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36 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 1 Most law firms already have Microsoft (or Office 365) deployed or are in the process of moving to Microsoft 365. In fact, according to the American Bar Association's 2020 (pre-pandemic) survey, about half of firms had already switched to Microsoft 365 and that number has steadily grown throughout the pandemic. However, many firms also see low user adoption, given the rigidity of SharePoint and other Microsoft applications, and limited applicability to the specific needs of line of business leaders and verticals, like the legal profession. At the same time, firms have seen a huge uptick in Teams usage for collaboration, but don't realize that Teams is running SharePoint on the backend; in other words, they are only utilizing a miniscule portion of Microsoft 365's capabilities while paying for the whole enchilada. The solution is for firms to turn their investment in Microsoft 365 into a capable document management system through the help of relatively inexpensive third-party add-ins that deliver the necessary automation components -- without spending hundreds of thousands (if not millions) of dollars on a separate dedicated legal solution or an often-unnecessary legacy system. Automation simplifies processes and can increase collaboration. A reduction in redundant or complex steps associated with saving, tagging, and locating content provides time savings and reduces friction. Meanwhile, collaboration improves when sharing and working together is easy. If team members can more easily find content to work on together and have it stored in the right location with proper versioning and check-in/check-out capabilities, collaboration will improve. This leads to a host of benefits for law firms and legal departments, including better utilization of existing IT infrastructure (specifically Microsoft 365) alongside better compliance and governance (music to any partner's, records manager's, or business leader's ears). A win for the firm, and for lawyers and legal professionals alike. The power of the cloud In the modern world of work, it is not enough to be able to access File Explorer and work with teammates while logged into VPN or from the office. Professionals today need to be able to file and access content from anywhere. The cloud allows this to take place in a far more stable, secure, and scalable way. Additional resources can be easily increased or decreased on most clouds instantaneously (based on demand), one of the hallmarks of the cloud. Meanwhile, content can be worked on in real-time by separate parties, updates happen automatically without IT involvement, and uptime is nearly 100%, limiting the risk of server outages and applications that are down. For many, the inertia to move to cloud applications historically revolved around security concerns; however, F E A T U R E S "Professionals today need to be able to file and access content from anywhere."

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