The Evolution of Legal Data Protection: Insights from Helient

Data protection in the legal world is evolving rapidly, and the stakes couldn't be higher. When it comes to safeguarding critical case files and client information, law firms face unique challenges that extend far beyond typical enterprise concerns.

The sheer volume of data maintained by legal organizations creates formidable technical and financial hurdles. As Will from Helient explains in this eye-opening conversation from ILTACON 2025, law firms must navigate exceptionally long retention requirements while ensuring data remains secure across multiple locations and storage media. This isn't just about good business practice—it's about preparing for what Will calls "the when, not if scenario" of data recovery.

Perhaps most concerning is the widespread misconception about cloud-based SaaS solutions like Microsoft 365. Many firms falsely assume their data is fully protected simply because it resides in Microsoft's infrastructure. The reality? While Microsoft maintains the platform, customers remain responsible for protecting their own data. This critical gap in understanding leaves many legal organizations vulnerable to data loss despite their cloud migration efforts.

Beyond data protection, the legal technology landscape continues to evolve rapidly. Artificial intelligence dominated conversations at ILTACON, though as Will aptly observes: "Everybody wants it. Nobody knows what to do with it." Meanwhile, the post-pandemic era has accelerated the exodus from traditional data centers as firms seek more flexible, OpEx-based cloud solutions that align with their increasingly distributed operations.

Want to understand how leading legal organizations are addressing these challenges? Listen now to discover the strategies and solutions that are transforming data protection in the legal sector. Then share your own experiences with cloud migration and data security—we'd love to hear what's working for your organization.

Chapters

• 0:01 Introduction to Heliant at ILTACON
• 1:32 Haiku Partnership Evolution
• 2:29 Law Firm Data Protection Challenges
• 3:27 SaaS Backup Misconceptions
• 5:22 AI and Cloud Trends
• 6:27 Heliant's Cloud-First Approach
• 7:19 Closing and Future Plans

Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:01

Hey everyone. We are live from ILTACON, the International Legal Technology Association, meeting talking legal tech with a true industry insider and innovator at Heliant Will. How are you Doing well, evan? How are you today Doing great? Live from the show floor makes it always fun and a little interesting. But maybe introduce yourself for those who aren't familiar, and what's the big idea at Heliant? What's your mission there?

Speaker 2: 0:32

Yeah, so we're here at Ilticon 2025 in National Harbor, Maryland, right outside Washington DC, and it's been a busy week of presenting and meeting a lot of customers and prospects and legal customers both throughout the United States and the world, and legal departments of some of the larger companies, and a lot of buzz around AI managed services firm delivering our services and emerging technologies to our customers, creating people, crowd transformations, innovations, backup, security, infrastructure desktop, you name it.

Speaker 1: 1:18

Fantastic, Well, a great place to be. I'm sure it's a busy week and you've been working with, among others, Haiku for a while now. Maybe talk about that partnership, how it came about?

Speaker 2: 1:32

and why it's working so well in the legal space. Haiku has been great. Haiku got introduced to it. It's almost been a decade. We've been a longstanding Nutanix partner when hyperconvergence really came on the scene in 2013. And Haiku was really one of the first to the market with AHV-ready backups. And because we were a very strong Nutanix partner, we aligned very closely with Haiku and started dipping our toe in the water very early, knowing that our customers had needs for backup, for off-site recovery, disaster recovery, and the evolution of Haiku has been great. We've been working with them on both Nutanix, aap backups, vmware backups, disaster recovery solutions, cloud backups, entra, id, microsoft 365. It's been a real exciting journey.

Speaker 1: 2:14

Fantastic. That's quite a potpourri of technology. So, from your vantage point, what are the biggest sort of IT and data protection headaches challenges that law firms are wrestling with right now?

Speaker 2: 2:29

I think one, especially in law firms. The size of the data footprint is just massive. Being able to store all of that data securely in multiple locations on different media and then also respecting the retention of some of these firms, where some of this case data may have to exist for a really long time until that case is officially archived or dead, can be cost prohibitive and technically challenging. To be able to ensure that that data can be backed up and backup is a crucial part of every law firm making sure that they have redundant copies of their data for the when, not if, scenario, redundant copies of their data for the when, not if, scenario, and then, if they do have to fail, they can fail fast and sleep well at night knowing that they're going to be able to recover.

Speaker 1: 3:12

Yeah, that's interesting, I mean from your pretty unique perspective. What are, you know, one or two of the things law firms still tend to underestimate when it comes to security and data protection for their SaaS solutions, when it comes to security and data protection for their SaaS solutions.

Speaker 2: 3:27

Yeah, I mean, the SaaS solution has really been a big discussion point over the last few years the adoption of email in the cloud, document management in the cloud, other SaaS-based solutions. I think it's still a learning curve for customers to understand that shared responsibility model. At the end of the day, that the customers are still responsible for their data. The infrastructure may be provided by the SaaS provider, but that data still is a responsibility of that customer to maintain. And ensuring that there's ideally one backup solution that can fit them all is great, but at minimum, having all of the data that's in these SaaS providers backed up in some secure methodology.

Speaker 1: 4:06

Interesting and you've done some pretty interesting research on your end with customers and partners. Maybe talk about a survey you recently announced at the show. What were some of the standout insights that kind of got your attention Sure?

Speaker 2: 4:24

I think that the sort of underappreciation of backup and SaaS applications is still a real thing. Customers that have moved to Entra ID, exchange Online, onedrive for Business, teams, sharepoint the assumption is Microsoft has that data redundant in multiple locations, but having that data on customer-owned storage or customer-provided storage is really important for legacy, for archive, for backups, and seeing a lot of the SaaS vendors that are out there that either don't have backup integration yet or are just starting to come on the market is eye-opening and you need to make sure that there's a solution for these customers.

Speaker 1: 5:06

Yeah, really interesting. So at the show, what are some of the most exciting opportunities that you're seeing for innovation over the next year or two? There's a lot going on, both in your domain and outside. What's all the buzz about?

Speaker 2: 5:22

I think every session, every vendor, everybody's talking about AI here. Everybody wants it. Nobody knows what to do with it or how to use it or how to implement it, but I think it's transforming a lot of the work products and the way that the law firms operate. So it's a lot of buzz, but it's also a lot of buzz every year, so we'll see what comes to fruition. But I think that in this post-COVID world, although people are not back in the offices physically present, people now want to get out of the data center space. So moving as much as they can to the public cloud is really, I think, everybody's goal. There's been some vendors out there that have not done them a service in significant cost increases, so moving to more of an OpEx model has been really attractive to a lot of organizations.

Speaker 1: 6:10

I bet and maybe describe how this new world has changed the way you work at Helium. What's next for your organization? Where are you investing and adapting to this brave new world and client demands?

Speaker 2: 6:27

Yeah, I mean we've been as a company. We've been cloud first since day one. Oh wow, we have been an iManage cloud organization with our documents in public cloud and relying on iManage to provide that infrastructure as a service. And with the GA announcement of Haiku, with the ability to back up iManage cloud as part of the Haiku R Cloud suite, it's a differentiator. We have now a true option to present to customers to cover an area of their SaaS environment that previously had no good data protection solution. And now there is an answer.

Speaker 1: 7:04

Fantastic. What's next for Heliant? You have a big part of the show, lots of education going on. What are you up to the rest of the summer, rest of the year? You must have quite a few things in the hopper.

Speaker 2: 7:19

Yeah, I mean we as a company are just very busy now. This is our big show. We're here, Lots of our customers are here. I presented earlier today a master class on both Heliant and Nerdio using it for Microsoft Cloud VDI. We'll finish up with a nice client dinner tonight with some of our best customers and then take a bath after tomorrow. It's a marathon, not a sprint, here, but it's a great time. It's a great time to see people from all over the US and the world that sometimes we only get to FaceTime here the US and the world, that sometimes we only get to FaceTime here. But I think it just further reinforces how important it is to get that FaceTime with customers and to bring everybody together and have a lot of that knowledge sharing. So it really is. Although it's exhausting, it's a lot of fun.

Speaker 1: 7:58

Now. It sounds like a lot of fun. What a great location in National Harbor in Maryland. And have another day or so. Have a great time.

Speaker 2: 8:08

Congratulations on the success and the partnership with Haiku. Thank you very much. Appreciate the time.

Speaker 1: 8:12

And thanks. Well, thanks everyone for listening, watching, sharing and stay safe. Talk to you soon, Bye-bye.