This year, it seems, is the year of the ‘law firm enterprise portal’. Firms have begun to commit themselves to particular products and strategies, making what appear to be careful and considered decisions for the most part. Time was when the first few firms to buy into a given technology would take years to make their minds up and the rest of the market would seemingly follow in what could be characterised as a blind stampede. Whether it is down to economic conditions, burnt fingers resulting from previous over-enthusiasm or genuine wisdom, what we are seeing is more of a considered approach to what is a very difficult decision.
Plenty of firms are now well into the first phase of their enterprise portal strategy. So what is the point? For some firms, it is simply to stop fee earners from ‘living’ in their e-mail browser, where there are so many distractions from fee earning work. For others, it is a means of ‘owning’ the screens of the lawyers’ computers and of management having complete control over the working environment of the workers. If a firm had high hopes for its knowledge management (KM) or customer relationship management (CRM) system, but the users rejected these systems by dint of simply forgetting they were there, a portal might seem a logical way to present the under-used systems or applications in a more sensible, convenient way.
