Firm Technology Forum

[Anonymous User]

I'm trying to get a grasp on where my firm stands with its technology, since the associates in my office have been getting increasingly frustrated with what seems to be bad hardware/software. Do most biglaw associates find their technology to be inexcusably bad? We're dealing with terrible slowness (emailed word and PDF files taking nearly 10 times longer (minute long wait times to open a PDF are the new norm) to open at work than on a personal computer at home, despite having good laptops on paper), far too frequent roadblocks under the guise of security (like out-of-date software because of the security concerns of downloading updates and frequent roadblocks that require tedious security approvals), software that's prone to crash (our document management system makes everything more difficult) and a lot else. In short, we are forced to figure out how to work around the lengthy list of problems, rather than being able to do what makes sense.

Does everyone else strongly dislike their firm's technology?

[homestyle28]

Lots of bigfirms have levels of redundancy and virtualization built into their systems that increase security/recoverability at the cost of performance. When you send a pdf at a big firm, it often can be a file actually on a network drive disguised as local, then needs to go through email server with several redundancies, to the recipient, add in a few network problems and you can end up with unbearably slow performance, smaller firms might just have an exchange server and a backup of that, plus maybe a document management system, all hosted locally, which means it'll perform better.

[Anonymous User]

My firm's technology situation makes me want to claw my eyes out. My computer has a billion secretly running programs (probably to make sure I don't watch porn or accidentally post confidential information on that YouTube thing). The programs leech all of my system's memory, so my computer stutters frequently, and program crashes are the norm.

Also, IT won't let me delete unused shortcuts from my desktop without their permission.

[1styearlateral]

Also, IT won't let me delete unused shortcuts from my desktop without their permission.

For the love of God...

[ballouttacontrol]

My firm's technology situation makes me want to claw my eyes out. My computer has a billion secretly running programs (probably to make sure I don't watch porn or accidentally post confidential information on that YouTube thing). The programs leech all of my system's memory, so my computer stutters frequently, and program crashes are the norm.

Also, IT won't let me delete unused shortcuts from my desktop without their permission.

Wtf if biglaw please out that firm