Global IT Outage Forces Law Firms’ Response to Keep Operating

Law firms were among businesses hit with Friday’s global IT outage, with website and email access temporarily knocked out.

The website profiles of British firm Ashurst were inaccessible throughout much of the day and one lawyer at the firm said they had struggled to access internal documents, while Kirkland & Ellis’ internal email system was down for around two hours, according to two people with knowledge of the situation.

Reed Smith’s US operations mobilized early Friday morning after receiving notice of the outage from teams in Asia, Europe, and the Middle East. “We’ve seen some impact from this, but we recovered very quickly,” said Ryan McEnroe, the firm’s chief information officer. “We were back fully operational prior to the start of business on the East Coast.”

A security update from CrowdStrike‘s cybersecurity program took down Microsoft Corp. systems across the globe. The outage resulted in thousands of flight cancellations and hampered computer functions in several industries, including healthcare, finance, airlines and retail.

The IT failures also struck court systems. As of Friday afternoon, the internet site of the Superior Court of California, County of Los Angeles stated, “The page you are looking for cannot be displayed due to a website error.”

The Maryland courts posted a notice: “Due to the worldwide Microsoft outage, all Maryland courts, offices, and facilities will be closed to the public today but will remain open for emergency matters. All clerks’ offices are closed.”

Maintaining system availability is crucial for law firm operations, as attorneys rely on consistent access to various cloud-based systems to collaborate with clients. Reed Smith on Friday activated a plan it had already put in place to respond to outages.

“We simulate events like this, so we are prepared when they happen,” said McEnroe. He was the firm’s former global director of IT operations and customer services before he was announced this week as Reed Smith’s new CIO.

In his new role, McEnroe will oversee network services and security across more than 30 offices in the US, Europe, the Middle East, and Asia. With a 25-year tenure at Reed Smith, McEnroe has guided the firm through several phases of technological change—from the adoption of internet services and cloud computing in the early 2000s to the current integration of AI technology.

One key area in coming months and years is the firm’s increasing integration of AI technology into its workflow, McEnroe said. Currently, the firm employs AI for tasks such as summarizing meetings and conducting legal research, which has already boosted productivity.

McEnroe said he believes AI is unlikely to immediately revolutionize legal practices, as he pointed out that the technology sometimes makes errors, including misrepresenting case law. “The firm is proceeding cautiously but not conservatively,” he said.