Legal is far beyond the tire-kicking stage when it comes to cloud technologies. Various technology surveys indicate cloud adoption rates exceeding 40 percent with an upward trend. While it’s not an all-or-nothing proposition, law firms and corporate legal departments are ‘cloudifying’ specific lines of business applications like document management (DMS), client relationship management (CRM), and case and practice management. They are also adopting a ‘cloud first’ approach for future technology roll-outs in an effort to create a best-in-class approach that combines true cloud technologies while including integrations with core applications like Microsoft Office and legal-specific third-party software vendors.
When cloud computing in legal really started picking up speed about seven or so years ago, all you heard was how unsafe it was to store firm and client files somewhere besides the server room. Security was clearly the ‘show stopper’ issue and the topic that came up most often with reluctant adopters.
