Software vendors serving the legal industry have gotten giddy: so many problems to solve, so little time.
They’ve created numerous applications, each of which purports to address a specific market need. Yet vendors in our industry consistently deliver very limited solutions that solve only part of a problem. Although I now work as part of that vendor ecosystem, I am a former law firm CIO, and I’ve dealt with this situation firsthand. I’ve seen how the proliferation of point solutions—limited apps that focus on single problems—quickly crosses the line from useful to burdensome and costly. Does a general counsel want to see his outside counsel’s time-entry data every 60 days? Let’s get an app for that! Does the firm need to simplify matter file transfers? Let’s get an app for that! Proper information governance requires automated ethical walls. Well, there’s an app for that, too!
