So Microsoft have pulled out of the Legal vertical (stories here and here). It has caused quite a buzz on twitter amongst us Legal IT folk.

The question is why. I think the comment on the knowlist article sums up the two opposite conclusions: 

The glass half full position is that this is a temporary, cost cutting reorganisation exercise. The glass half empty position: Legal – too fussy, too complicated, too small, not enough dollar. 

There’s probably truth in both. Why are Microsoft in business? To sell products! Their professional services team are effectively there to help them do that.

But what is there to sell to Legal? We all use Microsoft Office in a big way and aren’t going to shift anytime soon. We’re tied into Windows as most Legal IT vendors only provide their software for that platform. And because of our dependence on the above our licencing for the most part allows us access to SharePoint (at the very least SharePoint foundation). So again, what’s there left to sell us that is specific to Legal? Email and Unified Communications is going to be pretty much the same in every organisation. So that leaves CRM, not a product to base a whole team on. Thus they can save money by closing the team.

I jokingly commented on twitter that maybe we should expect to see Clifford Chance announce a deal with one of the big DMS vendors soon, indicating that maybe this was down to not being able to get the SharePoint DMS to work for legal. I’m not sure that this is the case, but they may have seen the market fill with Legal specific providers building on top of SharePoint (Workshare, Sword, Epona to name three) and from this Microsoft can sell their product (SharePoint) and let others do the implementation work (the hard work!).

I spoke a while ago to a senior person in a well known supplier to Legal (no not the one beginning with A) who indicated that internally they were more focussed outside Legal now because there was more money in it. So if old Legal IT vendors are looking elsewhere for the money it stands to reason that Microsoft have probably drawn the same conclusions.

So is it a loss for Legal? I don’t think so, Microsoft products will still be used and there are plenty of professional services outfits that can help. I suspect this is a cold hard look at our vertical by Microsoft and a realisation that we’re going the way they want us to go without the need of a nudge. So why spend money on the team to help us along.