Intranets and extranets were a key theme at this year's well-attended Legal Tech conference in New York.
For the technical staff, it was the security aspects of sharing data across the Web that caused concern. Among the lawyers, it was the cultural significance of the blurred boundaries between law firms and clients.
Eric Bowen and William Schiefelbein of Dorsey & Whitney spoke about "wiring the attorney-client relationship".
The two discussed the building of 'virtual legal teams' for large litigation work involving lawyers, clients and experts, and also the online drafting of documents with large technology clients.
One speaker at the conference, law practice technologist John Hokkanen, was so convinced of the merits of the intranet and extranets he developed for his firm, Atlanta-based Alston & Bird, that he convinced the firm to give the program that he used to other lawyers for free.
According to Hokkanen, the program, Pure Oxygen, is an 'out-of-the-box' tool for implementing and designing an intranet/extranet/Web site, and apparently makes it as easy as pointing and clicking.
So far, in the region of 500 firms, sole practitioners and non-profit legal departments have ordered the free software.
Another buzzword at Legal Tech, along with hand-held computing, was 'outsourcing'. Baker & Mackenzie has already outsourced its IT department in Chicago, and many feel this is a way forward for other firms in the future.
But again, it was the potential of the Internet and its related applications that had most delegates hot under the collar.
One quoted an anonymous business writer who said: "It is pretty simple. If you don't believe deeply, wholly and viscerally that the 'Net is going to change your business, you are going to lose.
"And if you don't understand the advantages of starting early and learning fast, you are still going to lose."