The Legal Industry's Inherent Technology Problem & 3 Steps To Take to Overcome It

A perfect storm has emerged in the legal industry. At once, technology has supposedly made a lawyer's life increasingly easier by adding efficiency and organization. You now have the ability to leverage tools such as smartphones, laptops, digital projectors, and cool A/V gadgets. However, what if the device or the network the device runs on is compromised or fails?

There in-lies the technology problem for the legal industry. While gadgets and tools have emerged, the legal arena is still archaic in many areas (insert fax machines). Specifically, many firms stop with one or two improvements and struggle to keep up the required care and feeding of modern technology, many leaving it all in the hands of a disengaged "IT Guy". To make matters, worse, many law firms do not know how much money they are spending on their technology. We have found the real costs be tens of thousands of dollars more than is necessary. Compound this all with a spike in hackers that specifically target law firms and you have a near- perfect storm of problems.

If your network, internet or phone systems are more than 3 years old, not only is the technology archaic, but costs can be 50% higher than necessary.

The reality is if your firm's technology upgrade was more than 3 years ago, it's old. It's archaic. No need to panic. Here are the three technologies that are the worst culprits in exposing the firm to failure and increased costs and what you can do now.

The Firm's Network & Security

Yes, we all know that moving to the cloud can save your firm money in the long run, but did you know that the costs of these servers have dropped more than 50% in the last THREE years, according to AppDeveloper Magazine. This is due to the cost of specific instance types, and the continually evolving generations of that instance type.

Further, the security of that network needs to be tended to 24/7, not just with eyeballs of your "IT Guy". Unless he has ongoing knowledge and is using real technology, your firm is exposed. Advanced forms of malware, like ransomware cryptoworms, are major threats to firms because the malware is self-propagating—meaning it is much more difficult to find and can propagate at network speeds. Some malware has even gotten smart enough to evade basic detection tools. These types of attacks are being carried out by teams that have the resources and training equivalent to an entire government at their disposal.

What to do? Well, when was the last time you did a cost analysis? Simply ask your IT Guy to review not only the technology running the network but the security of such, along with the up-to-date pricing models. It is not enough for the network to be "Up", but is the network the most efficient in terms of security, speed and cost?

Internet & Wifi

What’s more annoying than having great wifi, but slow internet speeds? Nothing. Nothing is more annoying than that. It is not a matter of 'if', but 'when' it happens, whether it is jumping onto wifi access points at your favorite client's office or courthouse...

In the legal industry, slow WiFi leads to increased costs (for the firm), decreased productivity, and a whole lot of stress for the lawyers and support staff, stress.

If your internet has not been reviewed in the past 24 months, it could be archaic and you had no idea. If your firm supposedly has the superman version of the internet, say, a fiber connection that gets you a mighty 1 Gbps (1,000 Mbps)—you’re never going to see those speeds if the routers are antiquated and yes that means they are only 12 months old or more.

What to do? Call your internet provider to see if you can get a better deal on your internet, especially if they’ve been giving you the wrong speeds all this time.

Phone System

When it comes to phone systems, many firms adopt the mindset of, “if it’s not broken, don’t fix it.” That may work in the short term, but the moment something does become broken, you’ve got a whole new set of issues to address.

There are many signs that your firm's phone system is out of date. If you have frequent system outages or regularly “lose” people when they call into your office, that’s a sign your phone system can’t keep up with demand. Poor sound quality is also a symptom of a phone system that is unreliable. When phones are down, business stops. Sometimes outages are unavoidable. If your firm cannot conduct business during an outage by routing calls to staff cell phones, you are losing business. Further, phone trees can be problematic, if your system routes callers through a maze of prompts without ever delivering them to a real employee, it can frustrate your customers.

What to do? Take a look at current offerings. Modern phone systems are worth the investment and technology has made phone systems more adaptable and feature-rich than ever before.

Conclusion

A perfect storm has emerged in the legal industry and the reality is that most firms already have an "IT guy". However, there are many instances when he is not paying attention to his client’s needs. Can your IT Guy say he did this for you.....

• Found you a savings of $10,000 a year
• Fought on your behalf to get a refund from your cable provider of over $5,100.

Yes, there are lots of technology service providers and all purport to do the same thing. So what makes TeamLogic different? First, our focus is on Atlanta based law firms. Second, my firm guarantees that we will always treat you the way we'd want to be treated and I personally back this up.

I can’t know your specific situation, but if you ever want to engage a company who puts your needs first and proactively gives you the most technology bang for your buck, call or e-mail me personally at 770-450-0910 or [email protected] or VISIT OR SITE.

Talk soon, Howard.