The legal industry has lagged behind other industries when it comes to moving IT to the cloud, in part due to regulatory and compliance concerns. Private, secure clouds afford law firms the convenience of the cloud while offering superior protection from cyber security threats. Learn how cost-effective a cloud can be, how it can improve the way your law firm runs, and how it protects against cyber security threats.
How the Cloud Boosts Collaboration and Productivity
How many lawyers work on a typical case? If you bring on multiple attorneys to handle a complex matter, the cloud makes it easy to share resources. This works especially well if you are collaborating across coasts or countries, where it would be impossible to share materials physically.
Lawyers and other parties often work remotely, for instance when traveling to a court in a different city. With a secure cloud, your staff can search for documents anywhere, at any time, and from any device. If someone forgot to print a signed agreement, they can easily find it, print it, and file it without having to go back to the office.
Teams can search for specific documents, categorize case materials, and even link material to specific cases, projects, or processes. High-level search features make it easy for your employees to sort and share information to work smarter, rather than harder.
In addition to sharing information with colleagues, your lawyers can make resources available to staff, court officials, and even their clients, speeding up the legal process through features such as
e-signatures, document sharing, and online project management.
In an important case, the ability to have multiple people collaborating securely and on-demand can help you stay ahead of the game, boosting your reputation in your niche. If you’re looking to get ahead of the competition, or if you’re a small to medium sized law firm seeking to punch above your weight, this can help.
The Benefits of Scalability
With records management increasingly going digital, there’s a steady demand for more and more digital storage space, especially in industries like law.
It takes significant memory, processing power, and support in in-house IT to keep up with records management. Factor in the cost of purchasing hardware, maintaining IT systems, and deploying the latest versions of software and the true costs of your current IT system become all too clear.
Cloud service providers offer comparable or better services at a better price, due to economies of scale. You’ll also pay a clear fee so you can budget accurately, rather than guess at IT costs.
Instead of investing more money in your own network, look to a cloud service provider, who can provide support, monitoring, and scaling to help your firm succeed. Since the cloud is scalable, you can start off with a small platform and build up as your storage needs (or your law firm) grow.
With round the cloud service, your cloud provider can keep things running smoothly so you can focus not on managing digital assets, but on fighting for your clients.
How the Cloud Improves Cyber Security
Every one of your case files contains sensitive information about businesses or individuals. If a hacker infiltrated your network and stole personal information, what would happen to your clients, your business, and your reputation?
Cyber security threats are changing constantly. Can you state with confidence that your IT team has the latest knowledge of malware, DDOS attacks, ransomware, and other threats?
When you have a cloud service provider taking care of your cyber security, you gain access to the best practices and advanced protections against cyber threats. This includes 24/7 security, full redundancy, on-call specialists, and instant notification if anything is wrong.
When speaking of cyber security, it’s important to discuss privacy regulations in Canada, especially pertaining to the legal industry. Reputable cloud providers should allow you to comply with regulations around data storage, data encryption, firewalls, and more. Look for a cloud provider who not only lets you comply with all regulations, but provides a strong Service Level Agreement that adds additional protection for your law firm.
Why Your Law Firm Needs Disaster Recovery
Consider what would happen if your system crashed and you lost current case files, with no backup. Law is a transactional business, and you can’t serve clients if malware or a power outage cuts your access to case files. Every law firm needs a disaster recovery plan to get back on track quickly in “worse case scenarios” like that.
Disaster recovery as a service (DRaaS), when part of a cloud plan, allow you to comply with legal regulations and secure your data. Not only is your business data and applications stored securely in the cloud, data is encrypted during transfer to protect your clients. Whether you lose a file when the computer crashes or experience a server crash at the firm, you can restore your work in minutes from the cloud — no need to request access from a data center.
Any one of these features can improve your law firm’s operations; gaining access to all of these features will transform the way you do business. More and more law firms are making the switch to the cloud. Before you migrate, however, it’s important to identify a cloud service provider who understands the needs of a law firm and offers the right level of support.
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