Extranet Pricing and Vendor Selection

When considering a legal extranet vendor, be sure to ask about the pricing structure.

Subscription based pricing is better than pricing with large upfront expenses. Per site pricing is generally better than per seat (per person) pricing. Try to avoid implementations with high implementation fees for system setup and configuration. Try to avoid pricing structures with significantly high incremental costs for large volume amounts.

But, after taking all of these factors into consideration, also remember that the legal extranet vendor has invested considerable time and money building the system you are interested in using. If it has all the features that you want and is easy to use, that obviously occurred at a cost. The key with pricing is to be sure that you as a client have a predictable and fair cost for the services you will be receiving, with limited exposure to unexpected or unanticipated costs, but also that the price is also appropriate so the vendor recaptures a portion of their programming and operational expenses and makes a modest profit providing this service to their clients.

Link to book on legal extranets

If you would like to learn more about legal extranets (a.k.a. law firm extranets) you might be interested in this book written on how to use portals / collaboration technologies such as this in the practice of law and support of litigations. The link is available by clicking here.

Article providing advice on extranet deployment

This recent article posted on the ABA website discusses the important of defining business requirements and other needs associated with building and deploying law firm extranets to support nationwide litigation. Among other links, it discussing the need to properly define the system security requirements, be sure all the system users are properly trained, set expectations with respect to what the system can and can not do, try to create an extranet culture within a firm where it is commonplace to manage case information/documents online (thus helping client communications, being sure the extranet allows clients to easily upload/download files and integrates with other common business software packages, and the perception that your law firm is providing outstanding service and value to your clients) and selecting a law firm extranet vendor who will provide high quality, customized service.

This article is available by clicking here.

The Human Side of Collaboration

Here is a rare look at some of the psychological implications of people collaborating together including some telling comments on how one-to-one communication (e.h. email) can hinder communication while many-to-many communication (focus groups, collaboration, etc.) can be of great value.

Details can be found by clicking here.

Load Testing

Here is a little reminder of how important it is to plan for peak periods of system usage. Nobody wants this type of publicity.....

http://www.techweb.com/wire/ebiz/60400620

Corporate Legal Intranets

This article, from 2004, describes one companies journey down a path of delivering a corporate legal intranet (for use within the company) only to share work product, forms, and provide legal advice not only amongst attorneys but throughout the entire organization. It very well might be of interest to corporate law departments looking to achieve some of the same objectives and ROI described in the article.

Click here to review this.

Informative Article On Legal Extranets

The January 2004 issue of "Law Practice Today" published an article by Mark Tamminga discussing law firm extranets including topics such as: The Basics, Benefits, Features, Costs, Implementation Choices and Strategies.

The article on law firm extranets is available by clicking here.