Clients complain about the multiplicity of law firm extranets, all different but not better, and the nuisance of maintaining passwords for each one. Can a group of firms collaborate to steer development of a tool useful to all, to build the “extranet as FedEx”— a common facility that many firms and their clients can use, in the interests of both economy and convenience? Is it true that firms compete on the quality of content, not the shape of envelopes?

How do law firms and clients communicate and collaborate? How do they manage the cycle of documents and tasks as deals move from inception to closing?

From Counsel Connect through the dot-com wave of deal room services to Legal OnRamp and home-grown SharePoint extranets, there have been many efforts to improve the profession’s ways of working. Yet fifteen years after Internet Explorer 1.0, the answer is still mostly e-mail, FedEx and yellow pads.

Why? And is there an opportunity now to do something better?

Do law firms reap any competitive advantage from the specific features of their individual extranets? Extranets are, after all, the 21st century functional successor to mail, messengers and FedEx as collaboration mechanisms. Yet in the 20th century no firm thought it necessary to develop its own bicycle messenger or air freight service.

Are firms today wasting money and effort on idiosyncratic software? Would they—and most importantly their clients—not be better served by collaborating around a common collaboration platform, as leading UK firms and banks have done on a common publishing platform?

At Kraft Kennedy’s invitation, a group of law firms will be discussing these questions and hearing about some new answers on June 17. (For information, write to events@kraftkennedy.com.)

We will be talking about SitePoint 2.0, a matter management and collaboration platform that has been used on more than 2,000 matters in the UK. SitePoint is launching in the US after success with several UK law firms, including Allen & Overy, Freshfields and Herbert Smith. Kraft Kennedy is assisting the developers, HighQ Solutions, creators of the UK Banking Portal, with the US launch.

SitePoint Key Features

• An end-to-end solution—from pre-transaction due diligence and data rooms through deal execution to post-closing events and permanent online closing binders.
• Single Sign On enabling a client or lawyer working with several law firms to use a single set of credentials for separate instances of SitePoint controlled by each of the law firms.
• Robust, fine-grained security for sites, folders, documents and modules. Audit trail and reporting of every action.
• Document management with versioning, bulk upload, digital rights management, customizable metadata and optional integration with Autonomy iManage.
• Comprehensive project management and group collaboration tools, including wikis, blogs, tasks and events.
• Dynamic social layer including email, RSS feeds, activity streams, favorites, filters, comments, tags and people profiles.
• Customizable online databases/spreadsheets and forms with custom columns, fields and data types.
• Can be integrated with a firm’s Recommind search system, so closing binders can be included in search results without replicating them back to firm systems.

We will also be talking about Basecamp, a very widely used collaboration and project management service in the US.  Among the many tools of its kind, Basecamp is noteworthy for ease of use, low cost and Single Sign On, so that one’s credentials can be used across all sites in the service. Some firms are focusing on Basecamp for technology, office construction, graphic design and other administrative projects with vendors.

For information about the June 17 event or about SitePoint and BaseCamp, write to events@kraftkennedy.com.

I recently had the good fortune to attend the SharePoint Conference 2009 in Las Vegas, which outlined the new features in SharePoint 2010.  Below are some of the things I took away.  I think this will be a huge improvement over the current version, and will offer a lot of very compelling new features, and a lot of good reasons to make the upgrade.

General Comments

The Beta will be released in November.  Final product will be released in the first half of 2010.

Microsoft is focusing on making the upgrade and updates easier.  You can upgrade the back end, while still keeping the master pages (look and feel of sites) the same.  Then you can upgrade the master page at the site level to test and get all of the new features.

Everything is 64 bit.  It requires SQL 2005 / 2008 64-bit, and Windows 2008 64-bit.  The server must have at least 4 GB of RAM.

A level 1 browser is required for users (IE 7 or 8, or FireFox 3) plus SilverLight for the best experience.

WSS is now called Microsoft SharePoint Foundation, and is still free.  SharePoint Designer is still free.  SharePoint Server still has Standard and Enterprise CALs.

There’s a limitation on data storage now if you don’t have SQL… The basic install uses SQL Express now (rather than Windows Internal Database in the old version), which has a 4 GB data limit.  So we should keep this in mind for small projects, and typically recommend SQL Server.

SharePoint has emerged as an entire platform, and Microsoft believes this will bring ECM to the masses, BI to the masses, etc.  Microsoft is also positioning this as a full featured internet-facing platform, as well as an intranet / extranet portal which 2007 was though of.

SharePoint should be evaluated along with Office 2010, since the integration is now extremely tight.  SharePoint can be the access point for all of the firm information.

The most impressive things I saw in 2010 were the workflow enhancements in 2010 and the Office web applications.  In many instances I couldn’t tell whether they were demoing things in the rich Office client or in the Office web app—the user experience is almost identical in either case!

Interface

The interface features a contextual ribbon, similar to all of the Office products, except web based.  It allows for running an action on multiple documents, since you can select multiple documents and then perform an action in the ribbon.  The interface is AJAX and SilverLight based, so there’s no postbacks and everything is more fluid and visually appealing.

Rich services are now included for Access, PowerPoint, and Visio, in addition to the existing Excel Services.  Office web apps can be hosted in SharePoint, and people can co-edit files, such as Word documents and Excel spreadsheets.  The Project Server 2010 web editor was very impressive, and looks just like the Project Professional client.

Wiki editing is much improved, with drop down links to choose from when you start to make a wiki link, and easier photo uploading.

You can set up multi-authentication from the same URL now, which is useful for extranets.  The user would hit the URL and get a prompt for which type of authentication to use, such as FBA or Windows Authentication.

SharePoint includes a native SilverLight web part, so you can drop rich content into any page.  For example, you can drop in the SilverLight mapping web part wherever you need dynamic maps.

ECM

Each document is given a unique document ID.

Outlook integration is unchanged.  Microsoft is pushing SharePoint WorkSpace for offline access and as the desktop client, but if you want to work from within Outlook (or for email filing) you still need a third-party product.

Document sets are introduced, which let you run actions on multiple documents.

Document libraries now have a “Connect to Office” button, which puts a link to that document library in the Word File -> New menu.  Office integration is tighter.

Documents can be worked on in the web app in SharePoint and edited at the same time.

Microsoft has developed SharePoint to meet all eDiscovery guidelines.  In Site Actions, there’s a Legal Holds and eDiscovery option.  You can enter search terms and find all discovery hits.  You can then “Add Hold” and lock down all corresponding content.  You can then view a Hold Report, and see an Excel web access report of all items with a legal hold applied.

Records Management has been improved.  In the ribbon, you can declare a file as a record.  Records can be declared in place wherever they are, so you don’t need to use a records center anymore.   You can automate workflows around records in place.  You can also define information management and retention policies to each level of documents, and can define multiple levels of retention (i.e. after x amount of time, move here, then delete after another period of time.)  You can set up organizer rules based on metadata and content types for where to move the documents.

In SharePoint Designer, you can create workflows that move, copy, or stub and link documents to a record center.

Workflow history is now shown as a visual diagram.

Videos can be uploaded to SharePoint and then streamed over a web page.

Document libraries will scale to tens of millions and archives to hundreds of millions of documents.  There’s also an out of the box option for managing data on file shares by storing metadata in SharePoint.

Social Computing

There are many more social features included and MySite now resembles more of a FaceBook type page.  MySite includes your status, your information, business relationships, and posts from people you are following.

All content can now be tagged, and allows you to write notes and rate any piece of content on a 5 star rating.  SharePoint also includes a tag cloud.

Business Intelligence

Project Gemini is now broken into SQL PowerPivot for Excel and SharePoint PowerPivot.  By installing the addin to Excel, and defining relationships between data sets, Excel can use the analysis services engine to run complex calculations in memory and manipulate millions of cells in seconds.

You can share data between PowerPivot files.  The queries use MDX (same as analysis services), so they’re not just Excel documents anymore, they’re entire OLAP BI solutions.

PerformancePoint Services 2010 are included with the Enterprise CAL.  It allows you to drill down many levels deep into data analysis.  Graphics are updated with SilverLight and you can do some cool things with 3D floating windows and animated time-lapse charts.

You can use SQL Reporting Services web parts along side Excel web access parts for reporting.  Reporting Services is the engine for the new Access Services reporting.

There’s native support for reporting on SharePoint lists.

Reporting Services Configuration has been made easier.

Reporting Services uses an AJAX viewer, so no page refreshes, and there’s a full drill through of reports.

There’s support for alternate access mappings, so you can target reports to a zone, such as an internet zone.

Workflow

SP Designer workflow is no longer tied to a list.  It can be created as a site / site collection / content type workflow.

SP Designer workflows can be imported into Visual Studio now.

Approval, Collect Feedback, and Signature workflows are still built in.  You can specify rich forms in InfoPath and can now specify due dates and other simple behavior in tasks.

In Site Actions, you can directly open a site into SharePoint Designer.

Association Columns can be defined for a workflow, to create necessary columns in a list if they are not present.

Impersonation Steps can be defined in SharePoint Designer, where you can impersonate the security context of the workflow designer, rather that the person that kicked off the workflow.  This is HUGE.  We had to do crazy workarounds because of this security context limitation in 2007.

SharePoint workflows can be exported to a template in Visio, and vice versa!!  You can create a flow in Visio and then import it into SharePoint Workflow Designer.

You can now do a hierarchy of task assignments, instead of just one after the next.

You can specify task outcomes like yes / no / maybe.

You can specify a process of approvals, such as having it be unanimous from several people, or just one person of several can approve.

Search

SharePoint comes with a basic SharePoint Search which is ok.   This can be upgrade to FAST Search for SharePoint, which adds a lot more features.  There’s also FAST Search for Internet Business.

Many search-based commercial sites are powered by FAST Search, such as Financial Times, Globrox.com, oodle.com, etc.

FAST lets you index all the information, find patterns in the data, and create refining criteria.  FAST search automatically creates the refining criteria for your search, and lets the user further refine based on those relevant categories.

Search can be federated.

Search is more scalable; 10x as many docs searchable.

Partners can enroll in the FAST Partner Program, enroll in the Search Specialization Program, and get training resources at FAST.

Administration

Stsadm has basically been replaced with PowerShell.  PowerShell is not SharePoint specific, so in many cases it takes multiple commands to accomplish the same thing, but you have a lot more flexibility.  SP 2010 will ship with 500 + PowerShell scripts.

Sandbox Solutions can be deployed, like wsp projects, but it allows the administrator to lock down exactly how much of the API and access levels that will be available to the application.  So there’s more control over what custom applications can do and interact with.

Visual Studio 2010 has native templates for creating and debugging SharePoint web parts, workflows, and other solutions.  Additionally, there are new APIs available for developers, and developers can create SilverLight web parts to drop into and interact with SharePoint content.

Tuesday was a exciting day at ILTA 2009 with lots of great sessions and discussions throughout the day.  About the only part of the day that wasn’t so great was the turkey bacon served at breakfast, which had the texture of construction paper and the flavor of it as well.

The morning saw a number of really good sessions, such as the session entitled “G100 Recap: Weathering the Storm and Cloud Computing.”  A number of key points were raised, such as the acknowledgment that technology spending was sacrificed during the economic downturn during the past couple of years.  The panelists believe that IT will actually help lead firms out of the recession and allow them to complete projects to help overall productivity.  On the subject of cloud computing, it was said that most law firms will likely begin to get exposure through telephony systems where there is less of the privacy concerns of other cloud based applications.

If you’re interested in exploring cloud computing in greater detail, Kraft Kennedy’s John Tsiofas and Dave Carlson will be speaking on data center relocation and cloud computing at 11:00AM on Wednesday in the Maryland C ballroom.

Also in the morning was a great session called “From the Trenches: Office 2007 Deployment Lessons.”  Here three different firms talked about their experiences, both good and bad, in upgrading to Office 2007.  The general consensus from the panelists was that the ribbon bar, the biggest visual change in the Office 2007 suite, actually turned out to be an insignificant issue overall.  The larger concerns were around application integration with document management systems and add-ins to Office applications that cause instability and performance issues.  In fact, one panelist described the project as “The document management system project featuring Office 2007,” highlighting the importance of the integration between Office 2007 and the DMS.

Office 2010 may have some of the same challenges.  Feel free to stop by Kraft Kennedy’s booth (721/723) to get a first hand look at Office 2010 running in our VDI environment.  The VDI desktops also feature Windows 7 and Microsoft Office Communications Server 2007 R2, so stop by and check them out!

VDI, or virtual desktop infrastructure, seems to be a hot topic at the conference this year.  Firms are starting to recognize that there are many benefits that can come with implementing a VDI solution, both in terms of financial savings as well as ease of administration and management.  We’ve spoken with many firms at the conference already this year that are starting to look at VDI as an alternative to traditional desktop deployment strategies.  We think the release of Windows 7 is also helping to drive VDI interest and adoption, as is the acceptance of virtualization technology in general.

With cost savings in mind, firms are also talking about how to contain costs or continue to reduce them.  Technologies like virtualization are helping to reduce costs as firms work to extend their hardware investments.  Developing a sound technology strategy has also been a reoccurring topic throughout the day as firms are preparing for what is coming next and want to ensure their strategy makes good business sense.

Finally, the day ended with the “Tut After Dark” party and casino night and everyone had a great time.  Even the party is a great place to learn new things, such as this blogger learning just how quickly you can lose $25,000 at the high rollers craps table.  But hey, it sure was a fun four minutes of my life!