Legal Technology 2010 – Batten Down the Hatches

Written by Christy Burke  | 17 December 2009

Three Legal IT gurus look at what can be expected next year

2010 – it’s a nice round number and the start of a new decade as well. Remember 10 years ago, the entire world was furiously updating code, fearing the end of the world when the millennium ended? Like most public hysteria, that panic turned out to be fairly ridiculous and we did indeed live to see January 2nd, 2000.

In the past 10 years, law offices have certainly made enormous strides in terms of process automation, workflow efficiency, and productivity enhancement by leveraging technology to the hilt. Now that the New Year is fast approaching, it is time to examine what 2010 will look like for legal technology. What major decisions and budget concerns will legal IT professionals face this coming year? How will legal technology providers be affected, from behemoths to underdogs? What will be the “hot items” on the MIS to-do lists of firms all around the world?

To answer such debatable questions, I asked some of the brightest bulbs in the legal software box to comment. These are people that truly follow and study the industry and must look to the future to gear their products accordingly.

Tom Burke is Chairman and CEO of World Software Corporation, makers of the Worldox DMS (www.worldox.com). Burke just won the inaugural Law Technology News LTN Lifetime Achievement Award in legal technology due to his longstanding contribution to the industry.

Looking at 2010 objectively, Burke predicts, “Law firms will focus on major upgrades such as Windows 7, Office 2010, SQL Server 2008 R2, Exchange 2010 and SharePoint 2010.” In addition, he feels that the state of the economy will encourage firms to prioritize which products and services are necessary, cost-justifiable and high value.

‘Batten down the hatches and ride out the storm’ appears to be the mantra of choice for law firms and legal departments in 2010. Gary Heath, CEO of Informative Graphics Corp. (www.infograph.com) which makes viewing/annotation (Brava) and electronic redaction (Redact-It) software, notes, “In our conversations with legal IT professionals, we aren’t hearing about many major decisions or radical changes, except those necessary to increase efficiency and make it easier to do more with fewer resources. Instead, we see law firms and legal departments trying to get the most out of existing implementations rather than buying new.”

Fortunately for the legal software industry, there are exceptions to this spend freeze. Fear is always a reliable motivator, so compliance and security technology enjoy a brighter future in 2010 than other “nice-to-have” applications. Heath notes that compliance-oriented technology, which protects counsel from running afoul of Uncle Sam, stands to enjoy a continuing honeymoon next year as legislation continues to respond to the fallout of the financial industry collapse. “Legal IT will need to stay abreast of potential regulatory changes resulting from the financial market meltdown, increased privacy protection concerns, electronic medical records and more. Tools that help with regulatory compliance will still command budget dollars because they help to ward off non-compliance vulnerability.”

Justin James is host of TechRepublic’s (www.techrepublic.com) weekly Programming and Developer blog and is also an enterprise network engineer at Levit & James (www.levitjames.com), makers of Best Authority Table of Authorities production software.

James believes that the push to save money is going to impact legal IT people in a number of ways. “Mega-players like Microsoft and Google may lose some of their influence on customers as people seek open source solutions to save money. Smaller vendors may pick up business because customers are doing their homework to determine cost/benefit and ROI on their purchases. Also, small vendors usually innovate more often and rapidly than large companies. Even though large vendors have cash reserves to slash prices, make deals, and acquire struggling rivals, overall, I predict that large players will lose some influence.”

Keeping in mind opinions from these three industry experts, it is abundantly clear that legal IT professionals will need to upgrade or troubleshoot rather than buying new, wring more value out of existing technology, and focus on shoring up vulnerabilities rather than stridently pushing forth with massive new rollouts. 2010 will be a year of consolidation, adjustment and protection, in the hopes that when 2011 rolls around, legal IT budgets and the users they support will be better situated financially to press forward with major new purchases and technology investments.