Most supplier conferences about their technology are not, let’s be honest, fun. They can often be interesting, however, and one I went to this week on Microsoft’s SharePoint document management/collaboration/etc business software was exactly that. It’s a technology which – once Microsoft has shaken out some obvious problems with it – will make law firms’ lives a bit easier for less cash.We ran a feature article on SharePoint in the Gazette recently, detailing what it does and how it works. I hear this went down well with readers and Microsoft alike, which has to be a first for any (erstwhile) IT writer. Following that, we were invited to a presentation of document management using SharePoint by SharePoint implementer ClearPeople and Microsoft at the big firm’s London HQ.

Interesting points were these: mainly, Microsoft has finally worked out that the Firefox and Safari web browsers are important, and now wants to think of them as ‘first-class citizens’. This should tell you everything you need to know about what Microsoft thought of them until now, and why browser-based business (or enterprise) software only currently really works on Internet Explorer.

What this means for law firms, to me, is that in future it will be much easier to run an office (or a virtual office, perhaps) full of Apple or even Linux users. Actually, what it means is that it won’t matter a damn what your users are running, which is a Very Good Thing. It definitely means that, should you wish to let clients access your system, you’re not telling them what PC to use.

Second, though Microsoft people wouldn’t give any details away about the next SharePoint, coming in 2010, it sounds like it will have solved three problems raised by several solicitors in the room with me: first, that it hates really big document libraries, and law firms love those; second, a lack of system-wide unique document numbering; and third, that it doesn’t get on well with Outlook.

Provided Microsoft has got SharePoint to love Outlook (and there really is no excuse for this not to happen, as Outlook has to be the law firm software), law firms will find it much easier to love.