Justin North of Baker Robbins & Co. reports at Legal Week the results of an informal survey of CIO's at major law firms asking them to assess what had changed over the past five years and what new developments would dominate the next five.  The firm consensus is that CIO's must view themselves as—and be viewed by their colleagues in senior firm management as—true strategic partners.

How long did you think it would be before you ever saw an observation (emphasis supplied) like this?:

Chris White, director of information technology at Ashurst ... suggests that any successful manager within a legal environment must realise that law firms have evolved into large-scale global businesses and, as a result, have positioned themselves in the last five years to be managed as such.

"They can no longer survive without using corporate styles of management," he says.

Evidence for this is in the CIOs' pedigrees:  A majority of CIO's at the UK's top ten firms arrived as "law firm virgins" from careers at the executive level in corporations. 

And, vs. five years ago, their job responsibility is no longer "fire-fighting" since baseline legal technology (e.g., document management and financial reporting) is increasingly commoditized and standardized. This frees them to be think strategically about using IT to competitively differentiate their firms.

The bottom line?

"A true professional CIO is first and foremost a senior business leader, who simply happens to be in charge of technology, rather than a technology leader in charge of a business unit."

True of your firm?  If  not now, when?