Are Application Service Providers Right for Law
Firms?
Their promises to take care of all your technology
woes, and save you money too, sound attractive ... at least until you
start asking the hard questions.
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 Ross L. Kodner is a lawyer and founder
of Milwaukee's MicroLaw Inc., a legal technology consultancy and systems
integrator. He chairs the ABA Law Practice Management Section's Computer
& Technology Division and was a member of the ABA Techshow Executive
Board from 1997-2001. He can be reached at rkodner@microlaw.com. |
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by Ross L. Kodner
ARE APPLICATION SERVICE providers (ASPs) a viable option
for law firms? An ASP is a Web-based service that provides software and
data storage that is delivered to your law firm via the Internet.
Instead of buying, loading, configuring, updating, and supporting
software loaded on your computers, in theory, someone else does it. The
user essentially rents for a monthly fee one's software functionality
and possibly even data storage. Examples of such services include the
WestWorks case manager from WestGroup, a variety of litigation-related
products such as CaseCentral, organizers such as CaseShare, extranet
services from companies like Niku for Legal and LextraNet, among others.
Even services like Yahoo's calendar and email systems, or McAfee's
Clinic anti-virus product.
In my experience, lawyers, as a whole, are not particularly
technologically aware. For the most part, they are just managing to
churn out the work, and that's about all they have time to do. The good
news is that they are attending legal technology CLE programs and
learning. But, it's hard to say whether lawyers will make the leap in
the next year or two to Web-based open standards systems and toss out
their internal Windows networks and local applications.
Lawyers typically are slow to embrace new technology, particularly if
they do not fully understand it. Still, they may be tempted by the "we
do all the work, so you don't have to worry about technical details"
that ASPs promise. Legal practitioners interested in ASPs must ask the
right questions. For instance:
- What happens if the ASP's servers go down and you don't have access
to your data or applications like word processing, spreadsheets, and
time and billing programs? Or worse, what happens if your ASP damages or
loses your data? What responsibility does the ASP assume, and how will
it assist or compensate you?
- How will you work if your Internet connection is down for any
reason? What happens if you can't or don't pay your bill (or if the ASP
mistakenly thinks you didn't)?
- What happens if you want to change services? If you switch from one
ASP to another, will the first give you your data? Will it be in a
format that you can easily use elsewhere? How long will it take to get
it?
- What about client security and confidentiality? How can you know
that your data is not being mined for information, or kept in a manner
that is not secure? How can you be sure the ASP is properly backing up
your data?
Most of the early entries into the ASP market have tended to answer
those specific questions with generalities like "We're completely
secure" or "We've got the confidentiality part covered." Those are not
acceptable answers when your livelihood, professional reputation, and
ethical responsibilities are on the line. The ASP concept has some
merit, and may just be the wave of the future, but until a standard
develops that can deliver 100 percent satisfactory answers to the above
questions, it very well might be malpractice to jump on this particular
bandwagon.
The ASP concept is not new. It is simply a high-tech variation of
outsourcing and service bureaus, neither of which ever managed to have
any sticking power. Business people, IT staff, and lawyers, in
particular, are not willing to give up control to other people whose
interests and priorities may not necessarily be the same. What actually
is more likely to happen (and is beginning to happen even now) is that
larger firms will become their own ASPs - building IT centers to
securely deliver the firm's entire application set and data storage
facilities over open standard Internet connections. Smaller firms will
seek out Web-enabled applications that allow them to take advantage of
now-commonplace high-speed Internet access to work from remote
locations.
In the meantime, the ASP topic remains hot. Law firms are grappling
with the promise of reduced cost and hassle versus dependence on a third
party for technology and data access. Regardless of what ASPs promise,
it is unlikely that the average lawyer actually will save much money on
hardware (or even software), given that some programs simply will not be
available on an ASP basis, and that the data mirroring and backup
necessary to provide fault tolerance and redundancy will necessitate
fully powered machines.
If ASPs can provide supportable answers to the questions raised
earlier, they would seem to show great promise. Better-funded companies
with more completely thought out approaches have the potential to offer
products that meet and even exceed expectations. But if the questions
aren't satisfactorily answered, lawyers would be wise to steer
clear.
Wisconsin Lawyer
