This past week members discussed client guidelines regarding the cloud and more. Do you want to learn more about the Legal Innovation and Tech Fest and the SharePoint||Office 365 Symposium? Hear from Connie Brenton and Berys Amor, both presenters at the Tech Fest and Kara Portwood, Symposium advisory team leader. Explore curated sources on these topics including some from ILTA’s treasure chest.
Client Guidelines for the Cloud
The cloud definitely has its benefits but how do law firms address client concerns about data security in the cloud? To orient yourself, start with the cloud section of the ILTA Peer – Security Best Practices document. You can then ask your third party vendors questions about their security. The ILTA webinar “Vendor Risk Management for Legal Firms: Key Questions You Should Be Asking” will help you formulate the questions. You should also prepare for a security audit. ILTACON 2015 session offers peace of mind with “Security Serenity: Performing and Responding to Security Audits.”
Legal Innovation & Tech Fest – Conversations with Berys Amor and Connie Brenton
I spoke with Berys Amor, ILTA Knowledge Advisor, and Connie Brenton, 2015 ILTA Peer Award Winner for Technology Advocacy Professional of the Year, about their involvement in the Legal Innovation and Tech Fest coming up in Melbourne, Australia. They shared with me some highlights of their presentations. Connie will present on disruption and innovative “easy-wins” using technology. Berys will speak on encouraging technology teams in law firms to move to the next level. Technology teams provide support for legal services but Berys knows we now should look to provide more. We should provide business solutions to clients. See “But Wait… There’s More – Legal Innovation & Tech Fest, Part II” to read more about my conversations with Berys and Connie. To learn more about the Tech Fest and ILTA’s collaboration on the project, see “But Wait… There’s More – Legal Innovation & Tech Fest, Part I.”
SharePoint Symposium - SharePoint ||Office 365 Symposium
ILTA’s SharePoint Symposium has an updated name in 2016, SharePoint || Office 365 Symposium and I got the inside scoop from Kara Portwood, the Symposium advisory team leader. Kara worked on the first Symposium in 2008. She explained that to this day, the Symposium still gives people an opportunity to discuss how they use SharePoint in their organizations but 2016 “is also a year of evolution because we are adding Office 365 into the mix.” Speaking of evolution, two Symposium speakers are former SharePoint MVPs and are now Office 365 MVPs. (MVP, Most Valuable Professional, is a Microsoft certification given to independent leaders or vendors who share their passion and technical expertise around certain Microsoft products. Read the MVP Overview for more information.) In 2016 the Symposium will have two tracks, SharePoint and Office 365. Microsoft just released SharePoint 2016 and Kara is excited for the presentation on its new features and functionality. She also knows ILTA members have questions about Office 365. Many organizations have Office 365 in their enterprise agreements but have not yet deployed it. Kara explains the advisory team’s “goal is to give people in the Office 365 track a starting point… we need to start thinking about a hybrid approach where can we leverage the Office 365 platform that we’ve already bought… and discover and harness its value.” For those in the SharePoint track, besides introducing SharePoint 2016, Kara wants attendees to learn how everything funnels up through SharePoint and that SharePoint can be the platform for Office 365. She reminded me that the Symposium is not just for law firms but corporate legal departments as well. At this year’s Symposium expect many networking opportunities, roundtable discussions, opportunities to meet with experts and vendors and an innovation session where Kara hopes everyone will think outside the box.
SOMETHING EXTRA – Tips for the Tip of the Week, the Litigation and Practice Support White Paper, Providing Technology Lawyers and Staff Will Adopt
Don’t you just love the ILTA Tip of the Week? When looking for a succinct way to describe how to simplify a task, scan through all the Tip of the Week entries or become the hero/heroine in your office and share these tips regularly with colleagues.
ILTA’s Litigation and Practice Support White Paper just came out last week. Catch the summary and analysis of the litigation support survey, advice on the hidden costs of e-discovery and more.
Andrea Foot of Tikit reminds us of what our technology consumers in the office expect when adopting tools we promote in her quick read, “Technology That Works Is No Longer Enough.”
As ILTA’s content curator, I’m always monitoring the discussion forums to discover what topics are top-of-mind among the members. Each week, I focus on a few areas that spark your interest, and I provide some curated resources to assist your own information-gathering on the topics. If there are specific topics you would like assistance exploring, please contact me at joanne@iltanet.org