Technology

Why Collaboration Tools Are Going To Play A Large Role In Law Offices

The way we work in the office is rapidly evolving -- so the way our office is run should evolve also, according to legal technology columnist Jeff Bennion.

By  
on

Intuit recently released a report about the future of business in the United States. Here’s one particularly interesting prediction:

The Great Recession will continue accelerating the long-term trend toward a contingent workforce. Contingent workers – freelancers, temps, part-time workers, contractors, and other specialists – are hired on a nonpermanent basis and don’t have full-time employment status. Yet, these pseudo-employees increasingly work as if they are full-time. What’s missing is a single employer.

Over the Next Decade:

The number of contingent employees will increase worldwide, In the U.S. alone, contingent workers will exceed 40 percent of the workforce by 2020.

Traditional full-time, full-benefit jobs will be harder to find.

Small businesses will develop their own collaborative networks of contingent workers, minimizing fixed labor costs and expanding the available talent pool.

Self-employment, personal and micro business numbers will increase.

Intuit states that today about 25-30% of all workers are “contingent” workers. While I tend to not believe charts and statistics that I find on the internet, I put more trust in Intuit’s predictions than anyone else because they make Quickbooks and TurboTax, so they probably have a better idea than anyone as to how employed people are classified.

This is certainly a trend I’ve noticed in the legal community. To make it legal specific, I will also include in the definition of “contingent worker” attorneys who open up their own solo practices because they can’t get a job anywhere else, but are still looking for full-time employment. Law schools are opening incubator programs to train lawyers to be solos. A lot of attorneys are working as career contract employees or doc reviewers or brought on for extra help to work on a trial, etc. There is a huge pool of unemployed and eager licensed attorneys, a shrinking number of full-time positions, but a more or less steady need for legal project work. So, lawyers and law firms are keeping overhead low by bringing on only contract employees.

The economy has left us, including and especially the legal profession, in a situation where we have an increasing number of workers who are not full-time/on-premises employees, and they predict that number will increase another 15% in the next five years. In short, the way we work in the office is rapidly evolving, so it would make sense that the way our office is run should evolve also.

How To Collaborate

The main concerns with working with contingent workers are going to be security and efficiency. With multiple contingent workers working from different locations, you want to make sure that everyone has access to the files they need, that everyone can work together, and that people only have access to certain documents for the duration of their time as a contingent employee to protect client confidentiality. Often, security gets in the way of convenience, but it doesn’t always have to be that way. Here are some tips on how to effectively collaborate in your law firm and tools to make it easier and secure.

Sponsored

As I discussed previously in the Efficiency Checklist, you should implement certain policies about how information is stored and shared in your office. In addition to the BYOD policy I mentioned in the previous article, you should also have a file retention policy outlining how client files need to be destroyed if they are in inboxes or stored on a worker’s computer.

File Storage and Access: I’ve stated multiple times that I think people should move to the cloud already. If it’s good enough for all of your credit card and banking information, your medical records, and your email, it’s good enough for your files. The benefits are tremendous as well. You can undelete documents, revert back to previous versions, and control who has access a lot more easily. When documents are stored on the cloud, you eliminate the need to save multiple versions of the same document. If it’s a sensitive document, then you especially don’t want drafts of it floating around in temporary employees’ inboxes and on their laptops.

Email: One way to make sure that your clients’ files are not in some contract employee’s Yahoo sent mail folder is to get a couple of temporary email accounts that you have enterprise access to. Enterprise control generally means that, as an administrator, I can log in and shut off account control or assign new accounts. For example, I use Office 365 and I can create user accounts with my domain. You can do the same in GoDaddy. If someone stops working for me, I can log in and disable their account so they can’t log in. All drafts that have been emailed back and forth are quarantined in the mailbox that I control.

As we move more towards a contingent workforce, we are going to have to look to more ways to collaborate and make sure we are complying with our ethical duties as lawyers to maintain client confidentiality.

Earlier: Law Firm As Collaboration Station
Are Collaboration Tools Overrated Or Just Misdirected?

Sponsored

Jeff Bennion is Of Counsel at Estey & Bomberger LLP, a plaintiffs’ law firm specializing in mass torts and catastrophic injuries. Although he serves on the Executive Committee for the State Bar of California’s Law Practice Management and Technology section, the thoughts and opinions in this column are his own and are not made on behalf of the State Bar of California. Follow him on Twitter here or on Facebook here, or contact him by email at jeff@trial.technology.

CRM Banner

Topics

, , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,