Law firms have a heightened need of security given the sensitive nature of matters that they deal with on a day-to-day basis. Added to this heightened security is the increasing number of breaches that have occurred in law firms recently. In fact, the FBI's New York office called a meeting in 2011 with the top New York City law firms to address the rising number of attacks in the industry and why it should be a priority to safeguard client data. Law firms are obvious targets for hackers, and the fact that some firms have not utilized current technology to avoid intrusion is alarming and should be noted.

The technology infrastructure of midsize and large firms has seen dramatic shifts in recent years. The consumerization of IT, Bring Your Own Device (BYOD) movement, and of course the cloud, has revolutionized the way firms practice law and implement technology. The benefit of this shift is that it enables firms like yours to simply do more with less — more productivity, more mobility, more security, more functionality — plus disaster recovery. All of this costs less, requires less hardware, and involves a lot less hassle.

Whether it's Gartner, IDC, GigaOm Research, or The Legal IT Professionals Survey, you can be certain that the question is no longer "is the cloud here to stay?" but has become, "where and for what applications should we implement the cloud first?"

Witnessing the 60,000+ attendees at Salesforce.com's Dreamforce event (where everything is cloud-based) highlighted the contrasting sentiment about cloud adoption that has historically existed between industries. The legal and financial services markets have typically been slower to adopt new technology, due to regulation and highly confidential data, amongst a number of other factors. However, according to recent reports, the winds are shifting and firms in these air-tight industries are learning about the extreme benefits the cloud brings in terms of security, flexibility, business continuity, and mobility – it's these benefits in efficiency and cost savings that are causing a tipping point for legal cloud adoption.

There have been a lot of great posts about the important questions you should be asking your vendor before doing business with them, and here is another. The cloud space is increasingly crowded and new companies are popping up every day – this makes your job as a business owner, attorney, financial advisor, or IT professional very difficult as you sift through the "cloud washing" and fluff to find the vendors who have appropriately invested in the right security, privacy, compliance, and redundancy measures.

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INTRO

"We've been using NetDocuments for over six years and have increased our productivity and collaboration across offices and clients." - Brian Marsh, Information Systems Manager

20 years ago Jim Payne and Dan Fears began their practice as an employment defense firm in California. Today, Payne & Fears has expanded into business litigation, insurance and construction law, with five offices across three states and employing nearly 100 people. Brian Marsh, the Information Systems Manager, led the switch from iManage to NetDocuments over six years ago, here's their story.

Apparently we're all workaholics. Did you know that according to a recent survey, 80% of people continue working after leaving the office? This is a good thing for the firm, more working people = more things getting done. BUT, since a large portion of this work is accomplished on mobile devices, this introduces two big issues 1. Are they secure? And 2. The Bring Your Own Device (BYOD) revolution.