Cloud computing has long been an interest of mine. I feel like I have been explaining it to lawyers for many, many years.

Recently, I had an article I wrote about cloud computing published and was quoted in another article about cloud computing for lawyers.

In the article I was quoted in, “Is the Cloud Cheaper? For Law Firms, It’s Difficult to Say,” Victoria Hudgins did a great job of surfacing a good quote out of my somewhat rambling answers to her questions. Unfortunately, you will have to register to be able to view the whole article. It’s an odd feeling to have to register to read my own quote.

“What I found is that people don’t consider all the costs or they don’t factor in the inconveniences and problems,” Kennedy said. “They either don’t give it a cost or they don’t look at the savings they get in the whole context.”

He added, “If you don’t assess a cost or value on peoples’ time, employee time and convenience, I think that skews your calculations. And also, one of the big benefits of cloud tools is to capture data and analyze data, and I don’t think legacy software allows you the same opportunity to look at data for efficiencies and patterns.”

The ABA Legal Technology Resource Center published the 2019 TechReport on Cloud Computing, which I’ve written for several years. The TechReports summarize the key results of the annual ABA legal technology survey.

While I don’t think there will be any real surprises in this year’s results, as cloud computing continues its slow march to widespread adoption, I am increasingly disappointed and concerned about the lax approach lawyers are taking to cloud security. If you work with law firms using the cloud, you will want to ask some tough questions.

As I conclude:

There is much that law firm IT departments and technology committees, legal technology vendors and consultants, corporate law departments, clients, and all legal professionals interested in the adoption of technology by lawyers can learn from these results. They give us much to think about and some indications where firms might want to move their technology strategies in the coming year and beyond. Applying basic common sense, diligence, and increased attention to cybersecurity efforts might be the biggest lesson to learn for the upcoming year. In short, cloud cybersecurity must be at the top of the list of questions for clients to ask their law firms. The current state of cloud security among law firms is a train wreck waiting to happen.

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[Originally posted on DennisKennedy.Blog (https://www.denniskennedy.com/blog/)]

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