Law Technology

How Getting IT Wrong Costs a Bundle

By Ross

It’s worth a few minutes to review the online slideshow from this week’s eWeek Editor’s Pick. It’s called “Dirty Dozen: 12 IT Disasters.” As they describe it, it’s about what went wrong and what happened next. Many lessons to be learned here and certainly can be extrapolated to any legal technology project of any size, from solo to BigLaw. Read it and then think about the consequences of:

• Mismanaging your firm’s IT projects - yes, they need management - they don’t happen by magic!
• Picking the wrong technology - often the result of lawyers representing themselves pro se on their own tech projects!
• Being cheap - trying to save a short-term buck which ends of costing many multiples of the savings later - spend “right!”

Even though these are “enterprise” corporate examples, the point is to keep our thinking caps on when approaching legal technology projects. For example, there is nothing quite as disruptive, divisive and expensive as getting a practice/matter/case management decision wrong.

This is one are where thinking “like a lawyer” can hurt us! Befriend an experienced, well-referenced, expertise-appropriate-for-the-project independent consultant who can help steer a rational path through your projects from the initial “light bulb over your head” idea phase to conclusion. It’s the least expensive, least painful approach.

Anyway, food for weekend thought.

Full post as published by Ross Ipsa Loquitur on April 17, 2009 (boomark / email).