move to the cloud very quickly," he
said. It can be a more complicated,
time consuming process for larger
firms, which have huge investments
in technology infrastructure. "It's a
hard internal sell to just throw that all
away," he said. "Small firms will be big
benefactors in the long run."
According to the 2013 and 2014
American Bar Association Legal
Technology Survey Reports, the
percentage of lawyers who say they
use cloud-based software and services
percent in 2013. It stayed level in 2014,
though solos and small firms continued
to lead the way.
According to the 2013 report, 40
percent of solo lawyers used the cloud,
compared to 29 percent in 2012 and 23
percent in 2011. Of lawyers at firms of
two to nine members, 36 percent use the
cloud, followed by 30 percent at firms
of 10 to 49 attorneys and 19 percent at
firms of 100 or more attorneys.
question security and confidentiality
when exploring a move to the cloud.
Many law firms are still concerned that
using the cloud exposes their clients'
confidential records to cyberspace, and
it's safer to keep it all in house under
lock and key. But Safran assures clients
the cloud is probably a more secure
location for confidential records than the
law office. "I understand the fact that law
firms are concerned about security, but
sometimes I think they lose perspective
over this," Safran said. "They have to ask
themselves, `Who's going to do security
better? Them or Microsoft?' You're never
going to be able to match the security
capabilities that the large global cloud
providers can."
According to Barry Miller of Primerus
member firm Fowler Bell in Lexington
and Louisville, Kentucky, his firm moved
to the cloud before it was popular. Miller,
a past chair and current member of the
firm's technology committee, said, "One
of the best decisions our technology
committee ever made was, before the
term cloud was ever used, to move to
NetDocuments.
document management system seven
years ago to replace its hardware-based
document management system, which
needed three servers to operate, Miller
said. The firm faced the decision of
whether to replace some servers, and
add more for a total of five. "I thought,
`I don't need a server for every five
attorneys.' That's absurd," Miller said.
That forward-thinking choice has
saved the firm a lot of money. "At the
time (of the switch), based on the price
we were paying, it would have taken
10 years to get to the price the physical
solution was going to cost us," Miller
said. A few years later, members of the
firm saw Microsoft commercials about
the cloud and asked Miller if it was
something the firm should consider. "I
said, `You have been in the cloud for two
years, you just didn't know it.'"
Miller's firm also made a progressive
choice in December 2011 to give each of
called "perhaps the only universally-
welcomed tech committee decision in
firm history."
Four years later, he still considers
the iPads a good investment. Attorneys
use them primarily to stay on top of
email when they're out of the office, some
light word processing, editing briefs and
taking documents into court.
Miller's firm in 2014, and many other
smaller firms like his, was becoming
better equipped to handle electronic
discovery, or e-discovery. (Discovery
is the initial phase of litigation when
parties are required to provide each
other relevant information and records,
as well as all other evidence relating
to the case. E-discovery deals with the
exchange of information in electronic
format such as emails, instant messaging
chats, documents, accounting databases,
websites, etc.)
Miller's firm has not invested in one
e-discovery platform because they have
found the needs of clients differ in each
case. Again, they have gone to the cloud,
using Nextpoint, an on-demand evidence
management, for some cases. It's another
example of how the firm can be nimble,
saving money by catering the technology
to exactly what the client needs, without
investing in expensive hardware.
According to Bradley Nahrstadt
of Primerus member firm Lipe Lyons
Murphy Nahrstadt & Pontikis, Ltd.,
in Chicago, Illinois, recent trends in
the area of e-discovery also present
advantages to small to mid-sized firms
and their clients.
A hot button topic in e-discovery now
is the idea of proportionality, he said.
With the high volume of information
that's electronic today, e-discovery can
quickly get out of hand with requests that
go far beyond what's proportional to the
amount in dispute in a case. Also a hot
topic is the idea of cooperation, whereby
concerned that using
the cloud exposes their
clients' confidential
records to cyberspace,
and it's safer to keep it
all in house under lock
and key. But Safran
assures clients the
cloud is probably a
more secure location for
confidential records than
the law office.