P2P

8 P E E R T O P E E R : I L T A ' S Q U A R T E R L Y M A G A Z I N E | S U M M E R 2 0 2 0 F R O M T H E P U B L I C A T I O N S L I A I S O N W hen the topic of this publication was designated last year, little did ILTA realize how prophetic the title was for June 2020. We find ourselves at quite a crossroads. In March, law firm information technology found itself in circumstances where decisiveness was mission critical and lead time was miniscule. The industry responded to technology deployments and home configurations with a changeover to a predominantly remote workforce - these events ARE impactful and DO shape our collective futures. The impact of the disruption in the technology provisioning to our firms is substantial. While not a "disruptive technology" in the sense of one technology tool that is an industry game-changer – the situation has utterly and completely disrupted technology delivery to our internal and external customers. We have a workforce in a risk-averse industry, and let's face it – to date a mostly cloud-averse industry, that mobilized with little notice. To provide some insights into how the technology trends looked before this year, the 2019 technology survey provides insight to the technology that was impactful a year ago – by identifying our starting point we can see how far we have come. One of the most reliable trends in the survey has shown the increasing cloud presence with the top barriers to moving to the cloud, actually all applications, being Cost, Security and Performance. In the pre-COVID world the learning curve of change generally outweighed the need for change – to the point that firms would reach end of support. Perhaps the 2020 events have taught us that learning curves are what we make of them. The top technical issues in the 2019 survey (members can view the 2019 summary here) included the one that has topped the survey results for decades - user acceptance. Will the future surveys highlight other challenges as users are forced to accept change and work in new ways? IT leadership has been battling the status quo since computers arrived. While we create the new future, we may be able to, or be forced to, adopt technologies to address these issues that have traditionally been barriers for legal information technology. While we work to identify new priorities to deliver technology to internal and external consumers - the future is bright albeit a little fuzzy. The unknown provides the opportunity to embrace a thoughtful leadership Community Engagement and Technology N A V I G A T I N G T H E C R O S S R O A D S I N 2 0 2 0

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