The legal core technologies (DMS, CRM etc) – where next?

So what about those core technologies (the key IT systems)? Well most law firms now cannot function without IT (who could have said that even 10 years ago!). email, the DMS and the global finance applications are now ingrained in most law firms as not just core, but key technologies.

Take a look at Legal Technology Insiders list of software used by the UK top 250 and you’ll see that all firms pretty much use a common set of key technologies. But mention web 2.0 (or whatever you like to call it) and my guess is there will be very few firms who have this type of software as a key system. Is this because it is considered a technology fad or is it inappropriate for corporate use? I don’t think either is true, in fact I suspect that there are a number of firms are already using Wikis, blogs etc in small niche areas.

I think law firms though are like any other firm, find embracing these technologies is difficult. To implement them you almost need to just put them out there and let people use them how they want to (which is why facebook, twitter, you tube etc have succeeded, no one told people how they should use them). This method of implementing new software I think is alien to most firms period, it’ll take time to change attitudes, procedures etc<

But we need to start to expect people to be IT savvy, just as we expect to have people employed that can read and write. Being proud of “not understanding computers” is no longer an option! I think firms with these type of people will start to push web 2.0 products in 2009.

What about MS Office?

This is probably the one piece of software that is on 100% of all legal desktops. And I suspect almost everyone has Office 2003, some brave soles may have jumped to 2007 but I bet the percentage is very small. The big question though is, will people ever move to Office 2007 or Office 14? I starting to think that not many will, do you really want any more functionality out of office? Office 2003 does the job, so unless Microsoft force you to do it through some licencing or support agreement there is little incentive to move.

However the one thing that could change this is if the desktop footprint in Office 14 gets much smaller and the application gets much much quicker, then we may see people switch in vast number! This is not as far fetched as it sounds, from performance results of the leaked Windows 7 beta it may be that MS now get this is a key issue!

Mobility

Honestly I don’t think law firms are ready to embrace the “80% office space”. Letting staff  hot desk their staff, saving on the usual daily empty 20% of desks. Sure BlackBerrys will thrive, remote desktop access or web based access will see more take up and messaging (Office Communication Server) will take off, but only if these were implemented in 2008 or before. I can’t see anyone getting budgets for doing initiatives like this from scratch in 2009.

Summary

So in summary I think most legal IT depts will still be around in a guise that we will identify as being roughly as they are now. I think in the current climate they will have been trimmed through cost cutting, but on the whole it won’t be fully outsourced. The IT dept of January 2010 will probably be smaller and it will probably have spent less in 2009 than in previous years. I think there may be a move in 2009 to some small scale outsourcing of specific functions taken up by a fair few firms, but which part and how much will depend on the firm. I also think there will be a firm in 2009 that will go for a large scale attempt at cost saving and outsource the lot, but personally I bet they will relive the last recessions outsourcing blunders and fail.

Overall though I think most depts will take a real look at how to make what they’ve got work more effectively. As well as looking to improve performance, reliability of the current services (the key issue I bet almost all firms will tackle!) I think there will be a switch from constantly upgrading and implementing the core technologies (DMS, CRM, Office etc) to more web 2.0 applications, either social type sites or mashups of their main systems.