Remote access has evolved to give lawyers unprecedented flexibility

The march to the future usually involves change, doing things in different ways, new forms of communication and end-user training, but not always. Sometimes, a dramatic change can happen right in front of all of us and is barely noticeable.

That change is happening right now and involves lawyers creating their own grassroots bring-your-own-device (BYOD) processes and, occasionally, using virtual desktops without anyone really noticing. This is one of those rare transformations that is truly noteworthy, has no negative consequences, and allows everyone to get what they need, from convenience to security. Many of us would like to take credit for this transformation but, in reality, it is more of a happy coincidence.

A while ago, many law firms had the inevitable 'our equipment is getting old and we need to reinvest' discussion. The last time this happened in mass, the 'cloud' was not a viable option for most. Firms largely reinvested in their infrastructure and implemented some key differences in their designs.

Rather than invest a lot of money in many places, such as all of their local offices, some firms consolidated their services and smartly invested in data centres. These were faster, more economical and more secure, and offered a bigger bang for the buck. Initially, they had a couple of obvious great by-products: reliability and flexibility. Over the course of time, another great by-product emerged: remote access.

Firms that consolidated their data, enterprise applications and services into data centres almost universally leveraged virtualised servers. The same software and capabilities needed to make a virtual server can also make a virtual desktop. A virtual desktop performs in the same manner and is as customisable as a physical unit; it just does not exist at a person's desk. You work with a virtual computer in exactly the same way you would with a physical device. If you have all of your data in a data centre, using a virtual desktop results in the best possible performance, as all of the data is easily accessible. All you need to do is to connect to a virtual desktop via a remote-access mechanism.

Remote access used to simply be people away from the office needing to work; it can now be many things. It can be a firm computer in a local office. It can be a firm notebook that is connecting away from the office. It can be a non-firm computer connecting from within or away from the office. As long as you have some sort of computer that can connect to the internet, you can remotely access your firm and work with its data.

Remote access at law firms is now a very secure process. Once authenticated, the connection is secure, data on the firm's computer is safe and encrypted, and data is also protected if one chooses to use the firm's virtual computer. Plus, the firm's data never travels to the person's computer.

People can 'remote in' from anywhere, do it in a secure manner, and the firm's security needs are met. People can choose whatever hardware they want, bring it into the office and connect 'remotely' via a guest WiFi network while in the office. If you add to the mix that they can connect to their own virtual computer in a data centre, they have the best possible performance without the firm having to purchase a physical computer. And the firm's data stays within its control.

We have to be honest with ourselves: firms probably did not specifically plan for this to occur. They did however make strategic investments in centralised systems, heavily leveraged virtualisation, embraced security and improved remote-access performance and options. It is clear now that it also gave many lawyers the ability to select both the technology that they use and how they use it. Everyone wins and no one loses.

A funny thing happened on the way to the future: strategic plans and investments have resulted in unprecedented flexibility and never-before achieved levels of control.