I am continually surprised by the number of firms that are still using hard servers in-house. Not only do those servers become antiquated more quickly, but the volumes of programming and information we are forcing them to handle may not be able to keep up going forward. Some firms without an IT department or designee often rely on a trusted paralegal to resolve the IT issue at hand despite the loss of billable hours.
So, let’s assess the situation: Are you having compatibility problems within your own office, software-wise? Do you have Outlook 2003, 2007 and 2010 running on different computers? How about the operating system? Most firms are running various versions of Microsoft Windows, generally Windows XP and Windows 7, and word processing software such as Word or WordPerfect. How many different versions of those are running under the same roof? Have you experienced the .doc vs. .docx dilemma, where the department with the older version of Word cannot open a document created by another department or client with the newer version of Word? Have you thought about just how much billable time is being wasted on IT (information technology) problems that are solvable?
