Agile, Secure & Responsive IT Environments
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Your primary focus is serving your clients. Technology is a tool to help your firm serve them more efficiently and effectively. However, technology can also feel like a quagmire with its myriad of options, standards, and rapidly evolving vendor offerings. Wading through IT issues can be distracting at best and potentially put your practice at risk.
The following are the key IT business challenges that we have observed in law practices today, and our advice in how to take steps to address them.
The security, control and access of client data is of the utmost importance in any professional services industry. As more staff work remotely from home or a client site, the use of cloud-based applications and document repositories has become standard for most businesses. Unfortunately, the legal industry has been a late adopter to cloud migration and many legal-specific applications are lagging in providing cloud offerings. For example, time and billing systems, CRMs, and document management systems can be very difficult and expensive to convert to provide secure, seamless remote access.
Recommendation: The best approach is often replacing legacy software with something new, even if from a different vendor, or migrating existing applications to the cloud. This refocus allows for a more concerted effort aligned with your immediate needs and helps you reap the benefits quickly, as opposed to waiting around for vendor-initiated advancements. There are various ways, as well, to mitigate the one-time expenses for this effort.
Talk to your IT managed services provider about the options for migrating legacy applications to the cloud and building a business case for the investment.
“IT has to be flexible. If we get terabytes of phone extraction data sent to an attorney for a case, we need to have the storage capacity for it.”
IT System Analyst, large New England law firm
The increase in threats from ransomware and other cybercriminal activity rises faster each year. Many firms are highly secure within the office. However, the potential vulnerability points multiply as the firm extends to a home office or co-working space. Creating the same level of security assurance in remote work and cloud environments requires a different approach to implementing a truly effective level of cybersecurity controls.
In addition, many clients are requiring that their law firm undergo a security audit as part of their vendor due diligence process. This audit used to be required from only very large clients, but the recent trends have made this a concern of clients of all sizes, especially the middle market.
Recommendation: A comprehensive security audit is a great first step to ensure that your firm has the security controls and protocols in place. Plus, it makes it easier to comply with the increased number of security audits requested by clients, which can lead to new prospects. In addition, cybersecurity awareness training for your employees will help mitigate human error, reduce risk, and decrease your chances of a cybersecurity threat, especially from ransomware.
The COVID-19 pandemic made working from home a requirement, but now it’s viewed as a legitimate option for many workers. Implementing an effective remote work strategy also creates opportunities for firms to establish smaller satellite offices in or around suburbs versus paying high overhead costs for large offices in downtown areas. This cost-saving trend means lower rent(s), decreased commute times, increased attorney satisfaction, and greater convenience for clients. For your firm, this likely means you can adjust your rates to be more competitive, which creates an all-around win-win scenario. Plus, the competition for talent in the legal field is fierce and a hybrid work environment will help attract the best candidates, as well as current employees.
"We have to have the ability to work from anywhere – the office, home, a bank, a client, etc."
Partner, Connecticut legal practice
Recommendation: Do what you can to make your remote work capabilities to be more efficient, secure, and unique than your competitors. This requires confidence in the technology, tools, and processes your firm has implemented to foster effective collaboration, seamless communication, and high productivity. Flagship provides tailored, flexible solutions that can address your workforce configuration with employees on-site, remote, or a combination of the two. Also, Flagship’s ITSentinel™ Managed Services will let you leave the execution and ongoing support to us.
With digital work environments on the rise and the use of web meeting and video conferencing platforms like Microsoft Teams, Zoom, and Google Hangouts increasing, firms are realizing that their legacy or proprietary video teleconferencing (VTC) solutions don’t interoperate with these other more common services. It’s important to adapt existing technology to work harmoniously with these services so clients can seamlessly connect with attorneys irrespective of the conferencing technology they use.
Recommendation: Rather than get lured by shiny new technology, your first step should be to create a technology roadmap based on the gap between your firm’s current capabilities and what you need to operate more efficiently. You want to answer the question, “What solutions do we need to successfully meet client and firm expectations?” This approach will lead to an actionable path forward that offers more security for less money and friction.
"The best thing a vendor can do is provide us the guidance
IT System Analyst, large New England law firm
on what we need is essential. Digest it down to what I need to know."
Whether your firm is hit by a cyberattack or a power outage, you need to address the questions, “How do we conduct business manually when systems are compromised or down?” and “How do we get back to business-as-usual quickly?” Your first concern should be whether your data and communications are adequately backed up for timely restoration if needed. Next, do you have a plan for how to respond to the issue, whether it’s a power issue or cyberattack? Lastly, if systems will be off-line for than a few hours, do you remember how the firm operated before you had your IT infrastructure in place?
Recommendation:Maintaining business continuity is a multi-pronged strategy. The following are three key recommendations:
Work with your IT services provider to satisfy create these plans and comply with your client’s requirements as cost-effectively as possible.
"Small practices have no IT staff. Midsize practices may only have one or two. If email goes down, we don't have time to dig through why it's not sending emails. If we tried, we'd waste a day and perhaps make it worse
Partner, Connecticut legal practice
There is very little data to help law firms determine how much they should be spending on IT infrastructure. We see firms spending between 1-6% of their total revenue on technology, which is a wide range driven by the size, complexity of the firms and their client base. The most significant expenditure involved is the initial investment into the hardware and software required to support each attorney, but as firms grow, they will need to budget for security software, cloud storage and disaster recovery systems.
Recommendation: Determining the right spend for your firm requires working closely with your IT services provider. They may be able to manage your whole environment through managed IT services, or help your internal IT team plan a roadmap that ensures you have the right technology for today and tomorrow without breaking the bank.
“IT always wants progress. It's our job to provide better quality services and solutions to holes in our operating functionality.”
IT System Analyst, large New England law firm
Flagship Networks is a proven, trusted Managed and Professional IT Services organization that works with law practices across Connecticut and in the New York Metro Area. Flagship Networks operates as an integrated arm of your businesses — understanding, predicting, and solving your business IT challenges. We have over two decades of experiences providing comprehensive IT consulting, design, implementation, monitoring, and support capabilities, combined with our industry knowledge, to help our clients achieve their technology goals and run their business more productively.
"I focus on what's missing in contracts. Flagship focuses
Partner, Connecticut legal practice
on the things that are missing in our IT environment."
To talk to a Flagship representatives about your IT Business Challenges, complete the form below and note your top challenges.
