ALA New Orleans 2009

1. Electronic Client Service
Extranets
Craig Bayer
Law Office Technology
May 18th, New Orleans, LA

2. Updated Slide Show
 http://www.lawot.com/resources.htm

3. What is an Extranet?
An extranet is a web portal that is
used to share various information with
non firm employees.
An intranet shares information with
employees.

4. Details
 Available in a web browser.
 Secure and not opened to the public.
 First uses in Law Firms in the mid
1990s.

5. Standard Features
 Document Versioning.
 Check In / Check Out
 Notification when new documents
added to the system.
 Shared Calendar's with Attorneys and
Extranet Users.
 Full text searching.
 Shared Contact Information.

6. What It is Not
 Google Docs
 Microsoft LiveSync
 Sync Tool

7. Uses in the Law Firm
2 Types of Legal Extranets
1. Share Information with Clients (Client
Extranet)
2. Collaborate with Outside Counsel,
Experts (Collaboration Extranet)

8. Client Extranets
• Bills and Client Costs
• Documents
• Firm Newsletter
• FAQ Questions
Some Firms charge for this service.

9. Collaboration Extranets
 Share Documents with Versioning
EX: Tobacco Case with 22 states and 60 law firms
 Upload / Download Large Files (Pics)
EX: Trouble sending large pictures and scanned
documents through email. Email is not secure.

10. Extranets Solutions
• Microsoft SharePoint (Quickbooks like
approach).
• Document Management Systems (DMS)
that have Web portals. (Worldox Web,
Interwoven’s Worksite, NetDocs, and
Clio).
• Specific Extranet Software: Xerdict,
Trialnet.com, AMS Collaborator.

11. What is SharePoint
Microsoft’ s DMS and
Collaboration tool.
 Host Documents, Blogs, and Wikis.
 Intra and Extranet solution

12. SharePoint
 Good Chance you might have it already
at your firm.
 Like Quickbooks, very general, will
need customization for it to work with
the firm.
 Can be hosted or in-house.

13. SharePoint Demo

14. DMS Extranet
•Do not buy a DMS because you want an
extranet, however, you should have a DMS.
•Best DMS are Closed Systems.
•Your Extranet should either be your DMS
or work with it so you don’t have to use
separate systems.

15. Worldox
 Law Office Technology resells Worldox.
 Worksite and Net Documents are great
products!
 Law Office Technology uses one of two
methods to implement an extranet into
worldox web.

16. Worldox: Separate Profile
 A separate profile group is established and
designated as quot;Externalquot;.
 The internal staff picks and chooses which
documents are made available to the clients by
publishing documents to and from this external
group.
 External clients are given access to this group, and
their particular subset of files.

17. Separate Profile: Example

18. Worldox: Field Code
 An extra field code is added to an
existing profile group, usually called
WDWEB.
 If an internal user profiles a document
and chooses EXTERNAL as a value for
this field for example, this document
will automatically be available to the
client logging in based on security rules
that allow this.

19. Field Code: Example

20. Worldox: User View
 From the client point of view, the initial welcome
screen after login is usually populated with
predefined bookmark buttons that will automatically
display all of the files that client has access to.
 Access to those files can be restricted to the point
where ONLY view access is allowed, to a full control
environment where the client has power to review
the documents, and even upload new material (and
everything in between). If material is uploaded or
modified by the client, nothing needs to be done to
make this available to the firm, those documents will
be instantly available via the standard Worldox client
on the workstations.

21. User View: Example

22. Clio
 Practice Management Software
 SaaS
 Has Extranet Capablities

23. Clio Client Connect

25. Legal Specific Extranets
 These are usually hosted solutions.
 Offered as a SaaS (Software as a
Service) Model.
 Pay a monthly fee.
 Much lower security risk because the
extranet is not at your site.

26. AMS-Legal: Collaborator
• Hosted SaaS Solution.
 Connects with most DMS
 99.7 Uptime
 Started In 1996
 Price???
 http://www.ams-
legal.com/home/index.ashx

27. Example 1

28. Example 2

29. Example 3

30. Build vs Buy vs Host
Should you:
1. Build from scratch with SharePoint?
2. Buy a DMS and set it up in your
office?
3. Used a hosted product?

31. Skills needed to Build
 SSL Certificates
 Firewall
 Active Directory
 Web Server
 Security
 Document Management
 Probably some SQL

32. Cost Analysis
25 Users of SharePoint for the First Year
In-House vs Hosted
Hardware/Software In-House Hosted
Front-end Server $2000.00 Included
Hardware $2000.00 Included
Server License $4424.00 Included
25 User Licenses $2350.00 Included
Set Costs ($125.00 hour) $6250.00 Included
$17,024.00 $3900.00

33. Hosted Extranet Features
 No Downtime (99.7%)
 No Installation, Configuration or Ongoing
Maintenance
 No Backups (Co-Locations)
 No Upfront Investment
 No need for an IT Services
 Natural Disaster Proof

34. Security
An Extranet allows non-law firm
employees access to your firm network
(in-house extranet).
This is why you install firewalls in the first
place!

35. Security (Hosted)
 Hosted Solutions are better in a
security sense because the users are
not connected to your work network.
 Just need to need have usernames and
passwords.
 Complex Passwords, Lockout policies,
ect.

36. Security (In-House)
 Use Custom Port #s
 Consider using 2 Factor Authentication
like Smart Cards or One Time Password
Tokens.
 Separate Web Server from
Document Server

37. Resources
List of Links to Blogs, Articles and Vendors on Extranets:
http://delicious.com/craigbayer/Extranet
Tiny URL: http://tiny.cc/gXtWl

38. Thank You For Listening!
Law Office Technology
www.lawot.com
www.lawotblog.com
Craig Bayer Cbayer@lawot.com