Canadian Lawyer

w w w . C A N A D I A N L a w y e r m a g . c o m S E P T E M B E R 2 0 1 7 23 cloud-based practice management soft- ware connects with the various storage providers, observes Allan Oziel, business and technology lawyer at OCL Law in Toronto. That leaves everything organized and in the cloud allowing the lawyer to open new matters, track them, connect to contacts, manage the calendar and tasks as well as the tickler or reminder system and manage trust accounting. "You really have to test out the tools in your practice to see if [they're] some- thing that you and your staff are com- fortable using and if it creates a benefit or efficiency in your practice," he says. "I've incorporated a number of tools that I find useful, including video conferenc- ing tools, remote desktop tools [and] we also use a cloud-based phone system." But, he agrees that it's all still pret- ty piecemeal. Everything needs to fit together like a puzzle and sometimes one tool may not fit in so smoothly with another. "Whoever's responsible for the tech- nology stack has to really put together a plan and ensure the selected technology plays nicely together and works correct- ly when it's all integrated. I think that is difficult for small law right now. If you don't have that inherent knowledge of technology, then it may be difficult to put together that nice set of tools that work nicely together," says Oziel. "There's the potential for improvement [for] a solution that ties all the require- ments together into one nice package." Legal consultant Mitch Kowalski is convinced that it is on its way. With what's available now, it's imperative for the small practitioner to understand and adopt technology and key into the tools that are going to make them more efficient but still allow them to be hyper cost conscious. That requires them to be more tech savvy and tune into find- ing what's out there that works for them while balancing the efficiencies. But when that law-firm-in-a-box hits the market, he sees it as a plug-in- and work system that will further alter the law practice model. "Right now, I don't think there's any one product that will do everything. There are products that will do a bunch of stuff and will then have to integrate with other things. Eventually, that's where the market is going to have to go," says Kowalski, author of Avoiding Extinction: Reimagining Legal Services for the 21st Century. Going to one vendor for one applica- tion that will do everything that a law firm requires is still five or 10 years off, he figures. But he sees the market start- ing to consolidate and driving toward that idea. And he sees the whole thing rolling into the cloud, where he says a shockingly low portion of the profes- sion is working. "What's interesting to see is wheth- er or not there will be a franchising approach across the law firm practice across Canada or Ontario where law- yers will simply plug into an existing system and not have to worry about all this stuff. It would just be: 'Here's your platform and we'll throw in maybe an accounting portion to that and we'll have a back office.' I think that's some- thing we'll eventually see," says Kow- alski. "The stumbling block right now is lawyer ownership and where money comes from to fund this thing." Neil Mangan and his partner, Jer- emy Hessing-Lewis, are already moving toward a similar concept with their Vancouver-based Small Law Corpora- tions, but with a twist. "What we're trying to do is operate a lightweight, customer/client-focused law firm which uses technology to allow us to deliver cost-effective, unbundled ser- vices and, in doing so, actually increase the amount of direct contact we have with clients, and so clients are experiencing this approach," Mangan says. "We're often try- ing to find other lawyers who share similar values. "There's a few of us out there that are kind of just pioneering and finding ways to make this work while also working within our somewhat archaic regulatory requirements." So, instead of having a bunch of "fran- chised" general practitioners in various geographic regions, Small Law Corp. is networking individual or small firms by practice areas. By operating on the same values and principals, it can refer to the lawyers within its group for their various expertise. The legal tech tools introduced this past year are helping to make those goals a reality. Mangan points to Microsoft's new Canadian data centre, allowing for data to be stored in Canada — a requirement for certain legal work. The increased automation has already changed client expectations, he says. "It's [technology] going to change the entire model of how it's done." Small law tech spending A 2016 survey by the International Legal Technology Association found that small firms were increasing their technology spend and moving to cloud-based services. Here are some other findings: • Top five purchases in 2016 include: desktop hardware/PCs (61 per cent); laptops/notebooks (59 per cent); net- work upgrades/servers (53 per cent); printers/multifunctional devices (44 per cent); and antivirus/antispam/spyware software (44 per cent). • New to the 2016 master list of purchas- es: security awareness training services, software and content (27 per cent); secu- rity monitoring services for the network (27 per cent); and artificial intelligence technology (three per cent). • Seventeen per cent of survey respon- dents purchased analytics software within the last 12 months, an 11-per-cent increase over 2015. • Firms' top IT challenges include security management (67 per cent), user adop- tion/lack of training (42 per cent), risk management/compliance (40 per cent) and email management (39 per cent). From ILTA/InsideLegal Technology Purchasing Survey

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