We recently partnered with Microsoft to host a legal roundtable in Bristol. Bringing together leading legal IT teams from across the South West to ask how legal businesses are utilising cloud technology to drive business growth. During this event, we discussed the trends and challenges the legal industry are currently facing and what Microsoft technologies can be used to help overcome these.

Don’t worry if you couldn’t attend. We’ve written up the key discussion points here, so you don’t have to miss a thing.

“Business as usual is not an option for many, indeed for any, traditional legal service providers. Innovation in services and service delivery will become a key differentiating factor.”
The Law Society ‘The Future of Legal Services’

Microsoft kicked off the discussion outlining the current trends and challenges legal businesses are facing. Which can be categorised into two key areas; Managing the realities of regulations, disruptive technology and changing business models and Meeting the expectations of increasingly digitally savvy clients.

We highlighted security as the biggest challenge many legal businesses are facing. With the cost of a security breach in the legal industry over £2,000,000 you can see why. So, we looked at how Microsoft cloud technology can help legal firms achieve their strict security goals by taking advantage of Microsoft’s annual investment of $1,000,000 in cyber security. This goes towards helping businesses enable digital transformation through a comprehensive platform, unique intelligence, and broad partnerships.

Microsoft then went on to discuss how legal businesses can start digitally transforming their business to keep up with changing industry trends. They broke it down into four key steps:

1. Engage your clients. The technologies available now will provide you with new and efficient ways to engage with your customers.
2. Optimise your matters. This will involve optimising your operations with the technology available, allowing you to focus on what truly matters.
3. Empower your professionals. Provide your employees with the digital tools they need. Allowing them to do what they do best.
4. Transform your proposition. This will involve transforming your products and services through the latest technology.

Cloud Direct’s Lead Azure Consultant, Jeff Field, spoke about which Microsoft technologies legal business can adopt to help them digitally transform and meet the expectations of their clients and workforce.

Azure Sentinel

Azure Sentinel can help the legal industry continuously monitor security analytics for your entire business. In short, it provides you with a 360 view across your entire business highlighting any security alerts and sophisticated attacks. Microsoft Azure Sentinel focuses on monitoring four key areas;

• Collecting data at a cloud-scale
• Detect previously undetected threats
• Investigate threats with artificial intelligence
• Respond to incidents rapidly

Windows Virtual Desktop

Windows Virtual Desktop is a comprehensive VDI that’s delivered in Azure.

WVDI allows your legal business to deploy and scale your Windows desktops and apps on Azure with ease. This will open your business up to creating a flexible workplace where staff can work from different locations of different devices, opening your business up to a range of different opportunities.

Legal businesses are known for having legacy apps, which is why WVDI allows you to manage specialised workloads, including these legacy apps you have. And what’s best is WVDI allows your legal business to stay secure whilst meeting regulations.

Talk to an expert

If you want to find out more about how your legal business can adopt Microsoft technologies, then get in contact with our experts. We’d be happy to provide you with a copy of the slides from the event and discuss any of the topics in more detail.