cloud technology

The last few months have highlighted the unprecedented risks law firms are facing today due to dated and on-premise solutions that lack security, privacy and remote functionality. The crisis has also uncovered that there are two kinds of law firms: Those that are cloud-based and those that resist. 

It's becoming clear the latter are in trouble. 

Law firms are great at the practice of law, but most are not designed to build massive data centers, develop cutting-edge technology, or stand alone against well-funded and sophisticated cyber attackers. 

Facing increased risk and client pressures coupled with ballooning costs to maintain scale and security, savvy law firms are saying enough is enough and getting out of the business of running server farms and risking client data due to homegrown data security. Instead, they are transitioning to the cloud and relying on the billions of dollars of infrastructure and security investment that companies like Amazon and Microsoft have pumped into creating industry-leading cloud solutions. To other industries, the fact that firms need to be convinced the cloud is superior to on-premise storage solutions is absurd.

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Staying On Premise is Risky Business

In trying to keep pace with the explosion of data and increased client needs in the last decade, most law firms heavily invested in building data centers and bringing legal technology in-house. But firms found themselves in a cycle of playing catch-up, overspending on tech and still missing the ball in terms of scale, security, and functionality. Clients are paying the price for this. 

As of October 2019, over 100 law firms experienced a significant cyber breach. Bad actors have wised up to the wealth of information firms and some service providers possess, and are actively pursuing them as targets. As Robert Mueller, attorney and former director of the FBI has said, "I am convinced that there are only two types of companies: those that have been hacked and those that will be. And even they are converging into one category: companies that have been hacked and will be hacked again."

These breaches, especially in large Am Law firms, are extremely troubling because they not only expose the employee data of billion dollar law firms, but they also expose the confidential information of their massive global clients. 

As anyone who has worked in a law firm can attest, budgets for IT and infrastructure are tight, and often the potential impact on profits per partner is weighted more heavily than the nebulous idea of cybersecurity threats or disaster recovery. Law firms shouldn't have to choose between investing top talent and keeping client data secure and accessible. Much like a company contemplating a merger would not ask their counsel for system integration advice, it is time we stop asking other legal experts to meet the growing challenges of maintaining massive data infrastructure and keep abreast of cybersecurity. 

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What the Heck is the Cloud and Why is it Better?

So what, exactly, do we mean when we say cloud? 

Cloud computing is, at its core, a simple resource sharing model: an on-demand computer resource, generally storage and computation power. Rather than buying your own servers, cloud means using space in existing servers from providers like Amazon (basically cloud = using other people's servers—that's it). 

Cloud is safer: Assuming that your client's data is safer behind the law firm firewall and residing on firm managed hardware and software is inaccurate. When dealing with high-profile and highly confidential internal or client data, leveraging an established and massive cloud provider (or partnering with a technology provider that has) is the safer option. The large providers dump billions into data security and can support the scalability and adaptability large enterprises require. Compared to the over $1 billion spent annually by Microsoft to safeguard Azure from cyber-attacks and the $13+ billion spent on Amazon for IT, most law firms and even major enterprise spending is nominal. This delta in cybersecurity investment is highlighted in the Hiscox Cyber Readiness Report finding that 73% of firms fail cybersecurity readiness tests.

Cloud does more for less: Cloud enables an organization to scale up in real time as needed to handle larger or more complex cases. Cloud computing allows organizations to reduce expenses generally for infrastructure and personnel to support their ediscovery program. This means organizations can focus on hiring talent to manage the case strategy (pushing expenditure to tasks that are billable) in lieu of infrastructure support. The cost savings benefit over a solo on-premise solution are substantial. An added bonus is that cloud enables smaller entities to leverage tools and tech on par with larger competitors without breaking the bank.

Cloud is the new normal: Statistics from Leftronic tell us cloud computing is the new business as usual: 

  • 90% of companies use some type of cloud service.
  • 80% of enterprises use Amazon Web Services as their primary cloud platform.
  • 77% of enterprises have at least one application or a portion of it in the cloud.
  • Enterprises use 1,427 distinct cloud services on average.
  • 60% of organizations use cloud technology to store confidential data.

It is less expensive to maintain, more secure, and scales in a way that on-premise data centers and internal teams of IT professionals can never match. One needs look no further than Netflix, Siemens, or Apple to see leading enterprises that rely on cloud infrastructure from Amazon Web Services (AWS) for scale, security, and innovation. Siemens in particular is fielding 60,000 cyber threats per second using AWS machine learning.

Highly regulated industries like healthcare and financial services as well as ones simply requiring heavy computational lift like video streaming have all migrated to the cloud because it is faster, safer, and cheaper. The reality is that, for most law firms, their clients have already moved to the cloud and it is high time the firms did the same.

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Cloud Adoption Allows Law Firms to Get Back to Lawyering

Cloud adoption for law firms is not a question of if, but when. E-discovery practitioners face rapidly expanding data varieties and volumes, coupled with the need to reduce time to insight without dramatically increasing cost. The scalable computational power offered by cloud-based systems purpose-built to capitalize on the decentralized elastic nature of the cloud enables the development of more robust and powerful analytic engines. The cost of keeping pace for the average enterprise or law firm is too great, and the risk of falling behind too severe to continue with dated and risky technology solutions.

 

DISCO Chief Innovation Officer Catherine "Cat" A. Casey is an established thought leader in e-discovery and data analytics. Cat has more than a decade of experience working with organizations around the complex e-discovery and forensic needs that arise from litigation, expansive regulation and contractual relationships, and works closely with DISCO clients as they modernize the practice of law. Previously, Cat was at Gibson Dunn & Crutcher LLP, where she led the Am Law 200 firm's global ediscovery and practice technology team.