Peer to Peer Magazine

66 A P E E R T O R E V E R E Josh Lazar Josh Lazar is an IT professional with broad experiences that range from small business to Fortune 500 companies. He currently works in the professional services industry as an the Senior Director of Information Technolo for the Community Legal Services of Mid-Florida. Josh enjoys the challenges of working with software in virtual environments and conversions of IT processes to the cloud. In December 2018, Josh sat down with ILTA Senior Content Manager Beth Anne Stuebe to talk about tech, virtual environments, the Cloud, and being an active and engaged ILTA member. Talk to me a bit about your experiences at both small and large firms... How did you get started in legal IT? After graduating college, I worked with a Fortune 500 company and a local software development company to begin my career. When I looked for a new career path, I reached out to my small network and eventually received two job offers. One was at a large well-known Orlando law firm, and one with a startup company. I decided to go with safer option, which jumpstarted my career in the legal field. The startup was bought by Yahoo a year later. My experience within a private practice law firm in economic good times and downtimes provided a lot of insight into legal operations and technolo and how they can change over time. Moving to a non-profit law firm, also known as legal aid or legal services, provided a different type of insight. The two JL are more similar than some might think technologically when the organizations are of similar size or scope. You have a professional interest in working with software in virtual environments and conversions of IT processes to the cloud; what, in your opinion, is the next big advancement? Technolo started with technologists working on large computers the size of warehouses and then put a thin client in front of the powerful machinery. Those thin clients eventually became our PCs and laptops with high computing power. Then, we move to servers with a lot of power to beget virtualization, with yet again a thin client in front of it. I think the next advancement will be the power of the computer at our fingertips as PCs and Laptops with the cloud compute being our powerful server. The main thing JL missing is cloud tools to fully manage those devices without something like SCCM, and even those tools are starting to emerge. Of course, this is only possible if client security audits allow us to move in this direction. So maybe the real advancement is regulators allowing clients to be able to leverage this environment within a future US like GDPR ruling. How do you leverage your Director of Information Technolo experience to meeting everyday lawyer and legal needs? Within my organization, IT has a seat at the table as I am on the Executive Leadership Team. In my opinion, being able to meet the needs of a lawyer or the firm starts with making sure we are aware of what those needs are and the overall direction of the firm. Once you have that insight, I build into JL S E N I O R D I R E C T O R O F I N F O R M AT I O N T E C H N O L O G Y AT C O M M U N I T Y L E G A L S E R V I C E S O F M I D - F L O R I D A

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