Adam Smith, Esq.

Secretaries Live in Word, Lawyers Live in Outlook

Thinking of building or updating your firm's on-line "portal?"

Can we start by just defining our terms?  What is a "portal," after all, and what strategic objectives is your firm trying to achieve?

According to this article in Legal IT, there are three ways to approach building a portal:

• start with your own internal document management system and essentially put it on-line (Allen & Overy took this route);
• go high-end, buy, and then customize (and customize, and customize) a product from LawPort or Plumtree (Morgan-Cole's choice); or
• just start with the basic functionality that comes with Microsoft's Windows Server 2003, especially its built-in Sharepoint Services.  Freshfields chose this for a cost of less than $30/year/desktop.

As we should all know by now, the make-or-break issue with introducing a portal is not the technology platform; it's lawyers' pace of adoption of the new capabilities.  And here, Freshfields took a remarkably common-sense view:  Only with Windows Server 2003 is Outlook an integral part of the portal, and "lawyers live in Outlook."  No cultural ramping-up required.