P2P

78 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 3 M E M B E R R E S O U R C E S content umbrella. Now, on to some of the established players in legal tech. Microsoft Company Update The Microsoft company update was delivered by Ben Grimes, VP & National Sponsor Professional Services, Tracie Larson, General Manager of Major Accounts, and Paul Edlund, Chief Technologist, Microsoft Central Region. T E C H F O C U S E D L I V E D E M O The Microsoft presentation was a highly technical update, indeed, it was the only live demo I observed in the product sessions I intended. This presentation literally executed from an engineering perspective many of their new capabilities, with a strong slant towards security, connectors and the ability to turn settings on and off as needed to appropriate define the scope of searches, data lakes, the reach of security governance, and like considerations. One of the key messages throughout the presentation was how Microsoft is making a concerted effort to listen to the legal industry, understanding there are unique security requirements in our domain and illustrating that they are diligently working to provide the necessary functionality to turn access off where needed within Azure to satisfy the industry as more data storage and application function shifts to the cloud. It's been a long journey, once which started many years ago when legal was just beginning to consider cloud platform technologies. But every year marks the implementation of more of the necessary security and governance functionality to close the gap. This supports a gradual shift moving to the cloud for some law firms, or the clients they serve, as they gain the requisite necessary level of comfort with the architecture. Naturally, the elements of the Microsoft product update supporting the company's AI functionality featured Copilot and how it is integrated within Word, one of the core technology tools for most lawyers. Microsoft presented an interesting example of asking Copilot a question asking for the retrieval of information about the ILTACON conference and ILTA CEO Joy Heath Rush. Once developed, the audience was shown how that created content could be moved from Word to PowerPoint via their transform functionality. It seems to be an impressive productivity tool, as the software first developed the content and then repackaged it for difference purposes. What else was reviewed in the demo? One snippet was the presenter illustrating some neat shortcuts, like typing WORD.NEW or PPTX.NEW into a browser and launching Word or PowerPoint. There was also some discussion on AI scope, including how the business Copilot product allows for broader searches, essentially including any content where connectors are enabled to allow results. And finally, it was noted that a security Copilot product is coming, something which has great potential for powerful functionality because of tight Intune integration. Finally, a Microsoft Fabric slide showed a broader picture of various Synapse data services, Power BI, OneLake and other elements of their intelligent data foundation. The update was a fine overview of many of the emerging capabilities of Azure both in the functionality and security categories. "And finally, it was noted that a security Copilot product is coming."

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