Issue link: https://epubs.iltanet.org/i/43390
"Nearly every aspect of our human existence is subject to eventual 'cloud-ification'." of law firm managers — raised in the modern era of technology — brings fresh perspectives on the essential elements of the practice of law. In many large international corporate legal departments, there is often little physical contact with people, including internal business clients, upon whom lawyers depend and with whom they frequently work. In our research with law firms, we find that there is a strong and rapidly growing trend towards remote, collaboration-based work. Highly successful legal work will be achieved by efficient collaboration among attorneys who may never physically meet, leveraging a sophisticated combination of defined processes and technology to make the work fast, easy and efficient. On the corporate side, this new cloud-based world will drive general counsel to rely on IT and collections 8 Corporate Law Departments ILTA White Paper of tools that are absolute requirements to their work. Of significant importance will be internal systems, including new forms of knowledge and expertise management that use selective scopes to make the most of both internal and the universe (a.k.a. the "cloud") of available legal service resources. This will be a combination of preferred outside counsel firms, legal process outsourcing vendors (including those that are discovery-focused, such as document review) and crowdsourced avenues, such as discussion forums and wikis. A growing way to manage law firm spending is by demanding alternative fees. Some law departments have even worked with their procurement departments or brought in a consultant to develop requests for proposals and law firm selection.