RIP Legal IT?

I read a couple of articles last year, one on the demise of corporate IT and another on how corporate IT has the same reputation as Carol Beer (the bank manager in the BBC’s Little Britain hit sketch show, “computer says no”). I agree with some of the sentiments in both of these articles, but not in the conclusion, that this is going to lead to the end of corporate IT in the former article or that this is generally the case that “IT says no” in the later. Here’s my response as to why.

Does the Corporate Legal IT dept need to be dragged into the future?

I spoke to one board level client who was stunned when he moved to his new company that he was unable to use his own laptop and iPad. The IT department instead set him up with a desktop that made him feel like he had been transported five years back in time.

But then I could as easily quote from an article like this one:

A company that runs two law centres has become one of the first two organisations ever to be fined for data protection breaches, after personal details of 24,000 clients were lost when an unencrypted laptop was stolen.

There are reasons that your work PC can be a pain compared to your modern quad core home laptop. But often there are very good reasons for this based on decisions that have been taken by the firm as a whole. It’s a balance and although I would wholly agree with the sentiment that corporate IT has to “say yes”, I’d also argue that it’s the business as a whole that needs to be dragged into the future as well and see IT once again as an enabler for the firm rather than just a utility service. See it as a former and you start to make joint decisions on what you want from IT for the firm, as the later it just becomes something you use.

So what about the End of the Corporate Legal IT dept?

Certainly Legal IT will change due to the three factors outlined in the article: 

  • The corporate acceptance of SaaS
  • The explosion of consumer technology
  • The economy

But it will change rather than die. Much as I’m sure that from the outside it can look like corporate IT is a dinosaur waiting for extinction, this is a generalisation. Most Legal IT depts are very used to change (they’ve been through enough of them in the last 10 years! Mergers, Growth, Recession, Globalisation etc) and so these factors will lead them to change yet again.

  • SaaS, yes it’s great but it still needs managing, it still needs analysis of the business needs/requirements, it still needs project management for implementing the service.
  • Consumer technology, Apple stuff still breaks you know and needs tech support.
  • The economy, if there’s one department that knows how to cut costs it’s IT!

So that’s my thoughts on these articles, what’s yours?

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4 thoughts on “RIP Legal IT?”

  1. Good positive reply,

    I think good legal IT departments will embrace cloud technology as we did fifteen years ago when we all bought in to the Microsoft active directory domain in house client server model.

    Lawyers most don’t want to know tech or geek and have enough hassle dealing with clients and legislation . We are here to allow the lawyer collective in our own firms to do their job as best as we can to support them.

    I like to think we act as the ground crew and the lawyer as the bomber or fighters pilots and our job is simply to make sure our lawyer hot shots have the best and most efficient weaponry available and it’s our job to understand the latest tech and utilise to gain them advantage.

  2. Good post. I think that one of the causes here is the marketing of IT kit in general as being simple to setup and use. The iPad is a good example of this – look at their commercials and read the small print that points out that demo “sequences have been shortened”. People see kit like devices like this with (admittedly) great user interfaces, which they are led to believe without much support from their IT teams. It’s then a quick step for them to think that they can do everything through these devices, when the reality is far more complex.

    I totally agree that we need to be seen as enablers rather than inhibitors of technology, and also that the role of in house IT teams will evolve to being value-add business analysts rather that mechanics.

  3. Good comments
    The era of BYOC (Bring Your Own Computer) is still a way off and has some challenges. We’ve been telling our business’s that standardisation is the way to go and changing that culture will certainly be one barrier, never mind the technical challenges of security and support. It will come though and you can see it coming in some technology, eg citrix on a secure USB stick.
    Maybe one day we will see people arriving at the office with their own choice of device, choosing a desk, plug in and go.
    For some bigger firms it will be about moving their private cloud ‘out there’ and managing that as oppose to buying into Google Apps or Office365 or whatever.

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