Are Application Service Providers Right for Law Firms?

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.

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.