Why true cloud is the future of your law firm
Dear person in charge of tech at a law firm,
How are you feeling right now? Excited? Overwhelmed? Overworked? Confused?
I am guessing all that and more. I’ve been that person and I have some idea of what it’s like. We are in a state of flux at the moment in legal tech. We have AI on the horizon but not yet a settled shape on how it will really look and impact legal work longer term. Cyber security risks are real and growing. Your workforce now spans generations that have grown up with smart phones entertaining them as kids to those who remember offices without computers. Staff expect to work effectively from anywhere. Covid placed extra expectations onto IT that don’t appear to have eased. The economy feels unsettled. And none of the day to day around support, training, process etc has gone away.
It’s. A. Lot. Many firms are sitting tight on legacy systems, either hosted on-prem or on private cloud and waiting to see where the cards fall. But not making decisions also carries risk.
Let’s take a quick look at those.
Security
Recent security breaches have struck ice cold terror into many hearts. Moving your applications and data to true cloud (Software as a Service or SaaS) allows you to leverage the technical capabilities of large software vendors. Vendors like NetDocuments provide two layers of encryption on your documents. In the first layer, each document receives its own encryption key, and the second layer encrypts those keys. Auditing and near real-time notifications of potential misuse are other features of these best of breed products. Security breaches tend to occur at a person level, so training, pen testing and policy remain important but it’s nice to know you have a team of cyber security experts at your side.
Future Proofing
We don’t yet know exactly where generative AI will take us and exactly what guard rails are necessary. But we do know that large software companies are heavily investing in it. Your chances of being able to leverage your data and processes when they sit in an on-prem environment are low. Much like the economies of scale that benefit large software vendors in the security space, they also have the means to invest in AI. If your data is part of that ecosystem, you have a much better chance of utilising the AI tools that will be released. In addition, tools like NetDocuments allow you to easily categorise and tag your documents, which will become imperative when it comes to the dataset you utilise for machine learning.
Culture and Team
COVID accelerated our acceptance of and expectation to be able to work from home as effectively as in the office. Cloud based applications mean your at home experience is exactly the same as that in the office. For those firms that had already invested in cloud, that work from home transition was seamless and needed very little IT support. Our clients using Actionstep often comment on how easy it is to truly work from anywhere. Some firms are still struggling with work from home experiences that are very different from that in the office. Limiting their ability to attract and retain staff.
So dear tech leader, true cloud is a part of your future. The question is how soon will you move and take advantage of it?
If you’d like to talk about the current state of cloud applications in tech and your options going forward, please get in contact.