Microsoft SharePoint and the Law Firm
December 22, 2008
Lawyers are, in general, similar to Scrooge McDuck. If you are too young to remember, the Donald Duck funny papers, Scrooge McDuck was tight with a penny. Lawyers eschew capital expenditures if possible. When a client foots the bill, the legal eagles will become slightly less abstemious, but in my experience, not too profligate with money.
Microsoft SharePoint offers an unbeatable combination for some law firms. Because the operating system is Microsoft’s, lawyers know that programmers, technical assistance, and even the junior college introductory computer class can be a source of expertise. And, Microsoft includes with SharePoint a search system. Go with Microsoft and visions of lower initial costs, bundles, and a competitive market from which to select the technical expertise you need. What could be better? Well, maybe a big pharma outfit struggling with a government agency? Most attorneys would drool with anticipation to work for either the company or the US government. A new client is more exciting than software.
Several people sent me links to Mark Gerow’s article “Elements of a Successful SharePoint Search.” You can read the full text of his article at Law.com here. The article does a good job of walking through a SharePoint installation for a law firm. You will also find passing references to other vendors’ systems. The focus is SharePoint.
Could this be a metaphor for a SharePoint installation?
I found several points interesting. First, Mr. Gerow explains why search in a law firm is not like running a query on Microsoft’s Web search or any other Web indexing system. There is a reference to Google’s assertion that it has indexed one trillion Web pages and an accurate comment about the inadequacy of Federal government information in public search systems. I am not certain that attorneys will understand why Google has been able to land some law firms and a number of Federal agencies as customers with its search appliance. I know from experience that many professionals have a difficult time differentiating the content that’s available via the Web, content on the organization’s Web site, content on an Intranet, and content that may be available behind a firewall yet pulled from various sources. Also, I don’t think one can ignore the need for specialized systems to handle information obtained during the discovery process. Those systems do search, but law firms often pay hundreds of thousands of dollars because “traditional” search systems don’t do what attorneys need to do when preparing their documentation for litigation. These topics are referenced but not in a way that makes much sense for SharePoint, a singularly tricky collaborative, content management, search, and Swiss Army Knife collection of software packages as “one big thing”.
Second, the discussion of protocol handlers, filters, and the business data catalog or BDC does not make clear what’s needed to get SharePoint to index and make available content from disparate sources. The omission of the costs of transformation is a serious one. Attorneys don’t like surprises in my experience, and the price tag for getting SharePoint working with a clunker like iManage or some other law firm centric system may ruin the managing partner’s bonus plan. I will be writing about cost analysis issues in 2009, and you may be interested in my recent post here about the financial hole in which Digg.com finds itself operating. The handling of the costs of SharePoint is an almost universal flaw in SharePoint analyses. I recently flipped through an azure-hued consulting firm’s “report” about SharePoint. The cost data were not just sketchy, what I scanned was wide of the mark. In my experience, the cost of fiddling with connectors and then tweaking or writing them can be open ended. SharePoint cannot handle content from other Microsoft server products without exporting data in a form Excel can understand and then using Excel to “house” the data and the graphical output. Clunky and expensive issues must be identified to the Scrooge McDucks of the world. The goose is sensitive to cost foul ups.
Third, the discussion of concepts and faceted search is superficial. I think lawyers need to know that there are third party systems from such companies as Coveo and Interse, to name just two, which provide these types of features within SharePoint without the pain associated with the Microsoft methods. In fact, you can find better snap in solutions for searching SharePoint content from the companies Mr. Gerow has mentioned. To his list, I would add Exalead and Isys Search Software, and for others just get a copy of my study Beyond Search. I run through another eight or 10 options. With eDiscovery systems from a number of vendors offering rock solid entity extraction, email threading, and stored queries, the SharePoint search system is anemic. No, anemic is too soft. The SharePoint search system is not up to par. It is free, bundled, and severely limited in the number of content objects it can index. Microsoft bought the star crossed Fast Search & Transfer technology to get around the limitations of SharePoint. Reading this article, my attorney would be miffed because essential information about Microsoft Fast is not in this article. The police investigation into the Microsoft Fast operation, in my opinion, is germane to some attorneys. Mr. Gerow’s experience may differ from mine. I understand that. But the fact of Microsoft Fast as the answer to SharePoint’s limitations is germane and needs a sentence or maybe a footnote. Omitting the information ruffled my feathers.
Stepping back, I don’t think Mr. Gerow is to blame. Microsoft’s marketing engine crates a Steve Jobs’s like reality distortion field around SharePoint. The fact that there are 100 million SharePoint licenses in the wild motivates resellers to elaborate reality. SharePoint equals revenue. Even the parvenu consulting firms are street savvy enough to jump on the SharePoint bandwagon. In the rush to establish one’s credential or to mint a fresh, new SharePoint expert, I think most pundits just recycle the received wisdom.
That’s okay with me. I don’t have to explain [a] why there are cost overruns, [b] why certain content cannot be included in the system, or [c] why it is necessary to buy the hugely complex and possibly outmoded Fast ESP system when SharePoint runs out of indexing gas. I won’t tilt at windmills. I will leave that job to law firm engineers and the parvenu consultants. I’m going back to the pond in Harrod’s Creek.
Stephen Arnold, December 22, 2008
Comments
One Response to “Microsoft SharePoint and the Law Firm”
-
- Subscribe to Beyond Search
Feature archive
News archive
-
[…] 31, 2008 This Beyond Search post caught my attention. Steve Arnold does an excellent job of pointing out the deficiency’s in […]