Hot off the presses is the 2011 Survival Guide for New Attorneys published by Los Angeles Lawyer, the magazine of the Los Angeles County Bar Association. It includes an article that I wrote, Cloud Based Electronic Discovery is in Your Future. (This is a scan from the hard copy; it appears not to have been posted yet online.)

The gist of the article is that, for the new lawyer, the future of law practice will be driven by data and the cloud is particularly well suited to dealing with all that data, specifically with regard to discovery.

Over the last few years, legal professionals have begun using the cloud for everything from practice management to client relations. Even so, one area of legal practice stands out as particularly well suited to the cloud–electronic discovery and the handling of electronically stored information (ESI).

In electronic discovery, the cloud offers distinct advantages: power, flexibility, mobility, economy of use, and ease of deployment. In fact, in a 2010 report on electronic discovery, the technology research firm Gartner, Inc. concluded that the future of electronic discovery technology is in the cloud. A cloud-based e-discovery platform, Gartner said, “offers benefits that on-premises software or applications cannot.”

To find out more about why I believe the future of e-discovery is in the cloud, read the article.