Cloud Migration for Law Firms – it’s time to make the move

According to the American Bar Association, 53% of legal firms in the US have already made a digital transformation. While this does seem to be a good start, the remaining firms have many reservations about moving to a cloud-based infrastructure. For many, just getting started seems like a challenge they’re unable to overcome.

With varying legal requirements on client confidentiality and data protection depending on the state(s) a firm operates in, high volumes of sensitive data and a mix of legacy systems, a migration to the cloud can often feel overwhelming. Unfortunately, the cost of putting off a cloud migration can add to those challenges. Here are the top pinch points for law firms considering a digital transformation:

• Unfamiliar User Interface (UI): A considerable challenge for diverse law offices is overcoming the ‘this is the way we’ve always done it’ mindset. Getting teams to embrace change can be challenging, but using one centralized UI will make things easier and combine the use of several programs and platforms for a more streamlined workflow.
• Ensuring scalability: A digital transformation isn’t a ‘do it and forget it’ project. Ensuring your law firm has new data storage and processing solutions in place for what you need now but also what you will need as your firm grows is essential to long-term stability and growth. Additionally, as your practice grows, the influx of data volumes grows exponentially, which will require backups and archiving to meet legislation and keep your firm compliant.
• Ease of Use – Making a digital transformation effortless for your legal firm requires an easy-to-use system for all employees. Providing this along with the required training to use new systems will ensure seamless adoption of new systems and platforms. Clarifying processes and procedures will limit challenges during a digital transformation and is vital to your law firm’s long-term success.
• Fully compliant, highly secure data solutions: Ensuring your data collection, storage and archiving meets and/or exceeds all legal requirements is crucial. The most well-known of these is the California Consumer Privacy Act (CCPA), though other data protection legislation is in place in other states and General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) if working in Europe and the UK. Ensuring your clients’ privacy, privilege and confidentiality is a threshold issue. Not meeting these legal requirements could be incredibly costly for your firm. Additionally, it’s vitally important that your firm ensures it follows the Modern Rule of Professional Conduct 1.6 around client confidentiality. Breaking this could jeopardize your position in the ABA and your license to practice law.
• Interoperability: Depending on the type of law you practice, you may receive client records, scans, medical information, police reports, insurance documents, etc., from various sources that may have different formats, encryptions and quality than your cloud-based infrastructure. Ensuring your new centralized operating system can sort and process this data easily and without delay is necessary to make sure client expectations are met.

While the digital transformation process and moving to a cloud-based infrastructure can seem challenging, there are many benefits to be had by upgrading to a more flexible, modern system.

Improved confidentiality and security: Security was one of the main reasons law firms haven’t made a digital transformation. As time has passed, security measures in cloud-based platforms have become more robust. In fact, cloud storage often has greater security measures than on-site servers. Offering end-to-end encryption, 24/7 surveillance monitoring, backup servers and, typically, a team of IT professionals and information security analysts to answer any questions, using a cloud-based data storage strategy would be significantly less expensive than if a legal firm were to put all this in place themselves.

Unrivalled productivity and efficiency: Moving to a cloud-based digital solution offers law practices the benefit of integration and automation. These lessen workloads around manual, time-consuming tasks, such as:

• Billing
• Invoicing
• File management
• Legal document creation
• Scheduling

Introducing automation into your legal practice will free up your time, streamline your workflows and add more structure to everyday tasks.

Reliable online governance: Moving your data to the cloud provides a full and demonstrable chain-of-custody offering data integrity checks, audit reports and remediation services which meet the most stringent legislation around client confidentiality and data protection.

Enhanced reliability: While your law practice has been using the same systems for decades, they are prone to outages, receive infrequent updates and require increased maintenance as they age. They are prone to outages which could result in legal practices losing files to equipment errors, damage, or data breaches. Migrating to a cloud-based infrastructure alleviates all these potential issues while providing additional security protocols to ensure you meet federal and state data protection compliance and the ABA’s client confidentiality requirements.

Increased cost efficiency: While there is an initial cost to migrating to the cloud, it’s relatively small compared to the high cost of local data storage and maintenance. Moving to a cloud-based infrastructure allows easy scalability without needing to purchase additional equipment, software, or IT staff. It also allows legal practices to better budget without having to deal with unexpected outages and the costs associated with outdated software.

Better performance: Cloud-based infrastructures provide unparalleled speed and efficiency – but there’s more to it. Introducing new technology into your legal firm will increase the adoption of emerging technologies in the future, including artificial intelligence, automation, and augmented reality. As court systems move to a digital way of operation, embracing these types of technology will futureproof your legal practice.

Unparalleled experience: Both lawyers and their clients will benefit from a cloud migration since it provides a better experience for all involved. For lawyers, it means quicker, more seamless workflows, reducing stress around time-consuming, repetitive tasks, allowing them to focus on their clients. For clients, it makes their experience a good one, with the trust their personal data is handled with integrity, and there are no holdups due to outages with their case.