Lawyers are increasingly adopting cloud-based software to host their sensitive and critical data. But as they embrace the cloud, corporate legal departments are venturing into new—and somewhat uncomfortable—territory as they lose some control of their systems and navigate the whims of software developers and users.

For AstraZeneca e-discovery director Josh Kreamer, the cloud presents an opportunity to leverage the cloud expertise and resources of Amazon, Google or Microsoft at a fraction of the cost. But vying for individual attention or resources from those experts isn't an easy task, he noted.

"Usually in a SaaS situation you don't get access to the back end [of the software]," Kreamer said. "If you have any problem with your exports it's almost nothing your IT team can do. You have to engage your providers. If you're talking about the huge providers, AWS, Microsoft, they'll get to it when they can and until that time you're dead in the water."