Law Firm Uses a Cloud Computing Solution Instead of Traditional Law Firm Software

When Rekall Technologies works with a start-up law firm, they are usually on a strict budget. Start-up firms are taking advantage of cloud technologies that provide all the features of a traditional setup at a fraction of the cost. In recent months Rekall Technologies has finalized Kluger Healey, an employment and labor law firm with offices in Red Bank and Florham Park, New Jersey. Kluger Healey attorneys have the ability to access firm documents, mail, billing times and faxes from their laptops and mobile devices without the need for remote access software. This is done without the investment costs of a traditional server. Kluger Healey is entirely serverless. They have the functionality of a large firm, with the technology costs of a small one. A major benefit is that as they grow, their technology will grow with them due to ease of expandability. With no server, there are no storage or space issues, there is no downtime, and there is no slowness or staggering.

When Rekall first sat down with Mark Kluger and William Healey, they were unsure when it came to their law firm budget. Due to this, Rekall gave them a standard server proposal with workstations and firewall. When the start-up came back with a budget that was much lower than anticipated, Rekall went back to the drawing board and came up with a cloud solution that suited large firms needs with all the bells and whistles at a fraction of the cost.

The first part of this serverless proposal was to provide a cloud solution for their email. After much discussion, the firm decided that Sherweb Hosted Exchange was the best solution over others due to their dependency on Microsoft Outlook. Hosted Exchange is approximately $9 per user per month. Hosted Exchange consists of a company that houses all firm email, supplies a spam filter that filters all spam & virus’ and provides each user with a 25GB mailbox, 24/7 end-user tech support, and webmail access utilizing the latest version of Microsoft Exchange. Hosted Exchange provides all the features of standard Microsoft Exchange without the costs or headache associated with owning a traditional server. Users can still share contacts, calendars, and mailboxes, as well as sync all mailbox items to mobile devices. For a 6 person firm, Kluger Healey pays around $50/month for Hosted Exchange email and all the features mentioned above. At that rate, the firm could pay for an entire Exchange server within 5 years, and be just in time for an upgrade. The firm will also have no downtime, no speed issues, and no connectivity loss with clients. A good Hosted Exchange company like Sherweb supports a 99% SLA (Service Level Agreement). This means that they guarantee up-time 99% of the time in a given month. Comcast, Cablevision, Verizon & the power companies don’t offer this level of service, and when internet goes down, law firms can be without email connectivity from minutes to days. For this reason alone is why hosted solutions work best for law firms.

The next step in the process was to organize firm data so that all users could access files from a centralized location without use of a server while still utilizing file and folder level security. For this task research was done on a product called Sugarsync. For those tech savvy readers, Sugarsync is like Dropbox but with folder level security. Sugarsync is installed on each PC or laptop and one user copies all the office data to a specified Sugarsync folder. That folder is then shared throughout all the user accounts, downloaded automatically on user login, and syncs as users make changes to documents on the fly. Sugarsync also allows folder level security. If a firm has 6 people and the partners want only 4 people to have access to an employee or admin folder, this can be done very easily by restricting access for the 2 other users within the Sugarsync web security console. Sugarsync holds the last 3 revisions of a document for security purposes. If one computer dies, the data is stored locally on the other 5. If all 5 computers die, the data is available on the web to be viewed and edited at all times. Sugarsync also has an iPhone app to access all firm data via mobile device. This solution provides better protection than a traditional server and has better capabilities. To add even more to the pot, this particular law firm has 2 locations. Traditionally, Rekall would have to install a Terminal Server to aid in remote access for data as well as a VPN firewall for security, perhaps a $6,000 solution. Sugarsync takes care of it all. All data is stored locally and available when there’s no internet connection. Once a connection is established with the internet, all changes sync up to the cloud and reflect in everyone’s shared folders. It is the perfect solution for traveling lawyers, multiple office firms and start-up firms. Sugarsync is $29/month for 100GB of online storage with 3 users. Each additional user is $10/month. Kluger Healey pays $60/month to have mobile and local access to their data as well as revisions, plus 100GB of cloud storage, not to mention folder level security. With Sugarsync these 6 users can access their firm data from anywhere using their laptops at any time. No power, no internet, no problem, these attorneys are completely mobile. With the use of law firm software PCLaw, attorneys can track time, accounting, and billing, and are able to bill and manage time through their mobile devices.

Kluger Healey is ready to run with corporate technology solutions on a small firm budget. They have the advantages that large firms dream about, but at a fraction of the cost. Their entire technology with the additional offsite backup costs them $160/month which is almost unbelievable when compared against a traditional law firm’s monthly I.T. costs. Kluger Healey is not like most law firms, they were willing to listen and take a chance on new technologies and they won. They understand the importance of their technology and how it affects them daily. When law firms have a respect for their technology and how it can help their firm productivity, they usually turn out to be very successful firms.

Rekall Technologies provides I.T. services for law firms and other professional service businesses within New Jersey. Rekall’s technology solutions are utilized in firms of all sizes. Rekall Technologies was founded by Ross Siroti after working extensively with law firm technologies for other I.T. service companies. Due to previous I.T. service experiences, Rekall’s core strengths revolve around reliability, responsiveness and results. Rekall is totally client driven preferring phone calls to emails and responding to support requests within 10 minutes on average. The overall goal of Rekall Technologies is that their clients grow and reach their goals without annoying technology setbacks.