ILTA’s 2021 Technology Survey captures many of the rapid changes in the eDiscovery space today. While each of these trends separately can be managed with individual workarounds, together, they serve as a clarion call for Information Governance.

Many of the changes reflected in ILTA’s 2021 update were trends accelerated by the COVID-19 pandemic and the rapid shift to a largely work from home (WFH) environment.

The first trend noted in the report is that of “simplicity and quiet” – a push that may be a counterpoint to a lot of the chaos and confusion that legal professionals experienced through the early days of the COVID-19 pandemic. Legal technology solutions that are preferable now minimize disruption and easily add to the law firm technology solutions’ stack.

Formal policies needed for Teams use

Governance policies for Microsoft Teams remain an ongoing challenge. With the shift to WFH, many organizations installed Microsoft Teams since licensing already included it in their existing Microsoft enterprise agreement.

Of the Teams challenges, “Over 50% of firms don’t allow externally shared documents through Teams. Almost 40% don’t enforce encryption of externally shared documents, leaving only 8% who enforce encryption through Azure Information Protection.” Seeing that law firms are the leading target du jour of hackers and ransomware criminals today, the fact that only 8% of firms are enforcing encryption through Azure Information Protection is shameful.

Law firms must do better at protecting their information assets and their clients’ information assets, companies that have entrusted them with their corporate information.

Continued migration to the cloud

Other trends cited in the report include the continuing shift from “cloud-averse” to “cloud-first” as law firms open up to cloud solutions with an increasing array of functions. The most significant advances in this area have come in Time and Billing solutions, Microsoft SharePoint, Document Management or Enterprise Content Management solutions, HR Information Systems, and Email Archiving.

The most notable change, though, I think, is one that was listed in the report but not cited as the proactive solution available for many of the other challenges cited. The disparate symptoms that our information weaknesses exposed during the COVID-19 pandemic are less frequently treated as individual challenges but are finally seen as a collective deficiency. This report shows that for the first time for many law firms, these issues are finally seen through their proper context – as symptoms of the most considerable information challenge – establishing your proactive plan to establish consistent Information Governance.

IG is top …….