Top 4 Problems The Cloud Solves

Imagine that you could make one decision – adopt one new technology – and four serious issues for your firm are alleviated. You make this decision and suddenly your firm is winning more clients, increasing productivity, managing turnover, and controlling costs.

You don’t have to have a wild imagination to picture this outcome; it’s possible – right now – if your law firm begins using the cloud. Here’s how it works.

 

  1. Winning Clients

This one is a no-brainer. Most law firms want to win more business and employ countless complex strategies to accomplish this goal. Clients can be skittish about testing out a different firm and may have concerns about security. With law firm data breaches making headlines every day, clients naturally focus on making certain their law firms – and all of their corporate data – are safe.

Your law firm can become the go-to practice for safety and security by using a secure cloud platform such as Legal Workspace. The fastest and simplest way to bolster your security is by selecting a cloud solution that was created specifically for law firms. Legal Workspace knows how important it is for law firms to maintain privilege – and their reputations. Every Legal Workspace client’s data is placed in a military-grade cloud built exclusively for lawyers.

You can use your firm’s data security as a selling point. Legal Workspace provides security information that you can use to win deals by proving that you can meet – and usually beat – all of your prospects’ security requirements.

 

  1. Increasing Productivity

No law firm wants its attorneys twiddling their thumbs as they wait for the server to come back online. The cloud means zero downtime for attorneys.

A cloud environment also gives attorneys the ability to work from any device with internet access. It’s after hours, and they get a call? They can immediately record their time. They’re stuck in the airport across the country? They can access the data they need. They’re in court or a satellite office? They have exactly the same access they would have if they were sitting in their offices. Not only that, but the environment from which they’re working is secure.

 

  1. Managing Turnover

Gone are the days when employees would take one job and turn it into a career that lasts until their retirement. Law firms know that it can be difficult to attract and retain good talent. One perk that appeals to talent is flexibility. Your firm can provide attorneys and administrative employees with the ability to work from home (or anywhere, really) when you use a cloud environment such as Legal Workspace. No hauling files to and from different locations, no thumb drives to misplace, no insecure file sharing. When your workers have access to the Legal Workspace cloud environment, they get the same secure access to files, legal applications, and workflows at home as they would in the office.

And, no law firm is static; as your firm grows and changes, Legal Workspace makes it easy to add and remove users.

 

  1. Controlling Costs

Some budgets are variable, no matter how hard you may try to stabilize them. If you rely on servers, then your IT budget falls into that category. Servers frequently need updating and patching – and that’s not something you can assign just anybody to do. Unique skills are required to work on legal applications, too. You never really know when something might go wrong or how severe the problem will be.

Using a cloud environment eliminates IT budget variability. Law firms never again have to worry about the price of repairs or the steep cost of expert knowledge. You pay a monthly fee, and that’s it. No more outages or downtime, no worrying about disaster recovery. It’s all taken care of for you.

It’s rare to be able to solve four problems by making one simple decision. Adopting a secure cloud environment can do that. Using a cloud environment such as Legal Workspace can change the way that you approach managing your firm and allow your attorneys to have both more freedom and more security.

 

Not All Clouds Are Equal: Select the Best

By now, you’ve heard all about the cloud, how it can keep your data secure, and how using a cloud environment is a more convenient way to work. You’re convinced that working in a cloud environment is the way to go. What’s the next step? How do you get the cloud and make it work for you? Will any cloud do?

As with any other technology, you must be selective. Choose the cloud environment that provides security and support.

Legal Workspace goes way beyond providing just cloud storage for lawyers. Its cloud environment was designed with the particular needs of the legal profession at its forefront. Because of that, Legal Workspace’s cloud environment – and its set-up and support team – provide special features that make it the best choice.

A dedicated team

When you work with Legal Workspace, you aren’t just buying space and an interface. You get to work with a dedicated team that is there to help you with your technology needs. This team is made up of people with legal industry experience.

That legal industry experience allows the team to immediately comprehend and meet your firm’s needs. The team takes an unbiased approach to hosting, and they understand a law firm’s daily workflow in addition to all of the facets of technology. For example, they can help you customize programs and applications for greater efficiency. Beyond that, if you ever need advice as you make technology decisions, the team can contribute CIO-level guidance.

And, certain aspects of tech maintenance become invisible. Just think: You will never need to worry about updating software again – because it will happen automatically.

 

A secure environment

You have your dedicated technology team to set up and maintain your own distinct cloud environment when you work with Legal Workspace. But that’s not all your team can do for you. You can consult with your team about security, too. Because Legal Workspace is designed specifically for use by those in the legal profession, it has developed and locked in place a multi-layer defense system to protect your – and your clients’ – data from exposure.

Legal Workspace uses two-factor authentication, advanced intrusion detection and prevention systems, state-of-the-art antivirus software, and anti-spam solutions as tools in its mission to keep your data safe. The security teams at Legal Workspace are always working to keep your data secure with proactive monitoring, redundancy, and airtight training and policies.

 

A compliant mindset

Legal Workspace takes security and compliance seriously. It knows how important compliance is to you and to your clients. That’s why on-staff security and compliance experts are easy to reach and at the ready to help you make compliance decisions and meet the demands of standards required by the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) and Payment Card Industry Data Security Standards (PCI DSS).

And, data storage isn’t a mystery with Legal Workspace. Your data is stored in the United States – in Dallas, TX, and Denver, CO – and it will never leave those locations.

When you work with a cloud solution that understands the challenges the legal profession faces, you have the opportunity to take advantage of its expertise. You can work in a cloud environment designed especially for law firms, and you can work with teams with legal industry experience and technology expertise. That makes it so much easier to set up a cloud environment that does what you need it to do.

 

Legal Software 101

legal-software-101Whether you’re getting ready to hang your own shingle or managing an established law firm, implementing a suite of legal software can seem like a daunting task. You might have been intimidated by the cost, the time to put the new procedures and tools in place and possibly the change from familiar processes. However, even with those hurdles, it pays (literally – it saves money) to improve your practice by adopting technologies that work best for you and your firm.

Software Categories

The four categories of applications commonly used by law firms include:

  • Practice Management Software
  • Document Management Software
  • Time and Billing Software
  • Legal Document Generation Automation Software

Practice Management

Practice management applications allow attorneys to streamline their workflow and business processes, thereby enabling them to spend more time generating revenue and less time doing tedious, unproductive tasks. These applications, at their core, offer fundamental matter-centric organization of contacts, calendaring, and management.

The use of practice management applications helps attorneys and staff with organization and quick reference to vital information, no matter the practice. These tools often integrate with other applications that allow for easier manipulation of that data as well as increased mobility.

Common practice management applications include:

  1. Amicus Attorney®
  2. Needles®
  3. Practice Master®
  4. Thomson Reuters ProLaw®

Document Management

Document management software applications are powerful tools in any law firm’s workflow. These applications provide the firm with a centralized and searchable depository of documents, emails and other matter-related items. Law firms deal with volumes of data in a variety of forms and formats. With the billable hour in mind, the ability to quickly search and recall documents or emails is essential for optimizing the firm’s workflow.

With paper documents converted to electronic files, less physical storage space is needed. It becomes easier to take or access documents off-site and audit trails become easier to maintain.

Two popular document management solutions are:

  1. Worldox®
  2. Microsoft SharePoint®

Time and Billing

Two of the most common struggles with any law firm, regardless of the size, is capturing billable time and getting bills out in a timely fashion. The right time and billing application can assist a timekeeper with these tasks and can even help capture more of their billable time. Used correctly, time and billing applications easily pay for themselves with more hours billed and more efficient billing practices.

Your accounting software can also be linked to your time and billing solution in order to facilitate invoicing and tracking accounts receivable and trust account transactions.

Popular time and billing software for law firms includes:

  1. Timeslips®
  2. Tabs3®Billing Software
  3. QuickBooks®

Legal Document Generation Automation

With law firms often collecting data for cases from a variety of disparate sources, assembling a single document from that data can be a challenge. Document generation software allows firms to streamline and automate that process.

These applications use templates and interview questions to help assemble the documents for attorneys. Firms can quickly automate the generation of releases, letters, government forms and other frequently needed documents.

Some applications that help law firms quickly generate these documents are:

  1. Hot Docs®
  2. ProDoc®
  3. Amicus Attorney®

Benefits of Integrated Legal Software Applications

Correctly implemented, these integrated technology solutions can save you time and money in billings, document generation and effectiveness – all while reducing risk.

  1. Increase profitability – capture billable time
  2. Increase productivity – automate documents
  3. Increase effectiveness – build templates
  4. Reduce risk – identify malpractice and disciplinary milestones

These benefits are reached not only through the efficiency of using each individual application, but also through reduced redundancy as the various products share information with each other.

The Legal Workspace Solution

Legal Workspace provides a cloud-based legal work environment with licensing options for all the software applications mentioned in this article. The platform was created just for lawyers and law firms. Our base package includes the complete Microsoft®Office suite, as well as the latest anti-virus and anti-spam protection and nightly backups of your data.

You can also customize your environment to add any specific legal applications your firm already uses or wants to offer, including the unique e-filing software used to submit documents to your local court. We allow you to move existing licenses to the cloud or take advantage of our SaaS (Software as a Service) licensing model for many legal software applications.

Our solution can be implemented in less than a week, often with most of the process happening over the course of a weekend, meaning little disruption to your workflow.

No matter how new or well-established your firm is, you can discover time savings and return on investment by implementing the right legal software solution.

Cloud Computing Is the Number One Technology Trend of 2015

Business Insider recently listed nine technologies that companies will be turning towards in 2015 and cloud computing is number one. Here is why:

For the past few years, enterprises have been slowly shifting away from buying software and hardware. They want to rent it from someone else, hosted elsewhere, paying only for what they actually use. This is known as cloud computing.

By the end of 2014, this trend has turned from a trickle to a stream. In 2015 it will become a waterfall.

IDC predicts that in 2014, companies will have spent $56.6 billion on the cloud, and that the cloud market is growing 22% a year, six times faster than the growth of the whole IT industry. By 2018, companies will be spending $127 billion on the cloud.

Read the whole list here

Are you considering moving your law practice to the cloud? Look no further than Legal Workspace.

How the Cloud Cuts Your IT Overhead

What if your workday was more about practicing law and less about running an office? It can be with Legal Workspace – your law office in the cloud. Watch this video to see why law firms are switching to the cloud:

legal-workspace-video2

Legal Workspace is a cloud-based IT solution for law firms. Our turnkey solution means you won’t need to hire an IT person, invest in equipment and hardware, or worry about managing IT issues. Legal Workspace gives you 24-7 support from legal IT experts who know your programs and the software you are running.

All of your software programs are hosted along with all your files on a virtual cloud server. The applications and software you need to run your practice can be accessed anytime, anywhere on any device. Co-workers can access documents and programs seamlessly and simultaneously for efficient collaborative work, whether they’re in the office next to you or somewhere town or anywhere around the globe.

If you’re ready to learn more, contact us for a free demo to see how Legal Workspace can change the way that you manage your practice.