Thursday, September 27, 2007 6:45 AM
My posts have been brief in recent weeks, but for a pretty good reason...I have been knee deep in Microsoft's Sharepoint (or Microsoft Office SharePoint Server (MOSS), if you prefer)
Rest assured, my opinion has not changed since last Winter (Part 1. The Law Firm DMS of the Future? Sharepoint - Part 2: The Law Firm DMS of the Future? Sharepoint). Sharepoint, whether Services or the full blown Server version, will be the dominate internal portal product in use at mid to large size law firms, certainly in the United States, and perhaps across much of the globe. And, while last Spring this move to Sharepoint seemed a bit under the radar (Sharepoint and Stealth Mode in the Legal Space), that has clearly changed, as well. At least at larger firms and their intranet portals, all of the buzz is around Sharepoint. My own feeling is that Sharepoint's dominance is just a matter of time.
Now recognize that Sharepoint itself is pretty vanilla, and Microsoft is not going to be spending a heck of lot of time or money) in research and development for a relatively tiny niche market like legal. They will leave that to their third party partners, of which there are a small, but growing number. These third parties will take that vanilla flavor of Sharepoint, and make it taste like legal. That is, custom tailor it to work specifically for lawyers and law firms.
My first impressions are generally positive. I do think that if you are planning on integrating your back office applications into Sharepoint, you should either hire the appropriate staff and give them the necessary time and money to succeed or look closely at the third parties which have already developed the hooks and toolkits needed to connect up many of the standard law firm applications. Third parties such as Handshake Software, XMLaw, SV Technology, eSentio Technologies, and Thomson-West's Hubbard One are among the companies to whom you might wish to speak.
My early takeaway on Sharepoint and the larger picture for legal is simply wondering what a dominate marketshare in the mid to large size law firm segment means for all of the other legal software companies out there? Within three years, we may see most of the AmLaw 200 standardized on Sharepoint (much as the AmLaw 200 has standardized in so many other product categories). And, I wonder if this standardization will mean that if a software product from other product categories does not seamlessly integrate into Sharepoint, it will it receive less consideration? Also, will Microsoft start introducing other "vanilla" software products (in a variety of categories) that just so happen to work really well in Sharepoint, and then let their third party partners move the products down the verticals, including legal? CRM, ERP, Litigation Support? Microsoft just provides the platform, the tools and the opportunities; the third parties create the solutions.
As an aside, I have not yet analyzed in depth Sharepoint as an extranet solution and my feelings there are that this space is currently wide open. But, on the lawyer's desktop, Sharepoint is going to be the big gorilla and just what that means is a very interesting question.