Recent years have witnessed seismic shifts in society. The global pandemic, political uncertainty, and public concerns about the balance between convenience and data privacy have altered the business climate. Like all companies, law firms must reevaluate and adjust to stay competitive. Technology can deliver key solutions to legal firm challenges.
Attract and Retain Legal Talent
The Challenge: Law firms depend on quality attorneys to attract good clients. In fact, a recent study showed that nearly half of commercial law firms cite hiring and retaining good lawyers as their greatest challenge. The pandemic highlighted the need for a work-life balance, and firms that can support that balance find it easier to hire and retain good lawyers.
Talented attorneys have grown to expect a flexible work atmosphere that allows employees to move seamlessly from the office to home. This means that firms must support a hybrid workplace to be competitive.
The Solution: Moving to a cloud-based system allows employees to work from anywhere. This extends beyond Zoom to include cloud-based practice management software and collaboration tools. Remote workers must have the ability to access necessary data and apps from anywhere without compromising security.
Support Remote Work While Boosting Productivity and Maintaining Compliance
The Challenge: While businesses across the globe moved to remote work during the pandemic, many experienced significant difficulties with productivity and collaboration. Slow connections hampered efficiency. And when employees could not easily collaborate with colleagues and clients, they found workarounds in unsanctioned and insecure tools.
The Solution: A hybrid workforce needs the right tools for the job, from properly equipped home offices to powerful and secure collaboration tools. For instance, Microsoft Teams includes a host of resources to power hybrid work. Colleagues move effortlessly from chats to meetings and real-time document collaboration over distance.
Additionally, remote work means that data becomes scattered across many devices and environments. To ensure visibility, accessibility and compliance of sensitive data no matter where it lives, firms should also develop sound information governance strategies.
Bring in New Clients
The Challenge: Second to attracting and retaining legal talent, law firms cite the need to expand their client base as a top challenge. Potential clients have a host of law firms to choose from. And they are becoming more careful about making their selection.
The Solution: Proactive firms use technology to market themselves effectively and to improve the quality of services they offer. For instance, clients expect a strong digital presence so they can research a potential firm before they make the call. An online portal for client intake, communication and billing will also prove a must.
Cloud-based practice management systems offer the flexibility that today’s law firms need. And tools like Microsoft 365 combine the familiarity of Microsoft Office with enhanced security and compliance features.
Protect Firm and Client Data from Costly Data Breaches
The Challenge: Without proper controls in place, many law firms struggle to find a balance between accessibility and data security. Home offices and the widespread use of personal mobile devices for work means the attack surface has broadened exponentially. But law firms have ethical, business and regulatory mandates to avoid costly data breaches.
The Solution: To provide a secure base for collaboration, firms must evaluate and upgrade their security controls. This will likely involve implementing multi-factor authentication (MFA), strengthening endpoint security and updating encryption. It must also involve promoting better security awareness among all employees.
An initial risk assessment and ongoing security monitoring will highlight security gaps. This will allow firms to take proactive steps to close vulnerabilities before a breach occurs. And, because businesses must prepare for the worst, firms should build an incident response plan long before a breach occurs.
Explore Tech Solutions to Legal Firm Challenges
The security and compliance experts at Messaging Architects understand the challenges law firms face. From cloud migration to information governance, data security and compliance monitoring, we can help you evaluate the best solutions to meet your needs.
