Law firms prosecute their file sharing and collaboration solutions

Global News

17
Jun
2014

Editor

Superfast file sharing and collaboration solutions allow law firms to work on time-sensitive files

As lawyers constantly work with important, highly time-sensitive documents, they struggle to effectively collaborate with each other when coordinating with branch offices or those working remotely. Many solutions have tried to create efficient file sharing and collaboration, but they lose the ability to guarantee files are updated in real-time, as and when amendments are made. 

Andrew Mullen, Senior VP Sales and Marketing of Talon Storage, believes that file acceleration and sharing technology is changing the landscape. It’s making it easier for law firms, with branch offices and remote workers, to be able to connect and communicate in a more productive way. 

“Often working to multiple tight deadlines, lawyers need access to the latest files regardless of location; there must be secure and quick file updates that are accessible to all employees. In order for this to happen, file-sharing technology must accelerate data for all users across the distributed enterprise – including those in or near Internet gateways, branch offices, data centres, and remote workers. In an ideal world, firms would have full-scale branch office consolidation which eliminate performance bottlenecks,” he stated. 

“Firms have tried to leverage wide area network (WAN) optimisation and data replication, but this often falls short on performance and end-user productivity. This could be a major issue when critical information might be sitting 300 miles away and the team needs to be able to access the file as if it was sitting on the local area network (LAN). Organisations often find that WAN has limited bandwidth and very high latency, which causes huge delays. 

“Effective sharing of information can sometimes be the difference between submitting important documents in time or not, and this can affect the service to clients. For optimal file sharing, solutions should be an integral part of the Microsoft Windows Server framework.

“File Aware™ optimisation also accelerates user response time. By acting as an independent channel for file distribution between the user and the server, and understanding how SMB/CIFS functions, file sharing can now anticipate user requests. This results in data being retrieved before it is requested and, due to the traditionally ‘chatty’ nature of CIFS, performance improvement is dramatically increased.”

Working with colleagues across the country, and even around the world, has always had its challenges especially as cases have such tight deadlines. Accuracy and security are obviously hugely important in the legal sector and ensuring you are working on the most up-to-date document, that has being worked on by multiple lawyers, is crucial to avoid error. However, having to continuously save files on the central server can be slow and time consuming, and in no way ensures that you are working on the most up-to-date version. Having an intelligent file sharing solution, with end-to-end distributed locking, guarantees file integrity between users; users can fully benefit from application locking principles which eliminates loss of data or file duplicates.

Mullen concludes: “By providing a secure and intelligent file-sharing environment, it eliminates loss of data or file duplicates ensuring lawyers have immediate access to documents and files whenever and wherever the data is needed, and without any low bandwidth latency issues. Technology is catching up with demand, and law firms need to look closely at whether their current infrastructure is up to the job.”