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02 March 2018 / Mike Sanders
Issue: 7783 / Categories: Features , Profession , Technology
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Collaboration technology for law firms

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It’s time for legal professionals to boost online collaboration if they are to see real productivity benefits, says Mike Sanders

  • Collaboration technology has evolved far beyond mere sharing of documents.
  • The latest solutions enable a project management approach, but traditional technologies lag behind.

As law firms continue to expand their presence across the globe, there is a growing need to be productive anywhere, at any time. Deadline demands are getting tighter and clients have higher expectations for law firm productivity.

However, the technology that many law firms are using to allow their lawyers to work together and with clients is creaking. Traditional on-premise systems, requiring legal staff to log in to a number of separate systems to access internal resources and share documents via email, are no longer good enough. If law firms do not address the pressing need to take their productivity to the next level, they will very soon begin to lose clients to competitors who are more flexible and responsive.

Legacy document management systems attempted to demand—often unsuccessfully—that lawyers operated within the constraints of the system. In reality,

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Gateley Legal—Jack Kelly

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The legal profession is undergoing a fundamental shift from selling services to creating technology-enabled products, according to Professor Luke Mason, Head of School of Law at Regent's University London
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