ILTAcon 2019

Epona USA perspective on the preeminent show for Legal Technology and Law Firms, in the United States.
By Keith Vallely, Senior Consultant, Epona USA.

 

As usual the weather in Orlando this time of year was lush.  Outside the air was hot and humid, and the venue which was on the Disney Epcot property was grand and classy.  Nothing was left to chance, and the attendees seemed to enjoy every day.  From the Epona perspective, the booths were showing the same essential technologies of the last 4 years, where the changes in technology were incremental with no specific ‘new tech’ dominating the imaginations of the law firms.  This is because the action at this show was in the Office 365 Knowledge Track, where every session of the 3, was standing room only, and had over 300 people in attendance.

 

Microsoft TEAMS, TEAMS, TEAMS and Teams.

What was obvious in session after session was that the adoption of Microsoft Teams was happening everywhere.  No longer were firms discussing “if the cloud was safe” or if “Microsoft Office 365” was a platform worth moving too.  These big issues were in the rear view mirror.  What was occupying the firms Technology Leadership at each of the meetings is:  Teams!  Teams!  Teams!

 

Law Firms are now deploying Teams. Their users are demanding it. But it is happening in a wild west sort of way, and the technical people in law firms are already seeing some of their biggest fears begin to happen.  Users are not saving their content in their DMS solutions because their DMS solutions DO NOT integrate with Teams.  iManage, OpenText, and other DMS platforms have no answer for this.  So what is happening?  What are the issues that kept coming up in the sessions?

 

What the firms are saying is they need a way to provision Teams, with all the right “parts” of the Team, and with pointers to all the appropriate Matter folders, and more.  When asked by attendees’ at one of the sessions, Panelist Chad Ergun, the CIO of Davis Graham and Stubbs, who has deployed the Epona DMS solution along with Teams for Matters, simply stated: “Epona’s solution provisions a Team with every Matter that we want a Team for, and it is very easy. I don’t know what your DMS provider will do, but we use SharePoint Online and Epona for our DMS.”

 

The advent of Teams as a Matter Centric solution provides tremendous capability for the law firms that are deploying them, and if these firms want to have the full benefits of the Office 365 platform, using the Epona Tools to convert the platform to a DMS on SharePoint online simplifies the entire software solution set for firms.

 

Epona Partnerships

Epona also expanded the depth and breadth of partners who answer some of the Office 365 solution requirements that make moving the entire firm to the platform.  These include Case Management/Time and Billing as well as Docketing/Calendaring solutions.  In the coming months, it is our expectation to announce full technology partnerships with other companies that can make the entire Office 365 solution set a no brainer choice for Law Firms everywhere.