Friday, December 15, 2006 8:40 AM
At year end, as part of my strategic planning process, I tend to look back at the year that was and then look forward to what might unfold. And, this year, I see the beginnings of a trend that I think may significantly shift control over the lawyer's desktop, especially at larger law firms, from a variety of small to midcap companies to one very big large cap.
For big law firms, their document management system (DMS) is their lifeblood. In many cases, it literally stores the accumulated knowledge of hundreds, if not thousands, of skilled lawyers over many years of practice. And, for years, the dominant DMS companies have been Hummingbird (now part of Open Text) and iManage (now Interwoven). Worldox and some other smaller players have also had some success in this area, but not at the market share levels of the aforementioned two.
But, things change. And, with each passing month I become more convinced that Microsoft's Sharepoint (aka Microsoft Office Sharepoint Server 2007) will be the market leading DMS at big law firms. And, I say this without knowing of a single instance of Sharepoint being used as the DMS at any law firm today. And, I say this without personally knowing the ins-and-outs of Sharepoint's DMS itself.
But, I do know this. Sharepoint is rapidly becoming the dominant portal (intranet) product at mid-size to large law firms. It is also making some inroads into the extranet space. And, after years of average to poor reviews of the Sharepoint line by law firm technology professionals, the tide is turning and the reviews are turning positive. Meanwhile, the marketshare of the competing portal products for legal have either flat-lined or are dropping. This says nothing about the quality of these competing products, by the way. It is simply a matter of the reality of trying to compete against a behemoth with a seemingly limitless supply of cash and resources.
And, Sharepoint comes loaded with a DMS. Now, this DMS may not meet all of the unique needs of law firms today. And, many firms may not use the DMS at all in the short-term, instead focusing on the other functionality Sharepoint offers. But, Microsoft is in this for the long-term and it is not in any rush. It can sit back and continue to pump millions into R & D, improving the product each year, with no worries about running short on cash. Furthermore, there are a growing number of third party software companies starting to build products that integrate with Sharepoint (XMLaw and Handshake, to name a couple). They can afford to do this, because the installed base of Sharepoint customers is growing at a rapid pace and is hitting numbers that make it economical (and profitable) to do so.
More on this subject in Part 2, which I am going to post Monday.