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40 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 | F A L L 2 0 2 0 A cultural consideration that is popping up or at least an old cultural issue that has a new flavor, is the divide between the Have's and Have Not's. It used to be lawyers had laptops and legal assistants had desktops and that was that. Now the measure is, who has a camera and can easily access Zoom or Teams meetings. When everyone is remote, and even when some are remote and some are in an office, the ones who can be on camera get that little bit more "connection" than the ones who can only phone in or use an old desktop computer without a camera. One lawyer said their biggest frustration was that while they could have Zoom meetings with clients and collaborate through video with them, they had to talk with their legal assistant on a cell phone and couldn't do any collaborative work with them. What is your firm's philosophy on this? Are they thinking long term about the consequences of the choices they are making right now? ILTA>ON Session, Tech Survey And Polls I was asked to moderate the ILTA> ON session, "Learning from COVID 19, Law Firm IT Success Stories". In the session, Tracy Elmblad, Chief Information & Operations Officer at Hinshaw & Culbertson LLP and John Jelderks, Director of I.T. at Barack Ferrazzano Kirschbaum & Nagelberg LLP, shared a few of their experiences over the past six months. As part of the session, we reviewed responses to ILTA's Tech Survey COVID questions and responses to polling questions we asked of ILTA>ON attendees. Here are some of the survey and poll results that are relevant for 2021 budget preparation: (ILTA Tech Survey) What is your firm planning to do differently, or continuing to do differently, with technology or process as the work-from-home (WFH) rules lift? • Maintain majority WFH (45%) • Provide Equipment for home offices - Laptops / Extra Screens / Printing / Scanning capabilities (21%) • Paperless Emphasis - change processes, improve scanning, policies for paper handling (10%) • Improve Virtual Meetings Experience • Add Mobile Tools • More Unified Communications, Collaboration Tools • More Cloud - migrating more systems to hosted services • Update BCP/DRP • Improve Remote Security You can look at that list and ask what is YOUR firm doing differently? Will you be able to continue to do those things differently or continue the progress made? Are there new priorities that emerged from the changes in process, that will impact the budget? (ILTA>ON Poll) Has your firm's appetite for moving to the Cloud changed since March 2020? • Less likely to move systems or applications to the cloud (0%) • No Change, we are Cloud First already (44%) • No Change, we are generally still Cloud Averse (16%) • More likely to move systems and applications to the cloud (40%) For those of you whose firms are still generally Cloud Averse or even those who are Cloud First, it's time to ask this question for everything, "can we do it easier in the cloud?" If yes, then do it or budget for it. Over the past six months, there are multiple examples of firms with problem with their networks on premise, people struggling with connectivity issues in offices, where access to hosted systems remained unaffected. The continued need to Work-from- Anywhere makes it easier to show the ROI for moving more to the cloud. (ILTA>ON Poll) Have you changed your patching or updates routines for your network infrastructure? • Routine was interrupted, not patching at all right now or significantly behind (4%) • Continuing as usual - manual onsite (2%) • Continuing as usual – remotely (67%) • Moving to MS InTune (10%) • Other (16%) Can you move to a system that allows better management and user experience for the ever-increasing cadence of change for operating systems and applications? 1 2 3 A S K I N G T H E R I G H T Q U E S T I O N S

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