The traditional VPN was a useful bridge — from the office-only network to the hybrid firm. It is now a bottleneck. SASE (Secure Access Service Edge) is what most firms are replacing it with, and the shift produces a better user experience and a stronger security posture simultaneously, which is a rare combination in enterprise IT.
Users don't tolerate the VPN anymore
Slow logins, dropped sessions, awkward client-portal behavior, timeouts during long depositions — the VPN has quietly become the number-one help-desk ticket in many firms. SASE removes that friction entirely, and the drop in ticket volume alone typically pays for a meaningful portion of the transition.
Security actually improves
SASE combines identity-aware access, DNS-layer filtering, secure web gateway and CASB into one enforcement point. The result is a stronger posture with fewer moving parts and fewer places for policy to drift. This is one of the rare architecture shifts where consolidation improves security rather than compromising it.
The transition can be phased
Firms don't have to rip the VPN out on day one. Move new users and new applications to SASE first, then migrate the rest deliberately over one or two quarters. The phased approach lets IT prove value at each stage and lets attorneys ease into the change without a disruptive cutover.
It's an experience investment
The most underrated benefit of SASE is what it does for attorney experience. Faster, cleaner, more reliable access is quietly one of the best retention tools a firm has — and one of the few IT investments that produces visible daily improvement rather than invisible risk reduction.
The multi-office and third-party angle
SASE handles contractors, co-counsel and expert witnesses far more cleanly than a VPN designed for employees ever could. Granular, time-bounded access with clear audit trails removes an entire category of risk that many firms had accepted as unavoidable.
The remote-first future
Even firms whose attorneys are largely back in the office are seeing more device diversity, more mobile use and more third-party collaboration. SASE is built for that world; the VPN was built for a different one. The direction of travel is not ambiguous.
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