With the rapid changes and the increasing investments that law firms are making in technology it makes good business sense to periodically assess the effectiveness of these investments and to ensure that your firm is making the most from them. Law firms are relying more on technology and, on average in larger firms, are investing approximately 5% to 7% of gross revenue on technology.

One of the objectives of any law firm when considering technology planning is to ensure that the firm is getting the most that they can from their existing technology investments. It generally makes little business sense to look at making new investments in technology without ensuring, to the extent practical, that you are getting the most from your existing investments, particularly in the current economic climate.

In the remainder of this article we have presented a summary of just some of the areas that firms should consider.

Making the Most of Your Intranet Without Portals
The promise of enhanced productivity and collaboration that portals bring to law firms has been a topic of debate for the past two years. While portals can bring to law firms such features as data aggregation and enterprise search capabilities, many portal vendors fail to mention that this is only possible if a law firm's back office systems can communicate with the portal system. For example, an ideal portal implementation for a law firm might be to integrate information from the firm's document management system, CRM system, accounting system and docketing system to provide a snapshot of the key information that an attorney would need to know for a specific matter. However, if these systems are proprietary and do not allow others access to the data that they store, the portal will not be able to communicate with them.

If you think that some of your back office systems may not be able to communicate with an enterprise portal, don't despair. Firms with an existing intranet and a knowledgeable Web developer on staff, can take a gradual approach to portal implementations. By using their intranet to communicate with back office systems that are accessible (or open) from other applications, firms can begin to leverage their investments in the back office systems that they have already upgraded.

Such firms create a portion of the intranet that provide detailed information about any client or matter. If they have an open accounting system, this portion of the intranet displays active matters for a given client number. If they have an open document management system, this portion of the site displays current work in progress for a given matter. Likewise, if they have an open CRM system, the site displays information about important contacts for a matter such as client contacts, co-counsel contacts, or case demographics. With this approach, as you look to upgrade back office systems that are not easily accessible from other applications, you can still provide valuable information from systems that are open and core to the practice of law.

Web-Based Remote Access
Staying connected while out of the office is critical for any "road warrior" attorney. Unfortunately for the technology staff, this can be quite an expensive part of its annual budget. Not only is there the upfront cost of purchasing remote access hardware and software, but also the ongoing costs of supporting it. With broadband access to the Internet becoming commonplace in many hotels, airports, and suburban neighborhoods, many firms are turning to web-based remote access to lower these costs. Needing only a Web browser to connect to the firm, costs associated with configuring and maintaining software on laptops or home computers are dramatically reduced.

Firms that are turning to web-based remote access are doing so in a variety of methods. Those that have implemented Citrix as their primary access platform have added a second component, called nFuse, which makes access to the Citrix server possible via a Web browser, alone. Others have chosen to enable the web-based components of their messaging, DMS, and litigation support systems. Products such as WorkDOCS (iManage), CyberDOCS (Hummingbird), Outlook Web Access (Microsoft), Notes Web Mail (IBM), etc. are add-ons to applications that these firms already have purchased. Frequently, these add-ons are free or require a small fee. With either the nFuse or web components approach, a firm configures a private web server that is connected to the Internet that allows users access to standard, firm-wide applications from a web browser anywhere in the world. However, don't forget about security! Firewalls and encryption must be properly setup to provide the appropriate level of security.

Making Use of Digital Copiers
Does your firm have digital copiers (e.g., the Xerox Document Centre)? Many firms do, but only use them as traditional copiers and not much more. Digital copiers can be used as networked printers and scanners. Instead of investing in scanners and more printers, first look at whether you already have these capabilities in the form of digital copiers. Before you send documents to a scanning vendor, assess whether you have the scanning and staffing resources to do some or all of this work cost effectively in-house. You may find that you can. Firms looking at making electronic copies of key hardcopy documents received from outside sources should consider using digital copiers and mail room staff.

Products such as Virtual Copier from Imagination Software allow you to scan from digital copiers into your applications such as document management, word processing, HR and others (www.imaginationsoftware.com). FlowPort is a similar product from Xerox (www.xerox.com) and is being used in several law firms. For a relatively small investment firms can implement the HP Digital Sender scanners (www.hp.com) that can scan hardcopy directly into e-mail in order to facilitate electronic distribution.

Leveraging Existing System Security Capabilities
You can't buy good security. No matter how much you have spent on system security whether it is in the form of hardware or software, you will not achieve your system security objectives without adequate security related policies and procedures. There is a minimal out-of-pocket cost to implementing these policies and procedures, but they can make the difference in how well your firm is protected. In this section we have mentioned just a few of these issues that you should be addressing.

System logon and password policies and procedures are less than optimal at many firms. At a minimum, firms should have policies in place that force users to utilize passwords that fit certain rules, for example, not using their names, the names of their spouses or children, etc. Also, users should not post their passwords on "notes" that are stuck to their monitors or onto their laptops. Firms should also enforce periodic password changes. Firms should be very careful about ensuring that departing attorneys and staff have their dial-in and system IDs removed as soon as they leave the firm. It is surprising how many firms do not inform their technology management of departing attorneys and staff in a timely manner. It is our responsibility as technology managers to ensure that our firms understand the importance of this issue.

As noted above, you need to ensure that you have properly installed your firewall. Many firms do not take the time to do more than the standard "out of the box" firewall implementation. There is little additional cost for ensuring that the firewall is implemented in the best fashion for your infrastructure and application requirements.

Another area in which all firms need to be vigilant is anti-virus software. You should make sure that you have and use the latest version, and that it is properly configured, and on all workstations, servers and don't forget your laptops. Ensure that e-mail attachments are scanned. Firms should have policies in place to ensure that updates are frequently run.

While it may seem that backups are not necessarily a security issue, they should factor into your security planning. For example, in the event that you are on the receiving end of a virus attack or a hacker, you may well need to rely on your backups to restore your systems to where they were before the incident. If you do not have consistent and reliable backups, you may have a real problem in recovering in a timely manner. While this scenario seems unlikely, we are aware of firms who have had this experience. Also, periodically test your backups to make sure that you can successfully restore.

Educating Users
Perhaps the area of the largest payback for getting the most from your existing technology investments is in ensuring that you are using the features and capabilities of your technology to its full extent. Your ability to reach this objective rests largely with educating your users as to what they can do with the technology that you have. Technology management in firms needs to ensure that users are fully aware of what technology their firm has, as well as how to use it. How often have you as technology managers been approached by an attorney asking if you can obtain some software, and it turns out that the firm already has it. Many of us have had this experience, and it is largely due to end users not knowing what our firms already have obtained. Also, how often do we hear that users are only using some relatively small percentage of the features of a particular software product? The answer is more often than we should. There is little reason for making substantial investments in technology only to have a small percentage of the investment used.

User education and training needs to have a higher priority at many firms. This includes additional initial training, ongoing training, periodic refresher courses, one-on-one support, web-based training and other approaches.

About our authors...

Bob Dolinsky is Senior Consultant and Mark Tramontozzi is Director Web Technologies and Mobile Computing at eSentio Technologies. They can be reached by e-mail at bob_dolinsky@esentio.com and mark_tramontozzi@esentio.com.