Secretaries Live in Word, Lawyers Live in Outlook

by | May 11, 2004 | Articles, Cultural Considerations, Knowledge Management, Technology strategy

Thinking of building or updating your firm’s on-line "portal?"

Can we start by just defining our terms?  What is a "portal," after
all, and what strategic objectives is your firm trying to achieve?

According to this article in Legal
IT, there are three ways to approach building a portal:

  • start with your own internal document management system and essentially
    put it on-line (Allen & Overy took this route);
  • go high-end, buy, and then customize (and customize, and customize)
    a product from LawPort or Plumtree (Morgan-Cole’s choice); or
  • just start with the basic functionality that comes with Microsoft’s Windows
    Server 2003, especially its built-in Sharepoint Services.  Freshfields
    chose this for a cost of less than $30/year/desktop.

As we should all know by now, the make-or-break issue with introducing
a portal is not the technology platform; it’s lawyers’ pace
of adoption of the new capabilities.  And here, Freshfields took
a remarkably common-sense view:  Only with Windows Server 2003 is
Outlook an integral part of the portal, and "lawyers live in Outlook."  No
cultural ramping-up required.

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