In the September/October 2011issue of The Pennsylvania Lawyer, published by the Pennsylvania Bar Association, practicing attorney and technology consultant, Shannon Brown, provides a very thoughtful and informative primer on the "why's and wherefores" of cloud computing. His article offers some important background for attorneys attempting to understand the "alphabet soup" of current cloud computing terminology.

Remember recess in elementary? That's right, a hundred kids running at full speed in different directions, headed for unknown destinations, totally oblivious of who would be there and why? Exciting, yes. Fun, yes. Total mayhem, you bet. The Cloud Computing industry is growing at a break-neck pace, recess is out, and it's time to make some sense of the chaos.

Collaboration is a broad and well trodden topic; in fact, it was Salesforce.com's theme at their event of the year, titled "Collabor8". But just because Salesforce.com can throw around phrases like "collaborative software", or taking a "collaborative approach" in their business vernacular, it doesn't make it any easier to grasp in a real sense, nor to implement in a real-life, competitive and fast-paced environment, especially if your business has nothing to do with Salesforce.com.

Do your friends call you a "techno nomad" or a "21^st century minimalist"? If all you need to run your legal practice is any web enabled device, than you've probably been labeled by one of these terms.

You see, in the 90s, the prevailing trend was bigger is better: bigger cars, bigger hamburgers, bigger houses and bigger technology. But with a downturn in the economy, more fuel conscience consumers and the rise cloud computing, consumers and businesses alike are learning how to do more with less, including their technology needs.

James Linehan uses NetDocuments to run a cloud based legal practice.

James Linehan runs a solo law firm in Oklahoma City. He is a pioneer in legal technology and has been running a virtual paperless firm for over 10 years. With the emergence of cloud technologies, James has eliminated his need for servers and software and now runs his practice from the cloud.

Problem

Although James Linehan had been running a virtual law firm for 10 years, he wanted to eliminate the stress caused by local servers and file backups, as well as the difficulties he was having in being able to work from anywhere.