These are all questions we dive deep into during this hour-long webinar recorded recently for Avvo, the online lawyer directory par excellence.

Avvo also has an online video of this presentation on their blog post, VIDEO: Cloud Computing for Legal Professionals.

You can also download our free cloud computing resource kit for legal professionals, including a white paper, a compilation of articles from mainstream legal technology press and the full text of the North Carolina proposed ethics opinion on using the cloud in law firms.

Cloud Computing for Legal Professionals
July 15, 10AM PST, 1PM EST

Description:

Just what is this cloud that everyone is talking about? From the perspective of the law firm, computing in the cloud eliminates typical IT expenses, management, and headaches. Cloud options are often cost-effective since they forego high up-front costs in favor of predictable monthly fees. But tread carefully and know your risks.

Avvo will host Larry Port from Rocket Matter, the leading online legal practice management and time tracking software for attorneys. If you’re interested in a CLE-eligible legal technology speaker for your event, (also covering business processes, cloud computing, and more), download Larry’s speaker brochure.

Registration Page for the Cloud Computing for Legal Professionals Webinar.

Over two years later, we’re happy to say that a state bar proposed ethics opinion can now serve as a guideline to help both legal consumers and cloud legal software providers. Thank you North Carolina, for answering the following question eloquently:

Given the duty to safeguard confidential client information, including protecting that information from unauthorized disclosure; the duty to protect client property from destruction, degradation or loss (whether from system failure, natural disaster, or dissolution of a vendor’s business); and the continuing need to retrieve client data in a form that is usable outside of the vendor’s product’; may a law firm use SaaS?

Their answer?

Yes, provided steps are taken effectively to minimize the risk of inadvertent or unauthorized disclosure of confidential client information and to protect client property, including file information, from risk of loss.

The full text, which also includes a terrific list of due diligence questions for legal software consumers, can be read here: Proposed 2010 Formal Ethics Opinion 7:
Subscribing to Software as a Service While Fulfilling the Duties of Confidentiality
and Preservation of Client Property. North Carolina crafted a smart and helpful blueprint for both service providers and consumers.

Without any installs or upgrades, Rocket Matter customers are able to access their clients, matters, billing, calendar, and to-do list from their iPhone, Droid, office desktop, and now, their iPad.

In the following video on our YouTube channel, Ariel Jatib demonstrates Rocket Matter functionality on the new device (full disclaimer: both Ariel and Larry, Rocket Matter’s two founders, have iPads and are completely enamored).

On April 5, day one of iPad business usage, lawyers on the Macs in Law Offices (MILO) Listserv were already talking about how they were using the device. Some examples of what an attorney can do with an iPad:

* Review and annotate drafts over lunch
* Spending some time reading.
* Working with PDFs.
* Using Dragon Dictate
* Make calls with Skype
* Remote into desktops at work using LogMeIn.
* Watch classic law-themed movies via Netflix On-Demand (hey Atticus!)

We are hoping that North Carolina will impose certain minimum standards on cloud-based practice management systems and their SLA/Licensing arrangements to protect all parties involved.

However, there is a risk that some of the commenters in North Carolina may seek to entirely rule out the use of products like Rocket Matter!

If you feel strongly about your use of Rocket Matter or cloud-based technologies in general, you must act quickly. It’s an open submission, so ANYONE, in NC or not, may comment. If you wish to do so, please submit your comment by April 9 to:

ALICE NEECE MINE
Assistant Executive Director
208 Fayetteville Street Mall
amine@ncbar.gov
PO Box 25908
Raleigh, North Carolina 27611-5908
Telephone: 919/828-4620
Fax: 919/821-9168

Ironically, I’m up here at 30,000 feet using the cloud in the clouds. At the airport I was connected too using a Verizon MiFi device. I’ve been using Rocket Matter to check my calendar, and using email to communicate. I even I shot a video using a Flip camera and sent it to people.

It’s pretty amazing what one can do these days. Alas, had I known, I would have charged the extra battery.

Law Practice Today hosted my second annual “Predictions for Online Legal Practice Management” article, in which I identify 5 trends that I see happening in 2010:

1. More Choices
2. More Disconnected Functionality
3. Mass Migration Away From Desktop Solutions
4. Change to Existing Distribution Channels
5. Increased Hardware Choices

Thanks to Bob Ambrogi for picking up this article as part of a collection of prediction pieces, which also includes words on e-discovery and medical/healthcare law.

I found it interesting to talk to people who leveraged some of the basic Mac productivity tools, such as Exposé, Spaces, Automator, and those who had never ventured down those paths.  Everybody grows into their own habits and creature comforts with their Macs, and it was interesting to hear how different people used their machines.

Steve McDonough won our Snuggie, and David Satterfield won one of our t-shirts. Congrats!

For a lot of the participants, it was a chance to finally match a face with a name.  Most of us knew of each other from the MILO listserv, but had never met in person.  I met customers and friends that I’ve known in a virtual sense for two years before finally meeting them in “meet space”.

The first presenter, Justin Kahn, dove deep into rich functionality available in Acrobat Professional.  Some of the tips I learned that I’d never known was how to embed indexes to make search on long documents faster, and a function that will download an entire website into a PDF.  Certainly, as we become more and more paperless, solid Acrobat skills will benefit any legal professional.

Software as a Service was one of the predominant themes at MILOFest, with three talks involving the subject, and two out of the four vendors representing SaaS companies.  There seemed to be a general feeling that SaaS is inevitable, a sentiment shared by many participants and even representatives of traditional, desktop installed software.  Jack Newton did a great job representing the legal SaaS industry, boiling down a lot of complex gobbledy-gook technospeak into easily digestible tidbits. Ben Stevens presented a session on using cloud-based tools, which unfortunately I had to miss.

I spoke on a subject near and dear to my heart, productivity.  The talk, “Running an Efficient and Error-Free Law Firm” was an expansion of the shorter talks I gave with the Avvo folks in Florida.  The goal is to delve into the world of project management, applying techniques long known in manufacturing and software industries such as Agile Software Development to the practice of law.  We’re looking for additional opportunities to speak on this topic, so if you haven’t heard the talk you’ll get plenty of chances.

(As an experiment, I uploaded the slideshow to Slideshare.net.  For the most part, they did a good job, but there are some amusing slides in there. Take a look and let me know what you think.)

BeeDocs Timeline presented a sneak preview of some new features.  If you haven’t seen this software, take a look.  It’s one of the most beautiful pieces of software I’ve ever seen.  The folks from Marketcircle and Omni Group were there as well.  Rocket Matter designs start with OmniGraffle, so it was cool to meet them as well.

As usual, we gave away a Snuggie and this time, in the spirit of MILO, we gave away a Magic Mouse.  But don’t worry if you missed out this time, because you can visit us at Virtual LegalTech and try to win some Rocket Matter schwag there as well.

A special thanks to Victor Medina, who did a great job organizing!

Third party clouds, however, can now do everything a business needs. The smaller the company, the more they should look to hosted “cloud” providers for services ranging from marketing to customer acquisition to accounting to project management to payroll. You don’t have to use hosted services for all these things, but if you do, you’ll save considerable money upfront and get constant software upgrades as part of your deal.

Click here to read the article in full.

Nicole Black, in her insightful Practicing Law in the 21st Century blog, wrote a piece called “Should Lawyers Be Wary of SaaS?”, which resulted in a very lively discussion.  Make sure you check out the comments section to see some interesting thoughts.  This article then appeared in Sam Glover & Aaron Black’s Lawyerist, with more great comments.

Sam Glover, meanwhile, followed up with a piece of his own titled “Can You Trust Google Apps (And Other Saas)“.  Says Sam:

I use Google Apps, and I am not worried about security, privacy, or waiving the attorney-client privilege. Here is why … (click to see why)

And Christopher McKinney, another very bright thinker in the legal technology space, penned “Cloud Computing For Mobile Lawyers“, appearing in Law.com.  Here’s Chris’s motivation for using the cloud:

As a trial lawyer who spends as much time out of the office as in, I need secure access to all of my client data on the road. I need to be able to send and receive e-mail, review document drafts, collaborate with clients and counsel, check and update task assignments to my staff, and make court filings from just about anywhere. Oh, and I would like this capability without spending a small fortune on a customized server system or hiring a small army of IT workers. How is this possible? Simple: My firm is in the cloud.