It is not the sexiest subject in the business world, but for any law firm IT infrastructure is a major consideration, especially in the context of a merger or office move. Tussling with day-to-day operational issues, managing strategic change and rolling out new services – it is a dynamic area that, when handled successfully by the IT support department, no lawyer should know exists. But how are law firms faring with the obstacles of mergers, upgrades, roll-outs and office moves? To find out more about the changing attitudes towards the firm’s core infrastructure, Legal Week’s sister magazine, Legal IT, recently undertook a survey of IT directors.
In the survey two factors, network resilience and security, were by far the highest priorities with regard to law firms’ technology infrastructure. When asked to rate what they believed to be their highest priorities, more than 80% of respondents stated resilience, or robustness – how likely it is that the firm’s network will fail – as a ‘high’ or ‘very high’ priority. This was closely followed by security, with more than 65% of IT directors claiming it was a ‘high’ or ‘very high’ priority.
