Law Department Management Blog
This blogger has questioned extranets offered by law firms for their clients on the grounds that law department staff do not want to learn many different systems (See my post of April 8, 2008: extranets with 13 references.). But that view may be misguided. Few law departments have enough uses for an extranet to run one well and require multiple outside firms to learn it. For that reason, law firms provide extranets. Provide them, indeed!
According to KMWorld, July/Aug. 2010 at 14, technology-savvy Fenwick & West deploys SharePoint extranets prodigiously. “It hosts 15,000 to 20,000 client-based extranets.” The mind boggles. If that many clients – not all of them have legal departments I have to assume and perhaps there are many extranets for some clients – make use of a single law firm’s extranets, I have to rethink my position. As part of that rethink, I wish I understood the astonishing number of extranets claimed.
Since the last metapost I have added more commentary on extranets (See my post of Aug. 15, 2008: ranking of extranets supplied by law firms; Jan. 21, 2009: e-rooms are cousins of extranets; Oct. 21, 2009: an extranet that goes beyond what a matter management system typically shows; Aug. 20, 2009: Baker Botts extranet for patents; Sept. 22, 2009: Belgian Post’s client extranet; Oct. 21, 2009: Malleson’s extranet for major clients; and Jan. 21, 2010: UK group of law departments share an extranet.).