Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs

Recently I conducted a survey of ILTA member firms about their cloud usage. The definition I used to define the cloud is:

For this survey, client data in the cloud is defined as data that is not in a traditional data center where you rent racks or host servers in a law firm office location. We are including eDiscovery data hosted with a third party as being in the cloud.

You can download the white paper at the end of this article.

Here is the executive summary:

Executive Summary

A 13 question survey was sent to all ILTA member firms via several ILTA e-Group messages. The survey was also posted to all ILTA G100 CIOs by ILTA’s CEO Joy Heath Rush. There were 102 responses to the study. Twenty-seven firms answered affirmatively and stated they were in the AMLAW 100 and/or G100. Seventy-eight percent (21 firms) of AMLAW 100/G100 law firms are storing client data in the cloud. Eighteen percent (5 firms) are not storing client data in the cloud and have no plans to do so. When asked whether the law firms asked for permission before moving data into the cloud, 57 of 84 (68%) of responding law firms answered no.

You can download the white paper via this URL (https://info.fr.com/law-firm-cloud-survey).

Questions I Asked

Do you store client data in the cloud?

What cloud services are you using?

Did you ask your clients for permission before you placed client data in the cloud?

If you answered yes, how did you ask them for permission?

If you answered no, why didn’t you ask them permission?

If you answered no, did you notify them?

Did you audit Outside Counsel Guidelines?