3 Reasons Your Law Firm Should Have Private Cloud Now

As an attorney, you have made a commitment to provide your clients with the best legal advice and service possible. To accomplish this, you have come to recognize that in the world of law, the clock keeps ticking regardless of circumstance. Court dates are appointed, not chosen. Client meetings are a must. Contracts have deadlines. Loss of access to your files and data, therefore, is a huge threat to your firm. As an attorney, you have a finite amount of time to build your case, do research, and gather materials, etc. Should you lose access to your data due to an internet outage, hardware failure, or human error during your last few days before court, for example, it could be disastrous to the outcome of your case.  Having your own private cloud solution can help you overcome these potential disasters.

As of 2016, more law firms are going paperless, investing in practice management software, and moving to the cloud. Close to 90% of all documents are now ‘born digitally’ in today’s law firms.

As technology advances, law firms can achieve faster results and be more productive, but there can be dangerous pitfalls when client data is digital. These dangers become even more so when the data and the applications reside at a remote location and not on-premise. Spotty or failing Internet connectivity can be crippling when some or all of your applications and data reside in the "cloud" or off-site.  These shortcomings are what make having your own private cloud so attractive.

As in any other business, law firms are vulnerable to flood, fire, power surges, severe weather or any other disaster including accidental or malicious deletions that could take systems off-line and destroy your irreplaceable client data. In addition to these threats, there’s the ever-present “human factor” where Larry the lawyer accidentally opens that seemingly innocent email attachment infecting the entire firm with the latest malware. These additional threats make it imperative that a law firm can recover either locally or remotely depending on the circumstances. This robust capability that is provided by a private cloud solution is referred to as Technical Agility.

There are several different scenarios that this type of agility can save your firm from catastrophic loss.

1.  Imagine opening a current case file, just to find out that all of its contents have been encrypted, and you are now being held for ransom by the newest version of cryptoware. (Currently, the going rate for a small amount of data is about $1800) Not only is this extortion expensive but is very time-consuming, because payment is not in common currency but bitcoins. Not only is this more than inconvenient, but you also have a short window of time (typically 48 hours) in which to comply with the demands or lose your data. If you are technically agile, you would be able to revert your data back to its unencrypted state, in a very short period of time (think minutes vs. days).
2.  Imagine your server having a hardware failure, not only can you not get to your data but now you cannot send or receive emails. Being technically agile you would be able to bring up a virtual clone of that server (in minutes) and continuing to do business as your I.T. team troubleshoots the failed hardware.
3. Imagine if Natural or Physical disaster strikes and all computer hardware is rendered useless. Technical agility would mean you would be able to replicate your server environment at an off-site data center, and your workers could continue to work from home.

In the past, these types of solutions could only be implemented by vast enterprises, with huge capital expenditures. Now with EMSCO Solutions private cloud solutions, these types of solutions can be implemented for as little as a few hundred dollars a month, and that is including new server hardware, as well on-site and off-site replication.

More and more law firms are turning to business interruption insurance to cover the costs of rebuilding, restoring, or regaining lost income. However, while your insurance company may be able to write you a check for the cost of a server that gets damaged because of a flood due to a broken pipe. It won’t be able to reimburse you for the aggravation of having to spend days rebuilding your firm's complete technology environment from scratch. More importantly, this type of coverage can’t shield you from damaged or lost client relationships. These three examples should help highlight the need for a law firm to have technical agility.