May 11, 2004
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.
Posted by Bruce at May 11, 2004 11:43 AM | TrackBackPosted to Cultural Considerations | IT | Knowledge Management Printer-friendly version
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