A closer look at the Records Management section of ILTA’s 2019 Technology Survey
This year, 537 law firms responded to ILTA’s 2019 Technology Survey — up 25% from the number of firms responding last year.
INFORMATION GOVERNANCE: TOP OF MIND
Overall, it appears that information governance continues to be high on the agenda as a “top three technology issue or annoyance” for law firms. This trend is particularly striking among firms with 150-349 lawyers — 33% of respondents of this size listed information governance as one of their top three issues, up from 24% in 2018.
CONTINUING GROWTH IN FILETRAIL ADOPTION
We were pleased to see that FileTrail continues to demonstrate momentum — both as the records management software of choice for physical files and increasingly for governing electronic records as well. Many law firms use FileTrail for visibility and governance across both their physical and electronic records — all via a single unified pane.
The 2019 survey also clearly shows that it is larger firms that are using FileTrail. Adoption has grown particularly among firms with 150+ lawyers.
CLOUD-BASED VS “FIRM-HOSTED”
Increased trust in the cloud was a major theme in ILTA’s 2019 Technology Survey, as more firms are moving to cloud-based applications.
Overall, 72% of respondents in reported that their firm’s adoption of cloud-based solutions will be increasing over the coming year — up from 69% in 2018.
When it comes to document management (DMS) and enterprise content management (ECM) systems, 25% of respondents reported that they are currently using cloud-based solutions, whereas another 31% say they are in the process of migrating to a DMS or ECM to the cloud within the next 12 months. And of the 76 firms that said they are moving to a new DMS, 82% said they were moving to a cloud-based solution.
As one panelist at ILTACON Europe put it, “The question today is no longer if you’re moving to the cloud, but how.” Another speaker predicted that in three years’ time, firms that say they are (still) storing data on premises will trigger far more client scrutiny than firms storing data in the cloud, underscoring the theme of increased trust in cloud-based security.
All these developments are consistent with what we’ve seen across our customer base. While most new FileTrail deployments today are in the cloud (as a SaaS solution), we still have new clients that require deployment on-premises.
Most importantly for our customers, FileTrail GPS enables firms to apply information governance policies to documents within their environments, wherever they are located — “in place,” without having to move content.
So wherever firms are in the process of migrating applications to the cloud, FileTrail GPS helps to bridge across multiple information repositories — and across electronic and physical files — so that IT and records staff no longer need to manually track their information assets and retention schedules, saving considerable time and resources, and reducing risk of noncompliance.
