sa.global reveals why your practice management platform should live in your cloud tenant
This piece outlines why law firms should host their practice management systems within their own cloud tenant to ensure complete data control and stronger client confidentiality. It highlights how owning your cloud environment enhances compliance, reduces security risks, and enables smarter, data-driven decision-making.
Series note: In my last post, I wrote about how clients now expect visible AI value — and why law-firm leaders need a credible way to demonstrate it. This piece builds on that conversation, shifting focus to the foundation that makes any AI strategy credible: cloud tenant data security, ownership, and trust.
Since joining sa.global, I’ve spent much of my time listening and speaking with business owners, senior partners, COOs, and tech leaders across UK law firms.
One message comes through clearly: data security is now a business concern. Data security and vendor trust are now differentiators, not just back-office hygiene. Firms know the stakes are high – one misstep can cost reputations, regulatory fines, and client relationships.
In a previous note, I laid out the six recurring pressures firms are grappling with. In this piece, I want to dig into the second of those: why data and cybersecurity are deal-breakers, especially when firms build increasingly intelligent systems that span multiple internal and external platforms.
I’ll share what I hear from leaders and what I believe firms should demand of any technology partner, especially those offering cloud solutions.
Why the risk profile has changed
Firms are weaving AI and automation into everyday work. That means systems talk to each other more often, and sometimes to external services as well. When access expands, so does risk.
The question partners now ask is simple:
Will this setup keep client data contained, monitored, and under our control — even as we add smarter tools?
If the answer is unclear, the business risk is high.
Why scale and spend on security matter
Most breaches exploit common patterns. The best defence is a cloud that is updated continuously, watched 24/7, and informed by global threat intelligence.
Microsoft invests billions of dollars each year and employs thousands of security specialists in exactly that — security research, monitoring, and rapid response at cloud scale.
For firms, the takeaway is practical:
Building on Microsoft’s security backbone lowers risk and audit friction in ways a typical vendor-hosted stack simply cannot match.
Cloud-native, not hosted — makes all the difference
Too many so-called “cloud” legal systems today are actually hosted solutions — vendor-controlled servers, shared platforms, limited control for the firm. The difference may not be obvious at first, but over time it shows up in security, agility, and trust.
In a cloud-native, tenant-based model, the solution is deployed inside your Azure environment. You retain control over identity, encryption keys, audit logs, and privilege boundaries. You’re not dependent on a vendor to expose data, open APIs, or respond to security incidents.
In contrast, legacy providers often host data in vendor-managed environments, limiting your visibility and situational awareness.
When you own the cloud tenant, your data security posture is not an afterthought. You can extend your firm’s own security policies — access rules, conditional access, MFA, network controls — up into the stack.You should demand that your technology partner’s solutions inherit your policies, not override them.
And when new AI agents come into play, the same model applies: access must be controlled, logged, gated, and monitored inside your tenant boundary.
This also helps with compliance: you can align data residency, audit trails, encryption, and retention policies to your obligations without being held to vendor infrastructure decisions.
What to expect from your technology partner
When leaders tell me they want a quick checklist, this is what I share — five plain-English tests that protect business outcomes.
Above all, ensure your partner enforces least-privilege access – that every user, process, or AI agent only has the minimum rights needed to do its job.
It’s the single principle that underpins them all.
- Your tenant, your control
- Insist the solution runs in your Azure tenant (or a dedicated, isolated one you own).
- You decide where data lives, who can see it, and how it’s encrypted.
- One identity, one set of roles
- Access should follow your existing roles and groups, not a parallel system.
- That keeps joiners, movers, and leavers clean — and audits straightforward.
- End-to-end visibility
- Every important action — human or automated — should leave an audit trail you can see.
- If you can’t report on who accessed what and when, you don’t have control.
- Zero-trust by default
- Assume every connection must be verified and limited to the minimum necessary.
- As you add AI and agents that touch multiple systems, this principle prevents surprises.
- Independent assurance
- Look for external security attestations, regular testing, and a clear incident process.
- If a partner can’t show this, keep looking.
Why this matters more now, and especially for AI
AI and intelligent agents are becoming central to how firms operate — automating triage, orchestration, and cross-system actions. But these agents often cross system boundaries (CRM, finance, document stores, external APIs).
That means the partner’s solution must support secure, auditable, permissioned access across systems without weakening your firm’s security posture.
If the deployment lives outside your control, every bot, every access request becomes a potential blind spot.
As one tech leader put it: “You don’t want to discover six months in that an automation routine is reading data it shouldn’t — or passing it into another system — without adequate oversight.”
The smarter the system, the greater the need for containment.
Closing thoughts and a path forward
In my conversations with law firm leaders, I often see a tension: firms want innovation, but worry about risk.
The truth is, you can have both — if you insist on a modern, cloud-native model that runs inside your own Azure tenant, layered atop Microsoft’s security infrastructure, and if you hold technology partners accountable for how they integrate with your identity, logging, and control model.
If you’re evaluating technology partners for the next generation of law firm platforms — especially those promising AI capabilities — ask tough questions about data residence, cloud tenant control, audit visibility, and cross-system agent permissions to ensure data security.
The technical details matter, but the principle is simple: How much control will you keep, and how much will you give away?
When you’re ready to compare notes, I’d be happy to walk you through real-world examples of how firms are doing this today — building on Microsoft Business Applications, along with sa.global’s practice management solution, evergreen, and secure AI workflows inside the Azure tenancy.
Drop me a message or let’s connect on LinkedIn — I’d be happy to talk.
