THE LAST OF the celebratory champagne has been consumed, you have responded to all of the congratulatory notes and calls from friends, family and law school classmates. You have ordered the furniture for your spacious new office, and then suddenly it hits you. Doing great legal work and billing a lot of hours is no longer good enough. The firm is expecting you to bring in your own clients and build your own practice and to do it right away. Maybe the firm has provided some training in business development skills and strategy, but maybe it has not. And even if the firm provided business development training, you feel it is not enough. How do you compete for premier legal business against partners from other firms with more experience than you have?
Developing the ability to present creative technology solutions is one thing you can do to give yourself an edge. One technology tool to look at to differentiate yourself from your competitors is an extranet. An extranet is a secure Web site maintained by a law firm (or by a client), either internally, or at a Web hosting service. The extranet provider controls access and therefore security through user names and passwords that they assign to authorized users.
