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In the September/October 2011issue of The Pennsylvania Lawyer, published by the Pennsylvania Bar Association, practicing attorney and technology consultant, Shannon Brown, provides a very thoughtful and informative primer on the “why’s and wherefores” of cloud computing. His article offers some important background for attorneys attempting to understand the “alphabet soup” of current cloud computing terminology.
He also outlines why it is important for attorneys to understand some of the risks associated with cloud computing, and how to mitigate those risks to insure compliance with various judicial opinions on the topic. Specifically, he cites Ethics Informal Opinion (2010-060, 1/10/2011) of the PA Bar Association’s Committee on Legal Ethics and Professional Responsibility, which states that attorneys may ethically allow client confidential material to be stored ‘in the cloud’ “… provided the attorney makes reasonable efforts to assure that the material is confidential.”
As Brown states, any attorney contemplating a cloud-based storage solution will need to understand what constitutes “reasonable efforts” regarding the confidentiality of data stored. To help with this determination, the author suggests three areas for attorneys to probe carefully before committing to the cloud. They are:
- Data encryption practices adopted by the vendor
- Awareness of the physical storage location of the data itself
- Procedures for disaster recovery of data made available by the vendor
NetDocuments appears to do rather well in all three of these crucial categories.
All documents sent to and from NetDocuments use secure SSL protocols with 128 bit encryption keys, and all documents stored on the NetDocuments servers are fully encrypted. Multiple additional technical and procedural safeguards are in place to insure that your documents are available only to you and to those with whom you choose to share them.
NetDocuments servers are located exclusively in the U.S. for U.S. firms, as well as two redundant datacenters in the UK. All data becomes replicated between the two secure hosting centers, insuring continuity of access. In the event of a disaster at one site, access to the replicated site is instantaneous and transparent to the user. You can read the details for yourself in the NetDocuments Technical Overview.
So, all of you Pennsylvania lawyers out there, rest easy knowing that NetDocuments fully complies with the standards as currently defined by your Committee on Legal Ethics and Professional Responsibility, and as further explicated by a practicing attorney who is also a knowledgeable technology professional.
The cloud can indeed be a dangerous place. Perform your due diligence accordingly.
Post written by Jack Schaller of Eastern Legal Systems (ELS). ELS is one of NetDocuments valued Business Services Partners. Jack is a partner and Director of Client Development and operates out of the firm’s Blue Bell, PA office.
Eastern Legal Systems LLC is a regional technology consulting firm specializing in legal billing and accounting, practice management, document management, and network optimization for small to mid-size law firms. Spanning the “Metroliner Corridor” of the Eastern United States seaboard, Eastern Legal Systems serves clients in New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, and Washington, D.C. from offices in those four locations.
Our mission is to add value to each project we initiate for our law firm clients, through our combination of extensive software and training experience, our deep knowledge of the products we support, and our solid legal industry background.
October 5th, 2011
Tags: Attorney, Cloud Computing, Content Management, document management, law firm, Legal Administrators, Legal SaaS, legal technology, LegalTech, Security, Technology|
Category: business continuity, Cloud Computing, Compliance, document management, Ethics, legal, Legal Ethics, legal technology, SaaS, Technology
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Quite literally, #ABATECHSHOW is held in the beautiful basement of the Chicago Hilton. I was debating between the words ‘basement’ and ‘bunker’, because of the unique marble architecture surrounding the building – giving quite the bunker-feel at times. While feeling very safe from anything in the outside world, the downside, was a near total disconnection and isolation as my AT&T iPhone continued to read “searching…” for most of the event. I had to connect to the “outside” world so I could participate in the silent conversations happening in the room I was sitting in. Yes, Twitter was ABLAZE the entire show, and in all of the sessions. It created a type of unseen energy and current in the session, as the speaker would say something, it was instantly voted on through Twitter, giving the sentiment of the crowd, or at least those of us online.
Aside from the widespread activity of social media, and the frequent comments about spotty wi-fi, there were some common and important themes in terms of where the legal technology market is headed. The common threads that began to emerge begin to build a valuable picture of where a legal technology vendor, consultant, or firm should focus as they shape their strategy moving forward.
Service Level Agreements (SLAs) and Terms of Service (TOS) – This topic came up in several sessions on cloud computing, as a way for savvy shoppers to differentiate between the good and bad providers of web services – asking critical questions like: Who owns the data? Who has access to the data? Where is the information stored? Is it secure, encrypted and redundant? How about the datacenters? What types of other programs does it play nicely with? How about what happens to the data if you want to leave?
Having a potential provider of web services answer these questions (and more) will take the covers off who may be cutting corners when it comes to security and privacy. SLAs and TOS will also open a potentially dark closet of the freemium model – Catherine Sanders-Reach stated, “If you’re not paying for it, YOU are the product”, highlighting the way consumer-services providers gleam personal info, or use widespread market presence to drive company valuation in the market. Many of these freemium-based companies are backed by venture capital firms which can’t guarantee the company will be around long enough for them to transition those free users to paying customers.
Web-based and Cloud Computing – Even though it was the first year the show had a full Cloud Computing tract, I’d say it was a success. Nearly all sessions we’re full, and based on the show of hands in the room, most attorneys have at least one web-based solution implemented in their firm. The takeaway – The industry is moving away from clunky, on-premise, hardware-intensive solutions.
People are sick of hardware, software, and the expensive upgrades that come with them. The strengths of cloud computing highlighted through the various session related to the plug-and-play aspect of the service, no upfront investment, no maintenance costs, lower internal IT costs, quick time to value, automatic and incremental upgrades, and the list goes on.
Mobility – I know mobility is such an over trodden word lately, but the real challenge and theme of these discussions are around which mobile applications should be adopted to maximize productivity?
And what services will help maintain consistency across devices, platforms, browsers and offices. It was about bringing the love of mobility in our personal lives, into the workplace. The consumerization of technology and IT is pushing the market to increase the level of user-friendliness and integration with business applications in order to drive productivity and ease of use. I loved the visual, as Erik Mazzone said in a session, “you can’t swing a dead cat around this room without hitting at least two dozen iPads”.
So I’m convinced. The ABA TECHSHOW is managed, organized presented and attended by a group of thought-leading, gadget-toting, forward-thinking, legal technologists and was well worth the trip to attend. I look forward to reading all of various blog posts that will undoubtedly come, but you could get a great summary of the show by looking at and following the tweets from…
(Disclaimer: this list does not intend to be comprehensive,… I may have missed some obvious names)
@econwriter5 @rodneydowell @stevenjbest @erikmazzone @bschorr @ethics_Maven @debbiefoster @barronHenley @david_bilinsky @blorish @Pauljunger @recessguy @legaltypist @bburney @trialpad @goclio @ALAeditor @victormedina @themaclawyer @rajuip @colincameron @finisprice @briannaneal @FamilyLLB @Kevinokeefe @TomMighell @macsinlaw @MassLOMAP @matthomann @stephkimbro
Post written by Marriott Murdock, NetDocuments Global Partner Program Manager. Contact him at @MarriottMurdock and let him know what you thought of the show.
April 14th, 2011
Tags: ABA, ABATechshow, Clio, Content Management, document management, Email, iPad, legal technology, RocketMatter|
Category: ABA TechShow, Advologix, Cloud Computing, community, customer service, document management, legal technology, SaaS, Trade Show
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Remember recess in elementary? That’s right, a hundred kids running at full speed in different directions, headed for unknown destinations, totally oblivious of who would be there and why? Exciting, yes. Fun, yes. Total mayhem, you bet. The Cloud Computing industry is growing at a break-neck pace, recess is out, and it’s time to make some sense of the chaos.
Collaboration is a broad and well trodden topic; in fact, it was Salesforce.com’s theme at their event of the year, titled “Collabor8”. But just because Salesforce.com can throw around phrases like “collaborative software”, or taking a “collaborative approach” in their business vernacular, it doesn’t make it any easier to grasp in a real sense, nor to implement in a real-life, competitive and fast-paced environment, especially if your business has nothing to do with Salesforce.com.
Note: If you think collaboration is a cliché topic, then you don’t really understand how far reaching of a “principle” it really is. It is the secret sauce to the budding industries and technologies of social media, software/technology design, the user experience, and channel management, so quit you’re complaining and put your “cliché” card away.
I’m not talking about collaboration specific to the NetDocuments world, although it’s worth mentioning that client portals, data rooms, extranets, threaded discussions, notifications, alerts, and workspaces are all collaborative tools available within NetDocuments’ functionality (shameless plug), but I’m talking about Collaboration from a bird’s eye perspective in the developing Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) industry. Business solutions aggregators are beginning to sprout and take shape; timely since CNET has just validated that one of the “Top 12 Cloud Gifts of 2010” is the broad acceptance of Cloud Computing. What immediately follows acceptance? Chaos. What should follow chaos? Collaboration.
Here are a few industry-specific collaborators – Let’s see what they have to offer…
The LCCA is specific to the legal industry and has comprised some innovative and thought leading organizations who among others, purport to be leading the “cloud computing” pack. Member organizations surround practice management and technology consulting for the legal professional, including: Clio, DirectLaw, RocketMatter, and TotalAttorneys. If the aim is to define standards and best practices, and form policies and guidelines, the list is not yet complete but I’m thrilled to see it beginning to take shape.
The LCCA’s charter
- Provide a unified and consistent voice for vendors in the legal cloud computing market;
- Collaborate and cooperate with Bar Associations and other policy-forming bodies in efforts to form policies and guidelines relating to the use of cloud computing in law practices;
- Define standards and best practices;
- Provide educational resources to attorneys and the broader legal community on cloud computing and the technical, legal and ethical issues relating to cloud computing
Virtual Solutions Consortium (VSC) aggregates financial services solutions and resources into one central location, separated by two main categories: Virtual Staff and Resources. Virtual Staff includes links to operational managers, compliance consultants, web developers, and accountants. The resources tab includes C-level strategists, coaching, client portals, and document management. VSC seeks to answer the questions: What can I outsource? What should I outsource? Who can I outsource it to? With a concise set of value-ads such as:
- Increased efficiency and productivity
- Expert advice and execution
- Greater flexibility
- Significant cost savings
Virtual Solutions and the LCCA are two innovative organizations seeking to bring collaboration and unity to the chaos and clutter of the cloud computing industry. I applaud their initiative, but there is still a lot of work to be done to collect and unite the key stakeholders across vertical markets and the industry as a whole. To learn more about new collaboration, or to contribute to the discussion, send a tweet to @NetDocuments or @MarriottMurdock.
Post written by Marriott Murdock of the NetDocuments marketing team and head of channel development
December 21st, 2010
Tags: Attorney, CNET, collaboration, Content Management, document storage, GreenIT, law firm, legal technology, MyVirtualCOO, Salesforce, Salesforce.com, Will.I.Am|
Category: business continuity, Cloud Computing, collaboration, Compliance, Cost Savings, document management, Document Management for Salesforce, Financial Services Technology, legal, legal technology, Registered Investment Advisors, SaaS, Salesforce.com, Technology
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Standing with a fist raised in the air, chanting “Bernard come back, Bernard come back”, I felt as though I was in a positive mental attitude, MLM event, getting geared up for yet another year of break-neck sales.
But no, thank goodness…I was one of the 30,000 attendees at Salesforce.com’s Dreamforce event in San Francisco participating in a Marc Benioff marketing stunt to combat Microsoft Dynamics guerilla marketing tactics with their “I Didn’t Get Forced” campaign.
Fueled by an army of Segways buzzing around all three buildings of the Moscone Center in downtown San Francisco, Microsoft attempted to slow the flow of energy surrounding Salesforce.com … It didn’t work.
Why so much chatter?
The four-day event was exciting and memorable. With two new clouds being released, the acquisition of Heroku, and soon to be released chatter.com and Database cloud, the place was rocking. However, I’m not sure if the hype around the new announcements will live up to expectations as their value add remains questionable.
Salesforce continues to expand their breadth, continuing their all-encompassing adventure into diverse markets and peripheral industries of the CRM world and beyond; including the omnipotent public social media space with Chatter.com.
The Cloud Team
Amidst the flurry of activity, I was able to connect with several of NetDocuments’ Partners, Potential Partners, Customers, and advocates, including Mary Ferguson, the CEO of Concenter Services – XLR8 CRM.
“We are already fully committed to the rocket ship known as Cloud computing, and Dreamforce ’10 has proven just how powerful and valuable the Salesforce community can be. We came away with many ideas on how to provide even better products and services to our Financial Advisor clients … plus we may have initiated potential partner relationships that might someday be as strong as our partnership with NetDocuments!” – Mary Fegurson
I also connected with Deepa Patel of Halak Consulting who stated, “This was my first Dreamforce and I enjoyed every minute. The sessions were fantastic and I learned a lot of little tid bits that I would not have otherwise. It was great networking with other Salesforce users and partners. The fourteen thousand people at the keynote session was amazing – this shows the direction Salesforce is heading into with future innovative technology platforms. I will attend the next Dreamforce for sure.”
Halak Consulting and Concenter Services were two of our many visits with NetDocuments’ Partners and Customers, so we need to give a special shout out for the mentions, meetings, and overall good time, to Kai and Melissa of SilverlineCRM, Karen Frigon of Taylor Frigon Capital Management, Sujung of MK Partners, Jordan of NADROJ Consulting, Raymond and Kevin of Charles-Schwab, John and Fritze of Healthios, Jake of Brand Tactics, Paul of AdvologixPM, Brad of BCE Technology, and Michelle and Vera of DocuSign… Thanks for making it a great show, and we can’t wait to see you next year at #DF11!
My #DF10 recap
Day 1 – Kicked off with the Partner Keynote, announcing ISV Force for partners, expanding the feature set for native and OEM applications on the force.com platform. With over 1,000 apps now listed on the AppExchange, it was a packed room to say the least.
Day 2 – The opening keynote with CEO, Mark Benioff, highlighted five, yes five, mobile devices emerging from the pinstriped suit Benioff was wearing. Will.I.Am shared his thoughts on collaboration and cloud computing, giving a fresh perspective, and highlighted the gap of the tech and music space! Stevie Wonder spiced up the night with the Global Gala, and everyone got their groove on.
Day 3 – The days are beginning to blur at this point, but day three highlighted the UCSF and the $100 million dollar donation Benioff and his wife are giving to build a new children’s hospital in San Francisco. This was accentuated by the various onsite philanthropic events and projects, which allowed partners, attendees, and customers to participate in the 1 – 1 – 1 initiative so famously started by the Salesforce.com Foundation. And although former President Bill Clinton was 1-hour late, Stevie Wonder was interviewed, giving a peek into his life, philosophy and struggles he’s overcome.
Day 4 – Blisters, dry mouth, and nausea from street dogs, I was ready to wrap it up. I enjoyed one last walk through the Cloud Expo before they officially shut the doors, time to wrap it up until #DF11.
Post written by Marriott Murdock, head of Partner Development at NetDocuments
December 13th, 2010
Tags: Big 10, Chatter, compliance, Content Management, Dreamforce, recap, sexy enterprise|
Category: business continuity, Cloud Computing, collaboration, community, document management, Email Management, Registered Investment Advisors, SaaS, Salesforce.com, Trade Show
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Is it game over for server based document management?
That was the headline in the latest edition of the American Legal Technology Insider Newsletter.
In his newsletter discussing the issue, Charles Christian pointed out recent developments in the traditionally conservative legal market as a signal that the dog days of server farms and boxed software are all but over.
“Are the days of traditional document management systems and traditional DMS vendors coming to a close? For example, over the last two months the cloud-based document management specialists NetDocuments have signed up eight new (legal) user sites, (six law firms and two offices of general counsel) and while some of the smaller sites are new to the concept of a dedicated DMS, the latest wins also include Open Text swapouts at Van Cott Bagley Cornwall & McCarthy in Salt Lake City and Lynn Tillotson Pinkler & Cox LLP in Dallas.”
At NetDocuments, we have experience in server based document management as our founders started SoftSolutions in the late 80s. Though the legacy model has served the business community well over the past 30 years delivering an enormous amount of innovation and developments, like the Seattle SuperSonics, Simon Cowell’s feedback, and my holiday mustache, all good things must come to an end.
The way consumers use technology has fundamentally changed over the past decade making them more social, mobile and empowered. Though businesses are behind the consumer, if the the legal market is any type of lagging indicator, businesses are catching up and doing it quickly. To continue the discussion, send us a tweet at @NetDocuments or visit our Facebook page. Post written by Danny Johnson of the NetDocuments Marketing Team.
December 9th, 2010
Tags: cloud document management, Content Management, Email Management, Florence and the machine, SaaS|
Category: business continuity, Cloud Computing, document management, Financial Services Technology, legal technology, SaaS, Salesforce.com, Trade Show
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The All New NetDocuments – Rich Functionality. Enhanced Design.
In the spring of 2011, NetDocuments users will get a new user experience. Without sacrificing any of our industry leading functionality and reliability, we have redesigned the user interface to improve navigation and simplify the management of documents in the cloud.
The Makeover Process
This is the most significant update in the 12 years since NetDocuments opened it’s doors and paved the SaaS document management highway. “We pulled together a highly qualified team of experts to enhance the NetDocuments user interface and to address areas that would greatly improve the user experience, while at the same time creating an attractive design that is more pleasurable to use. By using familiar design patterns and a more structured framework, the interface should require less investment in setup and also be easier to gain proficiency,” said VP of Marketing, Leonard Johnson.
[Click the image below to see more screen shots]
Cloud Content Management
To learn more, check out our video and slideshow full of screenshots. These contain all the information you need to quench your desire to know everything there is about the new design. We’d love to hear your feedback and questions regarding the user experience of NetDocuments on Twitter at @netdocuments. You can also drop an email to sales@netdocuments.com
Post written by Danny Johnson of the NetDocuments Marketing Team. He can be reached on Twitter at @dannymjohnson.
November 23rd, 2010
Tags: Cloud Computing, Content Management, document management, legal technology, NetDocuments, SaaS, SaaS Document Management, User Interface|
Category: Cloud Computing, collaboration, customer service, document management, Financial Services Technology, legal technology, SaaS, Salesforce.com, Technology
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The NetDocuments legal team is excited about their trip to Los Angeles in June for LegalTech West Coast, which will take place at the Los Angeles Convention Center on June 23rd and 24th.
During the show, the legal team, consisting of Matt Duncan, Keith Schneider and Kirsten Walker, will be hanging out at booth #325 and will be talking SaaS, cloud computing, document management and legal technology all week. Commenting about the event, Matt Duncan said, ”LegalTech West Coast 2010 represents a great opportunity for us to meet with many of our existing law firm customers in the region, as well as connect with other firms that are growing increasingly interested in cloud computing and SaaS.”
What is LegalTech West Coast
The good people at ALM who organize all the LegalTech shows said, talking about LegalTech West Coast 2010, “LegalTech [West Coast] provides an in-depth look at what the technological world has in store for you and your practice AND offers an expansive exhibit floor with the most extensive gathering of innovative products designed to meet your current and future technology needs.”
The organizers did a fantastic job earlier this year at LegalTech New York and we are expecting the same quality of show in LA. Innovative business columnist for the LA Times David Lazarus and legal expert Erich Andersen of Microsoft will be the keynote speakers at the event. Other sessions we are looking forward to are the Cloud Computing and Advanced Sharing Technologies on June 24th, as well as the Legal Technology and Cost Management track that is also on the 24th.
Social Media
The social media buzz surrounding the show is sure to grow as we approach June 23rd. The Twitter #hashtag for the show is #LTWC and to see a list of attendees using Twitter, check out the LegalTech West Coast Twitter List. Also, for those not attending, be sure to follow the list and hashtag during the conference to stay current on what’s happening.
Post authored by Danny Johnson of the Netdocuments sales and marketing team.
May 14th, 2010
Tags: Content Management, document management, Dodgers, Event, Lakers, legal technology, LegalTech, SaaS, Trade Show, twitter|
Category: Cloud Computing, collaboration, legal, legal technology, Trade Show
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Post Authored by Danny Johnson of the NetDocuments Marketing Department
I am one of the youngest employees here at the NetDocuments Orem office, if not the youngest (I’m 24), and if my calculations are correct, I am one of only two non-married employees at the company. So near the end of 2007, as the Twittershpere was reaching a Twittical Mass, the good folks in our marketing department, specifically Leonard Johnson, decided that it was time for us to join the party and see if social media was all @NikiBlack and @AdrianDayton had cracked it up to be. So after about a year and change of tweeting, we are believers. We’ve drunk the Kool-Aid, downloaded the iPhone app and continue to ride shotgun in the Twitter bandwagon.
Why We Got Started
Every Social Media guru, ninja, consultant, @GuyKawasaki wannabe or whatever they are calling themselves these days, say’s that you must have a clearly defined purpose for using social media. So as we started Twitter, our two main goals were to create more interaction with our customers and partners, and to better understand the small law and small business market in order to build relationships with people in these areas.
- Interact with Partners and Customers
Twitter has been a very effective tool for us in this regard. Especially after the Twitter Lists feature was released last summer. We created various Twitter lists to easily follow our more Twitroverted customers and partners including a NetDocuments Users List, a LegalTech New York list, and a T3 Technology Conference list among others. Through Twitter we’ve set up webinars, marketing activities and provided technical support. We saw that Twitter was so effective is sending real-time news that last fall we setup a separate account for the NetDocuments service status.
Before 2009, we had a distribution partnership with LexisNexis in which they handled marketing activities for small law firms. As our distribution partnership with Lexis ended in January of 2009, we saw Twitter as a good way for us to get back into the small law and small business markets, and to start building relationships there. Through Twitter, we were quickly able to make contacts with technology consultants, bloggers and training partners, as well as proselyte the value of SaaS technology and cloud computing.
Timeline
I’ve heard a stat numerous times and from various twitter streams (which I guess means it’s true?) that say’s 70%-80% of new Tweeters go the Twitter graveyard within the first three months, but we were determined to not be a Twitter-Qwitter, and we weren’t.
Those first three months on Twitter were like my first semester of sophomore year when I moved to a new high school; the only differences were that this time I didn’t get slammed into lockers or get my head stuffed in a toilet. It was fun and exciting and we met a lot of new people. In those first months we connected with people like @softwaretrainer, @CurtisASmithCFP and @DonnaSeyle, learned new words and phrases like Direct Message, #HashTag and Tweet-Up, and had some funny experiences.
After getting tweet happy one day I was told by a good friend that I had Twitterrhea and should slow down the number of tweets. After that I tried so hard to have correct Twitterquette that my tweets were boring and dry. Also, at the time we had few followers so it was easy to read nearly every one of their tweets and interact with all of our new tweeps.
If our first three months was sophomore year, the next six was the rest of high school. Our mind was opened up to many new things and we experimented with most of them. I think we tried every possible twitter manager that existed from TweetDeck to Twellow to Google Wave, but ended up liking Hootsuite the best due to the fact that it was feature rich and required zero software downloads. We fiddled with linking our Twitter and Facebook profiles but we decided that TweetBooking wasn’t for us as the platforms are different and we decided that we should post different content on each site.
Our favorite week was when we ran a contest via Twitter at the ILTA conference last summer. This created positive buzz and was a fun way to interact with others at the show.
The only downside of Twitter maturity was that as we started following more people, it became a bit less personal as it was harder to keep up with all the tweets and content that was coming in. Although it continues to be difficult to keep up with all that goes on, we’ve learned ways such as Twitter Lists and saved searches to stay current and remain social.
I’ve been impressed with how fast the folks at Twitter try to respond to its users in innovating its site and service while keeping it simple and easy. Although they’ve had a few mess-ups, like their Re-Tweet function that I still don’t like, for the most part they have kept up with the curve. So in year two of our Twitter life, I expect to find new and innovative ways to use Twitter and continue moving towards our goals of interacting with customers and building relationships that move beyond 140 characters.
P.S. I’m not sure why I started the blog by talking about my age and relationship status but I think I can justify it. As social media is all about telling others what we’re doing/thinking/feeling/etc… I thought I had to share what I was doing/thinking/feeling, and at the time of writing I was pondering how I am one of two non-married employees at the Orem office.
April 6th, 2010
Tags: Content Management, Facebook, SaaS, social media, Year in Review|
Category: Cloud Computing, Financial Services Technology, SaaS, technical support
2 Comments »
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