Tag Archives: Cloud

At iManage ConnectLive 2022 in Chicago

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On October 12th and 13th, iManage held their first in-person ConnectLive conference since 2019. It was at the Willis Tower in iManage’s home town of Chicago. Attendance was very good. Attendees reported that they were very pleased with the content of the sessions. The venue, Convene in the Willis Tower, was wonderful, adding to the friendly ambiance.

Meredith Williams-Range and Neil Araujo at iManage ConnectLive, Oct. 12, 2022

One of my favorite sessions was a fireside chat between Meredith Williams-Range, Chief Knowledge and Client Value Officer at Shearman & Sterling, and Neil Araujo, iManage’s CEO and co-founder. Ms. Williams-Range is a leader in the world of digital knowledge management. In 2018 Williams-Range arrived at Shearman and Sterling, a firm founded in 1873. The firm had one billion documents in locations across the globe, an aged document management system, and very little process around associating files with a Client-Matter and filing to DMS.

They studied the way forward and decided that they would migrate to a cloud-based document management system. This was not a minor decision for a Big Law firm in New York City. Risk averse clients, including those in financial services, have historically been opposed to cloud storage. However, the team worked with their clients to educate them about the change. Ultimately, there was no client resistance. Kudos!

Of course, then COVID hit. Their decision served them well. They were able to migrate to iManage’s Work 10 Cloud during the pandemic. The migration was a success.

For more background on Ms. Williams-Range’s pioneering career and her work at Shearman, I recommend this Profile Magazine spotlight, Meredith Williams-Range Builds the Law Firm of the Future.

To all of the attendees, heavens, it was wonderful to see you again and to show you the latest enhancements in our LINK app. I have to say that the most appreciated new feature in our LINK app was automated check-in after editing.

Here’s what I mean. In our LINK app, check a file out of iManage Work. Edit it in the Word app. Then there is an easy process for the lawyer to check the edited version back into iManage Work. But…if the lawyer does not check the edited version into iManage Work, LINK will automatically check it in. Voila! Lots of love for automatic check-in.

ConnectLive 2023 may be back in NYC. We’ll see you there!

-Maureen

We have FOMO in legal tech! 🦄

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What is FOMO?

Fear Of Missing Out

Today’s legal tech headline:

“Litera secures further investment from Hg”

Terms of the deal were not disclosed. But we know that:

  • May 2019: Hg purchased Litera investment firm K1 Investment Management. At the time Hg Capital Trust stated that as part of the acquisition, it would lead an investment of $39M in Litera.
  • Litera has trebled in size, per CEO, Avaneesh Marwaha.
  • And from the same press release:
  • Litera is approaching more than 1,000 employees across 17 different countries
  • Litera also has gained over 10 times the number of users since Hg first invested, now serving over 15,000 customers
  • Since 2019, Litera has acquired twelve companies.

And there are 🦄 unicorns in legal tech!

November 2021: Everlaw raised a $202M Series D round at a valuation over $2B.

June 2021: Verbit raised $157 million in Series D funding at a valuation of over $1B.

April 2021: Clio raised a $110M Series E round at a valuation of $1.6B.

December 2020: Ironclad raised $100M in Series D funding at more than $950M valuation.

Ah, FOMO…

To quote investor Kjartan Rist on FOMO, “The fear of missing out on the next billion-dollar opportunity is one feeling that never really goes away.“

FOMO is nothing new in Silicon Valley VC-land. But it’s new and exciting in the world of what is broadly referred to as “legal tech.” Legal tech has been known for slow adoption and conservative processes, including mainly using software which is deployed on-premises at the law firm or business entity. In many cases this changed with the pandemic. The overnight necessity to support attorneys and staff working from home catalyzed adoption of cloud-hosted software throughout legal.

My short summary of the phenomenon in legal tech:

☁️ Cloud scales = hyper growth potential

💉 Accelerated by the pandemic

⚖️ Legal (law firms, corporate legal) finally accepts Cloud/SaaS

💰 Capital wants in

🙌 Win / Win / Win

There’s more to this story. For example, FOMO leads to frothy valuations.

But for today…

🥳 Congratulations to the unicorns, the parties to M & A, the newly funded, and the rapidly growing companies in #legaltech! It’s an exciting time to be in legal tech.

-Maureen

A Decade in Legal Tech – 5 Surprises – UPDATE

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Travel back in time to 2010. What was appended to your hand back then? A BlackBerry?  Perhaps the least anticipated change in legal is the decline in usage – to nearly zero – of the BlackBerry smartphone. I was rarely separated from my CrackBerry. It changed everything. Always connected. 

Here’s my take on five changes in legal tech in the last decade.  One caveat, I work mainly with documents, email, mobility, and security. Therefore, I see just a sliver of legal tech. You surely have seen others.

BlackBerry and iPhone 11 Smart Phones

1. BlackBerry âŹ‡ď¸…iPhone #1

In 2011, 40% of attorneys responding to the ABA Tech Survey used BlackBerries. 

UPDATE:

The ABA 2019 Technology Survey shows the iOS usage has reached a record high of 79.2%. Android has slipped to 18.4%.

Image from iPhoneJD.com

Here are the ABA 2018 Technology Survey data on smartphone usage by lawyers:

  • iOS – 68%
  • Android – 25%
  • BlackBerry – 2%
  • Windows – 1%
  • None – 5%

Continue reading →

The Legal Mobility Disconnect

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DeathtoStock_Wired6 (small)

Some interesting and thought provoking data on legal use of Mobile Technology from the ABA Techreport 2014¹, highlighting a significant “Legal Mobility Disconnect”. Though 91% of lawyers use a smartphone, and 49% are increasingly using tablets, work related mobile device use by lawyers remains limited to checking email (95%) only.

This is surprising. The ABA Legal Technology Survey shows that lawyers, like the rest of us, use mobile devices increasingly frequently in their personal lives. For example, camera (used by 66% of legal smartphone users), GPS/Maps (77.5% of legal smartphone users), Instant messaging /Chat (44% of legal smartphone users), and Text Messaging (73% of legal smartphone users).

In addition, though lawyers regularly download apps to their mobile devices for personal use (as reference, by October 2014, 85 billion apps had been downloaded from the App Store²), the majority of lawyers have never downloaded a legal-specific app (57%) or a business app (55%) to their smartphone or tablet. This highlights a significant Legal Mobility Disconnect. Most lawyers surveyed are failing to use their mobile devices to their fullest potential for work.

Why is this and what will it take to reverse this trend? Security, cost and complexity are the most often cited barriers to mobile adoption in studies of mobile enterprise adoptionÂł. These are good reasons why lawyers have been reluctant to embrace mobility for their work.

However, there is another critical reason for the “Legal Mobility Disconnect” that has yet to be discussed. That is usability / ease of use. Since the mobile computing revolution began in 2007 with the arrival of the iPhone, we have become very sophisticated and discerning mobile users. We are quick to embrace new capabilities that are truly valuable and are easy and intuitive to use. Until this is true, new capabilities remain niche and unused, embraced only by the most geeky early adopter users.

What do we mean by usability / ease of use in a legal context? Well, we have a lot to say on this topic that we will share in blog posts to come. In addition, we are working hard to deliver a new mobile app designed specifically for lawyers that addresses this problem.

Please stay tuned – there is a more coming soon on the Legal mobility disconnect.

– Matt

1. ABA Techreport 2014 – Mobile Technology by Tom Mighell.
2. Statista Mobile Internet & Apps Portal – October 2014.
3. Fierce Mobile IT, IBM CIO Survey.

Mobility for Lawyers – File Access is Key

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iphone 6 in hand V2With 91% of lawyers using smartphonesš, Legal IT professionals are deploying solutions to expand mobile productivity at their firms. Here are three tips for mobile prosperity in 2015.

1. Files for the win.
Lawyers are all about billing. Their billable work is frequently related to electronically stored docs: contracts, briefs, and supporting research. Make sure that your mobile solution provides your lawyers with secure mobile access to their files.

The challenge is that files are stored in an array of repositories. Most often files are stored on-premises in a Document Management (DM) system such as WorkSite. Files may also be stored on-premises in SharePoint or Windows/CIFS file shares. At some firms, files may be stored in NetDocuments, which is a growing cloud-hosted DM. Use of public cloud solutions like Dropbox, Box, or OneDrive for file sharing is less common.²

Wherever your firm stores its files, from WorkSite to OneDrive, make sure that your lawyers can access their files from smartphones and tablets. A lawyer needs to be able to quickly find a file, review it, then to email or share the file, along with pertinent advice, to the client.

2. User experience will make it or break it.
If you work in legal technology, you are well-familiar with this dynamic. Lawyers have high standards. Consumer apps are easy and intuitive. Lawyers want the same at work. If your mobility solution does not provide an experience which is on par with consumer apps it won’t be adopted. A single workspace app with email, files, DM, SharePoint, calendar, and contacts is ideal.

Be sure to include lawyers in your trial. Poor user experience is the leading cause of failure of enterprise mobile apps.³ There’s precious little worse than deploying a solution which becomes shelfware.

3. Keep it simple.
The world has changed. Buying physical hardware is old school. Your mobility solution should not rely on proprietary servers. If it is to be deployed on-premises, look for a solution based on Virtual Machines, HTTPS, Exchange, HTML5, that is, infrastructure which you use today. Standard IT infrastructure will keep your costs and maintenance efforts low. If your firm is ready for a cloud-hosted mobility solution, that is often the simplest way to proceed.

At Mobile Helix we specialize in mobile applications which make it easy for legal teams to be productive from smartphones and tablets. If you are exploring ways to provide mobility to your lawyers we would be happy to discuss your needs and how we might be able to help you.

–Maureen

Twitter: @mobilehelix

1. ABA TECHREPORT 2014.

2. Recent ILTA data indicates that 15% of law firms use Dropbox for large file sharing. This figure was down in 2014 from 2013.

3. Kony Enterprise Mobility Survey.

Mobile File Sharing – It’s About More Than the Cloud

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Credit: Viktor Hanacek

Credit: Viktor Hanacek

You’ve been in this situation. You prepare for a client meeting or for court. You’ve got digital copies of all of the documents that you will need. Until you don’t. While you are in transit you get a message which changes things. You will need a few more files, but you have no mobile file sharing from your smartphone or tablet.

Files. After mobile access to email, files are the medium which we most need on the fly. We swap them with colleagues. We prepare and send docs to clients, who send them back and ask for changes. We change them, save them, and send them back.

It’s a tremendous productivity boost to have mobile file sharing from our smartphones and tablets.

Here is the challenge for IT. Where are the files which employees need to share from their smartphones stored?

Wait, you say. Isn’t this simple? Aren’t files all moving to the Cloud?

No, not in all cases. And definitely not in the near-term. While file storage in the Cloud is growing, there are many sectors and companies which won’t migrate to the Cloud for many years, if ever. Gartner’s 2013 CIO Survey1 found that 28% of CIOs expect to source all critical applications and operations via the Cloud by 2016, and 55% expect to do so by 2020. On the other hand, this means that 45% of CIO’s do not expect to source via the Cloud by 2020. While a significant portion of companies can move to the Cloud, for others it’s a more complex matter.

By some estimates, 20-30% of all file storage may never migrate to the Cloud. The Everest Group, in their Cloud Adoption Survey 20132, found that 21% of surveyed enterprises have no plan to migrate collaboration and content management systems to the Cloud.

Law firms, financial institutions, and other regulated industries will, in many cases, not be able to meet security and confidentiality requirements with Cloud storage. Amongst other issues, the concern that governments may require Cloud storage services to release files to the government is a major deterrent to Cloud-based file sharing at firms with highly sensitive data.

The reality is that file storage is undergoing a major transition which will last for many years. Some legal and financial firms do store certain classes of files, for example, those used for training, in Cloud storage. In the ILTA/Inside Legal 2014 Technology Purchasing Survey3, 35% of participants reported that they had purchased Cloud storage (e.g., Dropbox, Box, ShareFile or OneDrive) in the last 12 months. However, only 17% plan to make Cloud storage purchases in the next 12 months. A wholesale conversion to Cloud storage is not in the works in the legal sector. At many firms, files will remain on-premises, behind the firm firewall, for years to come.

What this means is that mobile solutions must support sharing of files stored in a myriad of repositories, both on-premises and in the Cloud. Files may be stored in Windows shares, SharePoint, or WorkSite on-premises, or in NetDocuments, OneDrive, Box, or Dropbox in the Cloud. Files may be on-premises this quarter and be migrated to Box next quarter. To the mobile professional, where the files are stored must be transparent. All that matters to the user is that file sharing on a mobile device is fast and easy. Therefore, IT needs one mobility solution which lets mobile users share files no matter where they are stored.

–Maureen

  1. Gartner CIO Agenda Report 2013, p. 8; http://www.gartner.com/imagesrv/cio/pdf/cio_agenda_insights2013.pdf
  2. Everest Group Cloud Adoption Survey 2013, p. 9; http://www.everestgrp.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/03/2013-Enterprise-Cloud-Adoption-Survey.pdf
  3. 2014 International Legal Technology Association/InsideLegal Technology Purchasing Survey, p.6; http://insidelegal.typepad.com/files/2014/08/2014_ILTA_InsideLegal_Technology_Purchasing_Survey.pdf