What will legal firms’ top five priorities be in 2021?

16 December 2020

2020 IT, networking and security challenges

Steve Whiter (Appurity director) and Jonny Watkinson (Enterprise Sales Manager UK&I at NetMotion Software) tell us what law firm priorities will be in 2021. NetMotion recently conducted a survey via their Connected Legal Forum in which 50 US law firms were asked about their IT, networking and security challenges for the coming year.

The below is an excerpt from the full article.

Improving the user experience

The pandemic has transformed our working environment forever. Most people are currently working remotely, many still getting to grips with the new devices and apps they’ve been given to do their jobs. Ensuring these remote workers have a good user experience will be vital in the next 12 months, especially in terms of increasing employee productivity and generating competitive advantage.

That’s why two thirds of IT leaders at legal firms rated this as top priority for 2021.

Moving to the cloud

If it wasn’t for the pandemic, this would be the number one priority with many firms already moving more and more of their applications to the cloud.

As legal companies increasingly rely on cloud-based applications like Zoom and Microsoft Teams to have highly confidential conversations and share information in a secure way, many are now asking why they don’t have more of their core applications (including document management systems) to the cloud. After all, it’s in their interest to off-load the risk and management of these apps to other companies, like Microsoft. Plus, there are the cost savings from a resource and infrastructure perspective to consider.

Embracing Zero Trust

An important part of the Zero Trust concept for legal firms is Zero Trust Network Access (ZTNA): the ability to access applications in a highly secure, uncompromised manner.

Traditionally, when everything was on premise, if someone hacked into a firm’s VPN that person could usually gain access to the corporate network. Think of it as a central point of vulnerability. And now that critical applications are moving to the cloud, there are new risks and security concerns to address.

Updating remote access VPN

As firms migrate various technologies from on premise to cloud, many are considering more effective alternatives to VPN. Companies are realising that their VPN isn’t the ideal solution in a hybrid environment comprising on premise, cloud and SaaS technologies. Most VPNs do not perform well over external networks and variable connectivity. In fact, many are renowned for disrupting the user experience.

Upgrading EUM/EMM

Many firms are considering moving away from using industry-leading enterprise mobility management (EMM) platforms and using Microsoft Intune instead, which is bolted on to Microsoft’s main enterprise licensing suite. The logical question being: if we’re already paying for Intune, why aren’t we using or at least testing it?