Small Law Firms, Technology

This Week In Legal Tech: Lawyers Still Fear The Cloud

There are many good reasons for lawyers to use the cloud, per Bob Ambrogi; just ask the right questions of your vendor.

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cloud computing technologyCan stormy weather interfere with cloud computing? Sounds ludicrous to say, but a 2012 Citrix survey found that 51 percent of Americans, including a majority of millennials, believed it could. Are lawyers very far off that mark in their understanding of the cloud?

Every year, the American Bar Association’s Legal Technology Resource Center publishes the Legal Technology Survey Report, a survey of the legal profession’s use of technology. The 2016 survey is now out, and it contains some surprising findings about lawyers and the cloud. (The full survey costs $1,995 and separate volumes cost $350 each.)

According to the survey, only 38 percent of lawyers say they have ever used cloud-based software for law-related tasks. That percentage is only a slight budge from the prior three years, during which the percentage hovered around 31 percent. Fifty-three percent say they have never used cloud-based software, and 10 percent have no idea whether they have or not.

Of the lawyers who say they have not used cloud computing, the survey asked them what factors stood in their way. Not surprisingly, the top concern is confidentiality and security. Other top concerns are losing control of their data, unfamiliarity with the technology, and the costs of switching to new software and paying a monthly subscription fee.

(I have many more details of the survey’s findings on cloud computing in a post at my Lawsites blog.)

These are all legitimate concerns. But I have to wonder about the accuracy of the survey’s top-line number that only 38 percent of lawyers have used cloud computing in their practices. I’m not questioning the survey or doubting that is what lawyers reported. Rather, I suspect that many lawyers who say they have not used the cloud actually have.

I go back to that 2012 survey I mentioned above. In it, 54 percent of Americans claimed never to have used cloud computing. Yet the survey found that 95 percent of the respondents actually had used the cloud. Nearly two thirds of them had used it for online banking and shopping and many had used it for everything from social networking to online file sharing.

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“Even when people don’t think they’re using the cloud, they really are,” the survey concluded. I believe “lawyer” could be substituted for “people” in that quote and accurately describe the current state of affairs.

As for concerns about security and confidentiality, lawyers are right to worry about them. After all, lawyers are bound by rules of professional conduct to safeguard confidential client information and to protect client property, including client files, from loss.

However, ethics panels in at least 20 states have considered lawyers’ use of cloud computing and have been unanimous in ruling that lawyers may ethically use the cloud — provided they take reasonable steps to minimize risk to confidential information and client files. (The ABA maintains a handy list of cloud ethics opinions.)

What are reasonable steps? Well, that depends. As a New Hampshire ethics opinion put it:

There is no hard and fast rule as to what a lawyer must do with respect to each client when using cloud computing. The facts and circumstances of each case, including the type and sensitivity of client information, will dictate what reasonable protective measures a lawyer must take when using cloud computing.

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Some basic questions to ask of a cloud vendor, distilled from various ethics opinions, include:

  • Is it a solid company with a good reputation and record?
  • Can you get access to your data whenever you want, without restrictions?
  • If your service is terminated – by you or by the company – can you retrieve your data?
  • Does it allow use of advanced password protocols and two-step verification?
  • What are its internal policies regarding employee and third-party access to your data?
  • Is your data encrypted both while in transit and while at rest on the company’s servers?
  • How is your data backed up?
  • What security protections are in place at the data centers the company uses?

Many cloud providers make it easy to find the answers to these questions by detailing their confidentiality and security protections openly on their websites. If you can’t find this information, ask the company to provide it.

The ABA survey asked lawyers who use the cloud what they see as its greatest advantage. The two most common answers were “easy browser access from anywhere” and “24×7 availability.” When the 2012 Citrix survey asked the same question, the most popular answer its respondents gave was “working from home in their birthday suit.”

There are lots of good reasons for lawyers to use the cloud – although working in one’s birthday suit may not be one of them. I suspect many more lawyers are in fact using cloud computing than the ABA survey suggests.

Fewer Than Four Out of 10 Lawyers Use the Cloud, Says New ABA Tech Survey [LawSites]

Robert Ambrogi is a Massachusetts lawyer and journalist who has been covering legal technology and the web for more than 20 years, primarily through his blog LawSites.com. Former editor-in-chief of several legal newspapers, he is a fellow of the College of Law Practice Management and an inaugural Fastcase 50 honoree. He can be reached by email at ambrogi@gmail.com, and you can follow him on Twitter (@BobAmbrogi).

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