28 Jun Business Continuity Strategies for Law Firms
As attorneys, you are devoted to providing your clients with the best legal advice and service possible. To do so, you recognize that time stops for no one. Any downtime is a huge threat. As a lawyer, you have a finite amount of time to build your case, gather materials, and perform research. Which is why having a business continuity strategy is so vital for law firms. The Legal Technology Survey Report results show that the number of lawyers moving to the cloud is up 40% from last year. Close to 90% of all documents produced in law firms are now digital. With technology changing the landscape, law firms can be more productive and achieve faster results, but there are also potential drawbacks when client data is digital.
Like any other business, law firms are vulnerable to fire, flood, severe weather, power surges, and accidental or malicious deletions that may wipe out your valuable client data. Don’t forget the human factor, where a lawyer accidentally opens a phishing email attachment that inflicts the network with the latest malware. A false sense of security practices has become common in law firms. There is often a misconception that data is safe if backed up regularly, but this may not be the case for many reasons.
- If you forget to perform your backup or the backup process fails, you’re not protected.
- If you only back up your files once a day, you’re still vulnerable to the loss of an entire day’s work.
- If you don’t correctly validate your backup files, you could be in for a very unwelcome surprise when you try to use those files to restore your practice’s operations.
- If you only back up your files on-site, you could lose them too—leaving you with no way to serve your clients.
- If you only back up your raw data, rather than all your application and server configuration files, it could take you several days to restore your practice to be fully operational since you will also have to rebuild your servers, operating systems, and applications.
Many law firms are turning to business-interruption insurance to cover the costs to rebuild, restore, or regain lost income. However, while your insurance provider covers the cost of a damaged server, it won’t be able to compensate your downtime and damaged or lost client relationships.
- S. businesses lose $12 billion annually due to data loss.
- 93% of companies that lose their datacenter for 10+ days file for bankruptcy within one year.
Here are some tips to help your firm avoid costly downtime:
- Outsource your firm’s IT needs to an expert who has experience in the legal industry. They will understand the importance of billable hours.
- Don’t sacrifice quality to save money when purchasing hardware. It will benefit you in the long-run to have reliable technology.
- Perform timely hardware and software updates, maintenance, and backups.
- Establish, review, and maintain system security of all practice technology.
The Better Way: Business Continuity
Business continuity describes a complete solution for backup and disaster recovery. A real business continuity solution will protect your data across all environments. Business continuity goes a step beyond just backup; it provides the ability to restore your data with disaster recovery.
Whether you experience a natural disaster or human error, Abacus Technologies’ secure business continuity solutions will have you up and running in just minutes or seconds. Our solutions implement cloud-based backups that can guarantee you quicker restore time. Contact us today to see how we can help your firm.