Digital White Papers

I L T A W H I T E P A P E R | P R A C T I C E M A N A G E M E N T 8 easily and consistently as possible. Thus, while legal professionals may at times feel alone in a world forcing them to merge with machines, they can find productive allies in IT managed service providers with deep experience and history in the legal industry. Partnering with a managed service provider is not simply outsourcing your information technolo services. Nor is it the simple exchange of capital expenditures for operating expenses. While the forms of engagement – from short-term, project-based contracts to fully managed IT strate, service and support – can vary considerably, partnerships with legal industry- focused MSPs offer legal professionals opportunities to cost-effectively learn, innovate and adapt without taking on the time-consuming and physically exhausting responsibilities involved with maintaining on-staff legal technolo expertise. Complexity A recent attempt to save a few dollars a month by swapping out the modem I have at home provided by my cable company with one I'd purchased online reminded me of just how complex even our most basic technolo infrastructure has become. Not that long ago a person could simply plug in a modem, connect it to a wireless router and start surfing the internet. Now, depending on the service provider, the process may mean calling the cable company and giving them the MAC address to the modem, suffering through the upsell they now require even technical support members to pitch customers and then settling in for a few hours of resetting the connections to the 25 or more internet of things devices (phones, printers, Wi-Fi outlets, cameras, locks, TVs, streaming devices, location- tracking dog collars and so much more) scattered throughout a house. I shudder at the thought of swapping out a modem at a busy law office with a dozen attorneys coming and going. Lawyers, paralegals, legal administrators and other staff can't effectively and efficiently serve a firm's clients if, instead of researching case law via LexisNexis, filing documents with the court online or performing myriad other tasks required of successful modern-day legal professionals, they are troubleshooting their internet connection issues, spending their evenings applying the latest Microsoft patches to devices and trying to stay informed of the current hacking techniques employed by cybercriminals. One might even say the responsibility to maintain one's legal expertise works against the ability to become a legal technolo expert of the sort found on staff at experienced MSPs. Lawyers and other legal professionals should not be taking on the responsibilities of engineers and other technolo experts. They have clients to worry about. Still, those clients expect their attorneys to maintain their confidentiality. "Lawyers and other legal professionals should not be taking on the responsibilities of engineers and other technolo experts."

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