If you run a law firm, you have an incredible amount of responsibilities—not only to your clients but also to government agencies and industry oversight organizations. Managing your data and communications is one of the most important steps you can take to grow your law firm. Here are five ways managed IT can help.
Is Your Law Firm Taking Advantage of Modern Technology?
If your law firm has been in practice for a while, you’re probably working with legacy equipment or software. If you are, there may be serious ramifications for your law firm’s long-term viability in today’s data-driven and cybersecurity-conscious environment.
For example:
- Does your law firm continue to do everything on paper?
- Are you using a traditional, old-fashioned phone system?
- Are you storing client data on a desktop or laptop?
- Are you relying on consumer-grade antivirus and security solutions?
If any of these are true, you are placing your firm and your clients at risk. Fortunately, there are solutions to these concerns.
5 Ways Setton Can Help Your Law Firm
We’ll Help You Convert Your Paper Documents Into Electronic Documents
Instead of printing out paper documents, law firms can create electronic documents and utilize e-signatures, and email them to their clients. This can be an incredible time-saving process, removing the need for clients to come into the office to sign documents. Granted, it’s difficult to completely move away from paper, but being able to scan and securely store paper documents instead of keeping them in file cabinets is a much better strategy.
An additional benefit of using electronic documents and converting your existing paper documents is that it allows you to check off a variety of best practice boxes.
- It allows you to reduce the amount of storage space you would need to store paper documents.
- Unlike paper documents, which can be damaged and even lost due to the elements or human error, electronic documents can easily be backed up and stored in multiple locations.
- Electronic documents make it easier for your firm to adhere to industry or state document preservation and security requirements.
- Team collaboration and access are simple with electronic documents. As they live in the cloud, the documents are always accessible to edit and share.
We Can Bring VoIP to Your Business
VoIP saves money over time: Implementing a VoIP solution allows your law firm to reduce a sizable portion of your communication expenses. By replacing the standard analog phone line with a digital broadband connection, VoIP provides businesses a means to make and receive calls from anywhere they can access the Internet.
VoIP provides a wide range of features usually reserved for expensive telephone systems:
- Call Forwarding
- Call Recording
- Unified Messaging (Voicemail-to-Email)
- Audio Conference Bridge
- Auto Attendants
- Simplified Management
- Unlimited domestic long distance
…and many more!
Make and receive calls from anywhere, using whatever device you are most comfortable with. Modern VoIP systems can be accessed from your smartphone, so you never feel disconnected or miss an important conversation.
Let’s Make it Easier and Safer to Work Away from the Office
You might think that all you need is a laptop to work remotely, but when it comes to accessing all of the files that you might need, while doing so securely, all while keeping everything updated and in sync, things can get pretty complicated.
We help law firms with this by establishing an incredibly easy-to-use virtual private network (VPN). Sound complicated? When it isn’t set up properly, it can be, but we can make it extremely simple. No matter where you are, if you are connected to the Internet, you can simply click on an icon and enter in a quick 2-factor code from your mobile device and immediately connect to your office network. From there, you can access files and applications as if you were at your desk, whether you are at a coffee shop, a business center in a hotel, a client’s site, or a resort.
The most important thing is that this VPN is secure. It encrypts the data that you send and receive automatically, so you can work with sensitive documents and information without risking it being intercepted (which is otherwise a common risk when using public Wi-Fi).
Your Law Firm Needs a Backup and Recovery Plan
Your data is your law firm’s greatest asset and is the primary target of a cybercriminal.
Backing up your data is only the first step, you also need to be able to recover it. This is why it is important to have an effective method to retrieve it. Some backup solutions might do a good job when it comes to backing up the data, but when it comes to restoring it, they will let you down by taking a longer time. Plus, you’ll also want to ensure that a copy of your data is being securely stored off-site too.
Another way to think of this is as part of your business continuity plan. A business continuity plan allows your business to survive a disaster whether it is caused by a hardware failure, ransomware, or a natural disaster.
We’ll Harden Your Security to Protect Your Practice from Modern-Day Threats
As a legal organization, protecting your business from cybercriminals and bad actors is incredibly important. As such, you should put as many barriers around your data as possible. These barriers should include multi-factor authentication, permissions management, and having robust spam and content filters.
You should also have centralized, always updated, constantly managed antivirus and firewalls to stop threats before they impact your business.
It also pays to invest in team training to avoid phishing and other threats that target users. Many cybercriminals’ main target isn’t your technology but your team. This is why it is essential to give your team the training they need to recognize suspicious emails and other types of communication.
The Right Tool for the Right Profession
The needs of a law firm are different from those of most other businesses, which means cookie-cutter or big-box IT solutions aren’t going to give the best experience. Your law firm needs personalized IT solutions that take a security-first and compliance-first approach. If you are currently having issues with your technology, chances are it’s because it wasn’t designed for the unique needs of your law firm.
As Manhattan’s business technology experts, we have the expertise to develop a customized IT solution that’s right for your firm. Call (212) 796-6061 today to schedule an appointment and bring your business into the 21st century.