The quarterly publication of the International Legal Technology Association
Issue link: https://epubs.iltanet.org/i/230349
ENTERPRISE COMMUNICATION CAPABILITIES SHAREPOINT AND THE CLOUD name�������������������������������������������������������������������������������������� Mike Taylor company . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . SPS / Strategic Products and Services website ������������������������������������������������������������������������������� spscom.com name . . . . . . . . . . . . . Noel Williams company . . . . . . . . . . . MacroView website . . . . . macroviewusa.com For providers of communications solutions, 2013 will be remembered as the year of Microsoft Lync — when the successor to Microsoft OCS broke out of the instant messaging window with a broad range of integrated enterprise communication capabilities. The technology that has created the most buzz in 2013 is the combination of SharePoint and the cloud. With their barrage of promotion for Office 365, the Microsoft marketing machine has done much to create this buzz. The growing number of hybrid cloud and private cloud hosting vendors has also played a part. Subtly, every time you use Office 2010 or Office 2013, you are also helping to build it. This will have a profound impact on the way lawyers create, edit and deliver documents. This is because SharePoint and the cloud are extending the Microsoft Word we use every day so that collaborative authoring and editing of documents is as easy as sending email. Actually, it's easier when you consider the documents do not have to be taken out of the document management environment to enable collaborative editing, and certainly much more secure than the email approaches most organizations use. Lawyers who can co-author with their clients will be more agile than their peers who continue to exchange email messages to refine document drafts. Capabilities include unified communication (UC) features, such as: • Voice • Videoconferencing • Desktop-sharing • Instant messaging and presence • Directory integration and federation • Unified voice messaging • Mobility applications With proper integration, any of these features can be beneficial to law firms. Staff who travel can stay connected with unified messaging and mobility applications. Firms with multiple offices can use videoconferencing to provide an in-person experience while saving on travel costs. Managers can interview remote candidates face-to-face. Lync can even extend existing room-based video systems to desktop and mobile clients, enhancing training and continuing legal education. A UC solution like Lync can provide a flexible set of enterprise communication capabilities, incorporating voice, video and text modalities. Even if you deploy only desktop video, IM and presence, Lync can integrate with your existing telephony platform. But integrating Microsoft Lync requires in-house IT staff with a wide range of Microsoft specializations — or a system-integrator partner qualified to implement the desired features. And before going all-in with Lync, articulate the what, why and how of the new functionality to make sure expectations are met. SIMPLIFIED NAVIGATION OF WEB PAGES AND MOBILE DEVICES name��������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������Ian Campbell company �����������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������iCONECT Development, LLC website ��������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������� iconect.com Swipe left to go back; swipe right to go forward. Click your name in the top right corner to log out. Anyone with a mobile device now takes these navigation features for granted. In 2013, we've become much more comfortable with graphical user interface (GUI) standards across multiple platforms. Our smartphones now look and feel a lot like the same full-blown Web pages we see on our desktop monitors, and the concept of a "user manual" is now a thing of the past. Yet here we sit in the world of legal document review with platforms that still look like the 10-year-old interface of Outlook. Several companies have taken a new spin on legal review, giving the user an experience that replicates that of the Web pages they spend their time on when they are out of the office. Swiping left and right, working as well in Safari and Chrome as it does in IE, built-in collaboration and facetted searching (like booking a flight on Expedia) now allow the review of documents in a familiar environment, which results in optimized document review workflow and an enhanced user experience. Peer to Peer 21