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I think it all came to a head in the pandemic, when everyone realized they were in a paper-based business and they were no longer able to pass paper freely back and forth each other and sign cheques and that sort of thing. So all of a sudden, they started seeing what other industries have been doing over the last 10 years.

If Mauch were launching a law firm today, he says he would sign up for Microsoft 365, buy cloud-based document management, practice management and billing systems, and the equivalent of what used to cost around $120,000, would cost him less than $150-per-month. He then could work off a simple computer, with only a web-browser and no local storage or a cell phone.

Everyone's got a supercomputer in their pocket now, he says. And that's how young lawyers want to work now. They don't want to sit in an office with a big computer and the server down the hall. They want to work anywhere, anytime. So, new, born-in-the-cloud firms, its easier for them.

It's the established firms with decades of precedence and accounting records and established ways of doing things, they're the ones who are going to have to shift in order to compete with these new born-in-the-cloud firms, which can pop up anywhere. They don't even need office space anymore.

Mauch got a law degree from the University of British Columbia. With a background in computer science, as soon as he realized a legal practice would not resemble the L.A. Law re-runs he was watching, he decided to do something different, he says. Mauch is now an IT consultant for law firms and CEO of BMC Networks.

Originally posted here:
Why have law firms procrastinated in transitioning to cloud? - Canadian Lawyer Magazine