Law firm IT leaders give their view on 2011: Tony Cordeiro (White & Case)

25
Jan
2011

Geoff Zodda

The year 2011 will bring a lot of change to the legal technology industry. We at Legal IT Professionals wondered how law firm IT leaders look at the near future. To find out, Geoff Zodda put together ten questions and selected 5 IT leaders  from major law firms to answer them.

Today, it is Tony Cordeiro's turn to answer the questions. Tony is CIO at White & Case.

Will the role of the CIO/CTO change in law firms as some experts have predicted in the next year?
I think the role of the CIO has already changed—the question is really whether CIOs have changed their approach sufficiently enough to feel the impact of it.  If a CIO is spending more than 90% of their time keeping the lights on, then they have a huge opportunity to shift their focus to more strategic work.  That said, I am mindful that not every firm sees the CIO’s role as a critical executive management role and, accordingly, part of the change that has to happen will come from the executive suite on their perspective of the role.

Will major IT projects that had previously been postponed as a result of the recent economy, such as upgrades, rollouts, and conversions, going to be re-initiated?
There are a number of upgrades and refreshes that will be a priority, but I also see the need for firms to consider newer hardware and software technologies in conjunction with the refresh.  For example, during the hardware upgrade of a PC—should one simply refresh the hardware with the same software OR take the opportunity to introduce new versions of software and instantly add the complexity of testing with all back-end systems, deployment and training?  The latter requires more investment, which some firms may not be willing to immediately invest.

Will current trends across the legal industry drive new technologies to emerge or come to the forefront in the next year? 
There are two trends masked by the proliferation of smart devices (iDevices, Androids and Windows mobile devices) and their access to the law firm.  The first is that if the law firm doesn’t respect the nuances associated with data and information management on these devices, it is instantly increasing its exposure. It has become much easier to put a client file in the cloud where the law firm is unable to control it.  The second trend is the demand, which I expect will come for firms to extend their applications to be more mobile with these smart devices.

Will the majority of firms within the AMLaw 250 develop SharePoint or other web-based portals in-house?
Yes. Like it or not, SharePoint is the new standard for web-based portals AND web-based applications.  It takes relatively low effort to integrate traditional .net applications into SharePoint as well.

Where will be the major areas of growth departmentally within law firm IT groups?
I don’t expect there will be much growth.  We are all living the ‘new normal’ and I fully expect that we will need to continue to manage with what we have, but do so intelligently.  For example, as natural attrition happens, one may use the spot in a new area where demand requires it.  I have also seen a shift to using external expertise for finite activities with an appropriate knowledge transfer to firm personnel as part of that arrangement.  I see these arrangements priced as a fixed fee, so greater emphasis is put on the service provider to deliver.  If fixed fee specialty arrangements are good for our clients, then our vendors should provide them to us.

Which of the major software vendors will have the greatest impact on law firms’ spending in 2011?
Microsoft will likely continue to be the dominant player here with pilots and rollouts of Windows 7, Office 2010, SharePoint 2010 and Lync. Other players, like Recommind and IntApp, have a number of specific niche offerings for law firms, which are gaining popularity. Lexis and Thomson continue to aggressively compete in the space beyond legal research and are busy rounding out their portfolios of software and service solutions.

Are law firms going to continue with VoIP technology or is there another trend on the rise within telecommunications?
Current VoIP offerings are a no-brainer where there are new location build-outs or office moves.  Ripping and replacement of older telephony switches is done with more scrutiny around ROI, since many old switches fall into the ‘why fix it if it ain’t broke’ category.  One trend that came on the horizon a couple of years ago, but has not yet taken off as I thought it might, is hosted VoIP telephony—essentially having a third party buy, manage and maintain the environment.  Transitioning parts of a large firm to this model is usually not immediately beneficial and the investment to rip and replace a whole firm is a little too pricey. Maybe this becomes more attractive over time with creative financing.

What types of applications will begin to be utilized that haven’t been widely used in the past?
I think one of the big ones is “intuitive e-mail filing”.  Firms have taken various approaches to this in the past, utilizing existing repositories to store these e-mails (like the document management system), but it invariably requires extra effort and is limited to that user’s diligence.  New technologies are coming online, which not only suggest where to file e-mail based on context and relationships, but also leverage the power of the filing community at large.  For example, if several people receive an e-mail and one of those recipients (or senders, if it is internal to the firm) files the message to a respective matter folder, the others do not need to do a thing.  Unfortunately, adoption of traditional e-mail filing has had mixed success, since finding what one had filed easily and quickly has been challenging due to limited capability of search.  The combination of this intuitive filing and search will dominate the legal market in the future.

As law firms continue to take on sizable litigation matters, will firms build up their litigation and e-discovery support practices internally, or outsource services?
As with any support service, which has a number of moving parts, careful examination of process, people and tools against a business strategy is essential.  There is a role for all combinations of internal, external and hybrid models—the right strategy will be a firm’s level of maturity and partner engagement to define what they would like and lastly the firm’s ability to execute.

Will firms centralize their IT departments or will they build them within the individual offices?
As long as there are demanding lawyers, there will always be a role for local IT support!  Additionally, the notion of ‘better understanding the business our lawyers are in’ requires IT personnel (support, analysts, business process people, trainers, project personnel) to be close by.  Centralized services are usually those that need not be near and can be handled over the phone or virtually—like back office infrastructure operations, service desk and some application development.  The real determinant here isn’t so much where the expertise sits, but rather how the IT group communicates and interacts to resolve issues and works proactively to prevent them.