Is your law firm doing all it should to respond to the challenges of the internet era? Based on my experience with hundreds of US law firms, I am confident that the answer to that question is no.
So many of my clients react to the web’s penetration on the business of law as though meeting the internet challenge requires no more than creating a firm website. The site often does little more then disseminate information about the firm, its practice areas, lawyer biographies and almost always contains bad graphics of a gavel, court house or a spinning globe of the world.
In effect, they apply a thin veneer of customer-oriented information over a law firm’s organisational structure and mentality that is rooted in 100 years of ‘business as usual’. Firms believe they can do everything: marketing, strategic planning, technology and client services in the same old way but faster via the internet.
The real task is much bigger; internet-based technologies are changing the way a law firm is organised and how it relates to not just its clients, but information suppliers, employees and how it manages its own intellectual assets. The new internet economy is based on one thing: information. A firm’s ability to organise it, disseminate it among its members, price it based on its value to clients and distinguish it from the competition is the only thing that will differentiate one law firm from another in the new marketplace.
Applications via the web
In the past, law firms have built expensive, complex networks to deliver applications to firm employees. It takes an army of consultants and internal IT staff to maintain and service this complex infrastructure.
Today, software applications are available over the internet. The web application idea is a simple and seductive one: rather than buying or downloading software and then installing it on your PC, you log on to a website where you use an application that remains on that site’s server. At your end, you see either a conventional browser interface or a custom screen. You enter information, get results, and can print or save at your end – but the real computing is accomplished on the server end of the connection.
The use of the software is either free or the firm pays a monthly, quarterly, or annual fee. Either way, you are always assured of having current versions, without worrying about upgrading and version incompatibilities.
Web-based software for e-mail and calendars have been available for years and have been wildly successful. Why are these browser-based alternatives so popular?
Certainly part of the appeal is that they are free, but free Windows-based counterparts have been around for a long time. You cannot discount the power to access your data from any computer anywhere (without having to install anything) as the reason why these programs have been a major draw. And, at the other end, there is no need to set up and maintain servers; the service provider is taking care of that for you.
So no software to install, no server hardware to install, and access from anywhere.
This might strike you as a solution only for consumer-oriented applications. Could a law firm really deliver all of its mission critical applications via the internet? You might be surprised.
Virtually every major software developer is figuring out how it can deliver its applications over the web. Elite has announced that its software will be available over the internet later this year. Microsoft is currently ‘renting’ Office 2000 out via the internet. Litigation support developers are popping up monthly with fully web-based applications. Document management systems such as iManage and PC Docs have been web-enabled since last year. Network Alternatives, a US-based network integration firm is delivering all of the desktop applications needed by a small- to mid-sized law firm (10-80 lawyers) via the internet today.
Most law firms will move to this model in some hybrid form initially. Perhaps the ‘commodity’ desktop applications like e-mail will be outsourced first. But as law firms roll over and upgrade to new platforms, Network Alternatives will prove to be a highly cost effective and viable approach for all applications, training and help desk support.
