law firm.

The best advice I can give is to stop doing things the way you have always done them because that is what you are comfortable with. If this pandemic has taught us anything, it has taught us that we must be nimble, embrace change, and allow workers to work from anywhere. Today we see remote workers providing the same productivity as they would be inside the office. Your technology stack needs to be designed to accommodate this from the top down. The traditional methods of remote access via remote desktop servers or Citrix may have been adequate for the occasional remote worker, however many argue they were not designed to run entire law firms on a full time basis and can also be very costly depending on the size of your firm. I recommend you take a look at your specific law firm and make that determination for yourself with the help of your IT team or legal technology consultant.

The cloud may not be achievable for everyone overnight, it can take time to get there but it should be part of your strategic planning. In my experience most law firms benefit greatly from going completely cloud based. Working over a remote terminal server or Citrix server is no longer your only option. However, in order to move on you have to be willing to let go of any software that is not keeping up to date, and in most cases this means software that you may have used for many years. The time has come for all small to mid-sized law firms to re-think their technology strategy through revolutionary change by embracing the cloud.

If you or someone you know needs guidance on this, please don't hesitate to contact me (Jeff Alluri) at jalluri@ele-ment.com.