Legal technology is unique in many ways, and where it is not, its application to the support of fee earners and the law often is. Trends in legal technology often follow trends in other industries and can be hugely impacted by current events.

A classic example of this is the move towards disaster recovery preparedness and business continuity planning that grew out of the events of 11 September, 2001. For many firms, this catastrophe served to move these initiatives to the forefront of their long-term strategy.

The unprecedented wave of consolidation in the legal sector has led to the creation of firms as global in reach and scope as the multinational corporations that form much of their client base.

Conversely, as their offices have become more remote and their practices more diverse, law firms are increasingly turning to centralisation of their critical data stores and information management.

Among the benefits of centralisation are the tremendous potential for cost savings based on relocating the data centre and much of the IT staff to areas with lower rents and wages; better and more secure management of the firm's intellectual capital and resources; improved disaster recovery capability; and better access firmwide to know-how and precedent.

Before 2000, there were various infrastructure platforms and applications in common use in law firms. Each application used its own database and fee earners kept much of their information stored separately on their own PC or laptop.

Today, the Microsoft Windows Operating System, Office Suite and the SQL Database have become the de facto standards for the entire legal community.

Some may argue that there are better platforms and tools available, but the fact is that almost all of our practice management and document management systems utilise a SQL back end.

Now that there are widespread standards, it has become possible to link these various systems in ways we could only theorise about five years ago. For example, all the information in a firm's practice management, client relationship management and document management systems can now be linked, and changes made in one system can be simultaneously updated in the others. Lawyers can quickly see the entire history of a client, who has worked for whom and find all the relevant documents to an individual case or matter.

The potential for this use of technology is virtually unlimited in terms of business intelligence reporting and true knowledge management.

Of course, we have seen many technologies fail. Client relationship management and knowledge management are two such technologies in which firms universally agree there are tremendous competitive advantages to be gained if implemented successfully. Yet few have succeeded.

If anything, the past five years have taught us that if a new technology or process adds even a few steps to the workload of the average user, it is bound to fail. Technologies of the past were more about features than process. Technologies of the future will be more about fitting seamlessly into the way that the user is accustomed to work.

The successful applications will be integrated across a plethora of systems and will perform much of their work in the background. The user must necessarily interact with these applications, but will do so from a single interface that connects the firm's information stores and delivers content directly to the user, requiring no more effort than their normal routine.

Notebooks, cell-phones, PDAs, Blackberrys – the type and number of mobile devices is as staggering as the flexibility and adaptability of the technology. They are having a fundamental impact on the way lawyers and other fee earners conduct their practice, communicate with clients and even how they live their lives.

In the next five years, we will see a dramatic improvement in the way that wireless devices are used and the number of applications they will support. In fact, it will not be long before these devices will have the ability to perform every function of the lawyer's desktop. Soon, they may replace the PC entirely.

We have seen a number of firms struggle to align their internal staff and processes to their strategic business objectives. As they do so, they seek to supply fee earners with high-quality services at the lowest cost possible. This leads to the question of sourcing. Firms have to decide which skill sets are best kept in-house, and which may be safely acquired from an outside provider.

This is a tricky endeavour and we will see more of it. However, certain functions will always remain in-house as the risks often outweigh the reward.

As firms become more centralised in terms of their data and information management, we will see the emergence of highly mobile fee earners with access to all of a firm's intellectual capital and internal knowledge, who perform their work with little thought for the underlying process or technology. That is the promise of the coming years.

Peter Kelly is a consultant at Baker Robbins.