Growing Firms and Growing IT Standards

Many law firms don’t realize how necessary a top notch IT Company is to operate properly and according to compliance standards. You’re growing, you’re adding more staff; you need to spend more money on IT.

Bringing in new users is costly, and puts you at more of a risk for storage problems, back up failures, server crashing, or someone downloading a virus accidentally. Your infrastructure may need to be HIPAA compliant, and that’s next to impossible to do on your own. All of these issues can be easily solved by choosing a cloud provider specifically for law firms.

To gauge whether or not your firm needs better IT, consider making a list of the following:

• What technology does your firm regularly use? Desktops, laptops printers, scanners?
• What software does your firm use? PCLaw, iManage, ProLaw, Worldox, etc?
• Do you call tech support for any of these products? Is it time consuming? How is their support?

Evaluate your Security

Security requirements are continuously increasing, and quite honestly it’s like a full time job trying to keep up on them. Choosing an IT/Cloud provider that specifically handles law firms and law firm data will take this burden off of your shoulders. Cloud providers have state of the art infrastructures, are often compliant in HIPAA and meet all other security requirements. Being on the cloud allows you to work remotely from anywhere on any device and have enterprise level security over all of your documents.

Ransomware is a hot topic right now especially in the legal world. Ransomware can come in the form of an email, masked as a normal day-to-day email that has a link to an invoice, a menu, or something else to trigger your attention. People click on the link, and the ransomware begins to take over your computer and encrypt all of your files. These encrypted files are held for a ransom (monetary), and the ransom increases the longer you wait to pay.

The cloud prevents all ransomware attacks from breaching your data. With enterprise level security, ransomware is trapped before infecting your machine, a tech notifies you that you were prevented from ransomware, and some education can be passed along your firm to avoid emails that look like that next time.

Cost and Time Saving

In the long run, Cloud providers will save you both time and money. You don’t need a super computer to access the cloud, which saves money on purchasing new desktops for new employees. A base model will be able to provide excellent access to a private cloud.

Earlier we discussed how long you may spend on support for law firm applications. We all know that no one wants to call into support that may be outsourced, have high volume hold times, or just overall not be able to fix the issue at hand. An IT/Cloud provider that focuses solely on law firms has technicians on hand that are well versed in all of your legal application needs. If a technician can’t fix your problem right away, they’ll call support themselves, saving you the headache.

Cloud companies provide unlimited support, as well as support outside of regular business hours.  They understand what needs your law firm has, and exactly how to suit your needs.