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Legal sector experts offer their views on the major technology trends that law firms can expect to experience this year. DUNSTAN DE SOUZAManaging partner, CBP LawyersTechnology is part of growing up for the younger generation today. Whether it is their iPhone, their BlackBerry or some other technology, it is with them all the time. They expect access to technology and information.If you were out with people in the old days and you were asked a question, someone might have known the answer or had a guess, or you might have had a bet on it over a drink. Today young people will just look it up on their phone or their iPad; it is available instantly.There is also an expectation with the relatively recent generation of lawyers that they will have access to this form of technology and they feel quite disappointed if it is not there. So there are generational challenges and technology is part of that generational challenge.Another big issue is that as a result of the traditional model of practising law, our profession is losing a huge percentage of women employees when they reach a very valuable stage of their career. Women, more than men, have chosen other fields, either being primary carers of children, opting to go in-house or selecting avenues other than a private law firm. One of the things that will help us retain that valuable talent in our sector of the market is to actually give them some flexibility in how they work and to change the business model. To give them that flexibility, technology becomes a critical player. Added to this is the fact that our clients now expect technology and it is not just a gimmick anymore. There is an expectation that we will have certain levels of technology.Technology has become a really valuable contributor that adds to our ability to create opportunities or minimise the risk of failure in our profession. It is not going away. An example for CBP Lawyers is our response to social media. I tell a story about when email first emerged. I remember we had a very serious debate around the partnership table – and it is not that we were dinosaurs – about whether we should allow email in the firm. It now sounds like a nonsense that we had to have that debate, but reasonable, intelligent people were having a serious discussion about whether we should have email.To me, some of the debate around technology today is in that vein; there is this fear of it perhaps; there is this ignorance about it perhaps. I put myself in the ignorant category. I am certainly not scared by technology; I would just like to learn more. The debates about social media that are taking place today will seem as farcical as the debate we had about email ten or 15 years ago.In recent times, we have trialled a number of technology devices at this firm, including iPhones, iPads and BlackBerries. That is the hardware of today and they just seem to be very practical. Now obviously our staff also have desktops and laptops, so that technology will remain available, but we will also be making available smart devices that will be rolled out over time.On the aforementioned gender issue, the profession has a terrible statistic among medium to large law firms. Among the large firms in Australia, the top 30 or 40 firms, the number of women in partnership represents about 20 per cent. So I think technology will help firms deliver a more flexible workplace and, in turn, assist the retention of women. And I think it will help us with our ability to service our clients because we will be providing levels of service that will be enhanced as a result of those devices .The question is, of course, whether we are putting too much of a burden on our lawyers, so none of these devices will be compulsory. We do not require anyone to have a BlackBerry; we do not require people to take the iPad. Teams will make their own decisions. It will not be compulsory. It will be rolled out on an optional basis.The key thing with technology is clear: do not be scared of it. Look for the opportunities and manage the risks – like we did with emails. DERMOT CROWLEYDirector, Adapt Training SolutionsMore and more firms are seeing the benefit of allowing all staff, not just partner level, to bring their own devices to work and link into their email, calendars and tasks. As the expectation rises that tools like MS Outlook are used as central time management tools, it makes sense to allow users to access and use this information when away from the office. Productivity increases and users get to use the tools they like, rather than what is given to them. As long as some positive expectations about when to turn work off are in place, this will prove extremely beneficial to productivity.Many law firms are also struggling with the need to manage matter information safely and efficiently. Matter documents and emails need to be centrally stored rather than sitting in an individual’s mailboxes, need to be backed up, and need to be quickly accessible by anyone working on the matter. Unfortunately, many users currently complain about the fact that they have to receive emails into one system (MS Outlook usually) and have to file and search for matter emails in a separate system (a Document Management System). The use of one system as an interface to receive, file and retrieve emails will become more and more common.With the rise of tablet technology, will law firms move away from paper? In the game of paper/rock/tablet, I believe tablets will win. Already many partners in the leading firms have been issued with tablets like the iPad, and have converted in droves. The high level of uptake at that senior level means that the use of tablets will become more and more common in the next 12 months or so. Expect to see the wheeling of trolleys full of matter files around Martin Place less and less!Although the reduction of paperwork is one of the benefits of tablet computing, many users are also finding benefits in having their emails at hand when they have a micro-moment, and of course having access to their calendars and tasks. Many partners with whom I work are also marking up matter work that their operatives have drafted, and sending comments straight back electronically, rather than on a printed out email. In other areas, imagine a whole legal library sitting on one device. That will save space. Imagine being able to search that entire library in seconds for that key finding, precedent or fact. That will save time, effort and money. Once law firms embrace this already available technology, and let go of the traditions of dusty leather-covered books and pink ribbons, a whole new world of mobile research will open up. While not a lawyer, I am looking forward to holidaying in New Zealand after Christmas with several novels, a cricket coaching guide, the Lonely Planet guide to New Zealand and a couple of business books – all on my iPad. Yes, I might miss the rustle of pages and the feel of a real book, but I won’t mind the reduced weight, or the fact that if I get bored with my choices, a million more books are at my fingertips! BLAKE DAWSONIT director Chrissy Burns, national library services manager Alison O’Connor and IT business solutions manager David O’ConnorCloud computing in all its forms (software-as-a-service, infrastructure-as-a-service and platform-as-a-service) will continue to be an important trend. Software-as-a-service offerings for the legal market are already mainstream in a number of areas, particularly to support human resource management.  While the challenges of integration with the various law firm-specific software applications has posed some initial challenges, law firms will become more experienced at addressing these issues. There is also pressure on the vendors of the various law firm-specific applications to accommodate the trend towards cloud computing in their software.Virtualised desktops and thin clients (those with computer systems that rely on a server to perform the bulk of their data processing) are also likely to become an increasingly important piece of the IT architecture in law firms. Mobility is a clear benefit of these solutions. So is the security profile which they offer. Relatively large-scale BYO (bring your own device) is already under way in terms of email delivery to mobile devices and tablets. Securely extending further portions of the corporate network onto these devices will be one of the greatest challenges of the next year or two.Tools to improve time capture and business process automation systems are slowly making inroads into the Australian market, and are likely to see a good expansion next year. The products are maturing and vendor competition is increasing. The use of technology to support matter management is also likely to increase, as is the adoption of business analytics tools (e.g. dashboards to monitor key performance metrics). A more nefarious trend is the increasing sophistication of information technology security threats. In other areas, to date the business benefit delivered by tablet technology has largely struggled to match the surrounding hype. While a host of undeniably useful apps have emerged for personal use, in the corporate world scalable applications which are integrated with other business systems have been slow to appear.Firms across the globe have been racing to produce ‘innovative’ tablet solutions, but have often been caught somewhere between gimmicky iPad apps and cut down versions of their existing websites. A few have chosen to expend extensive development resources to produce niche custom functionality. With early lessons now learned, the next 12 to 18 months promises to be more productive. Robust mobile device management solutions are now available to add a much-needed governance layer, and many legal software vendors are working on tablet integration points to their off the shelf products. The alignment of these two trends should allow genuine large scale tablet productivity opportunities to come to the surface more readily.As the use of tablet computers and mobile smart devices increases, so too will the interest in tools such as eBooks that make legal content available on those platforms. In 2011, each of the three main Australian legal publishers released eBooks to the market. Advantages of eBooks are their portability and annotating features. The portability will be of particular interest to lawyers who want to refer to resources during meetings or in court. The development of the annotation features lends itself to the annual legislation volumes. The growth of eBooks in law firms in the next couple of years will require enhanced eBookfunctionality.  It will also be influenced by the pricing and lending models presented by the legal publishers.    

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