Law Technology

A Quick Intro to SharePoint for Lawyers - My Latest ABA Journal Column

By Dennis Kennedy

Several years ago, I was at the ILTA conference in Phoenix. I wanted to attend a presentation on Microsoft SharePoint, but found that the room was standing room only and people were standing outside the door to listen to the presentation.

Now, I'm known for being able to spot trends and look at the future of technology in the practice of law, but this was easy to see as a legal tech trend to watch.

In Tom Mighell's and my new book, The Lawyer's Guide to Collaboration Tools and Technologies: Smart Ways to Work Together (see review from Jordan Furlong here), we devoted one of the central chapters of the book to a discussion of SharePoint. Any lawyer, law firm, legal department or other organization considering implementing collaboration tools simply must have SharePoint on the list of tools that they consider. It's a force to reckon with and helps you understand what collaboration tools can do and what the basic collaboration functions are. I don't necessary believe that SharePoint will be the right choice for you, but I do believe that if you compare your other options to it, you will make good decisions about the tools you do choose.

My new ABA column is called SharePoint: A Killer Legal App, and, although I would have preferred that they put a question mark at the end of the title, I use the column to provide a quick intro to SharePoint and how lawyers might use it.

The money quote:

Because they affect our actual day-to-day work so much, I think the two most important areas in emerging technology for lawyers are project management and collaboration. SharePoint addresses both.

I hope you find the column a good starting point to help you understand the growing interest in SharePoint (and other collaboration tools) in the legal profession and elsewhere.

I'll also recommend that you check out the other articles in this issue of the ABA Journal at its excellent and award-winning website.

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

Now Available! The Lawyer's Guide to Collaboration Tools and Technologies: Smart Ways to Work Together, by Dennis Kennedy and Tom Mighell. Join the book's Facebook Group here.

Technorati tags: legal technology collaboration tools sharepoint Law2.0

Full post as published by DennisKennedy.blog on June 03, 2008 (boomark / email).