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At home in the cloud
RICHARD WEINER
Technology for Lawyers
Published: June 13, 2014
A recent (fairly small) survey of attorneys by Lexis-Nexis shows that attorneys are increasingly comfortable using cloud-based services, whether they are for “software as a service” (SaaS), storage, organization, billing (the most popular reason to use the cloud) or other online functions.
The survey gauges lawyer’s attitudes toward cloud services rather than counting actual use.
To that purpose, the majority or so of attorneys showed a fairly friendly attitude toward those services.
Fifty percent of those surveyed responded that they were “more likely” to adopt cloud-based services. Nearly three-quarters of those asked said that the firm was “more likely” to go out to the cloud.
About 40 percent said that they did not have significant security issues with their data being on someone else’s server. If you read this column, you know what I think about that (naïve, to say the least).
In addition to security issues, those surveyed were concerned about data ownership and control issues (many free data storage services claim ownership of the data), and ethical questions (which basically mirror security issues). Many of those ethical questions have been studied and discussed now for enough time that attorneys are getting more comfortable with those issues.
The smaller the firm, the more likely that attorneys are to adopt cloud technology, and that has to do with flexibility and cost.
Those surveyed said that the top reasons they would adopt cloud technology is the multiple ways the data can be accessed (especially for small firms), and disaster recovery. Somebody should tell them that there are other ways to accomplish those goals without going to the cloud, but whatever.
A part of the positive view of cloud-based services is the increasing ease of use being brought about by the recent, developing flexibility of multiple devices and multiple, integrated platforms.
One analysis of this survey said that the law business may have reached its tipping point in favor of the cloud. Nearly half of those surveyed said that they believed that cloud-based services for lawyers would eclipse those same functions on the desktop within five years. Maybe, but hackers lick their chops when people say things like that.