Legal Tech: Moving to the Cloud for Business Continuity Planning

In the past year in the United States alone, the devastation caused by natural disasters has been immense. From massive wildfires in the West to excessive flooding in parts of the Midwest and the Mid-Atlantic, to major hurricanes in the Southeast, the damage is extraordinary.

Fire, water and wind have taken homes and places of business alike, and those left standing often are without basic utilities for extended periods of time, let alone all the other resources needed to operate a business. Rebuilding areas of the Carolinas and the Florida Panhandle that were hit hardest by Hurricanes Florence and Michael this fall will take years and may bankrupt businesses that did not adequately prepare for disaster.

Law firms, like every other business, are left to deal with the aftermath of these catastrophic events. Firms that have established business continuity plans to put into effect when these instances occur will find themselves a step ahead in the disaster recovery process. And the ones leveraging cloud technology are at an even greater advantage.

Establishing Priorities

Law firms today are under constant pressure to produce the best work possible with fewer resources than ever before. IT departments must implement new technologies that enable innovation while keeping critical client data, applications and workspaces secure. Planning for business continuity and disaster recovery often takes a back seat to the day-to-day challenges of managing IT for an evolving firm.

Failure to prepare adequately for natural disasters or other critical events, including key technology failures or cyber attacks, could lead to financial disaster for the firm. With cloud-based computing, law firms today can move toward solving the challenges of both constantly improving and planning for business operations following an availability issue.

Disaster recovery typically focuses on how a firm will recover key IT-related assets such as servers, applications, networks and workstations. These plans usually focus on getting applications and data restored and accessible as quickly as possible.

Business continuity planning deals with planning to maintain business operations in face of a disaster:

• Analysis of threats to the organization — cyber attack, hurricane, power outage, building fire, etc.
• Analysis of the specific threat impact to critical business functions required for short-term and long-term survival of the firm.
• Plans to mitigate the risks associated with threats to core business operations.
• Detailed and communicated action plans in the event a specific threat is realized.
• Regular practice of business continuity plans as related to specific threat scenarios.
• Continuous feedback into improvements in plans.
• Monitoring for new threat scenarios.
• Regular communication and buy-in from everyone in the organization especially when it comes to cyber threats.

By creating a business continuity plan before a disaster happens, law firms can respond more efficiently in different crisis situations, ease confusion among employees and clients via written procedures, and ensure rational decision making. If employees know what tasks are expected of them and how to perform these tasks, the response to a crisis can be organized and controlled.

The Cloud's Impact on Law Firm Innovation

Enterprise level cloud-based applications have built-in high availability with fail-over, which are not typical of most on-premise applications except in the most sophisticated data centers. Cloud applications and the information saved in them are stored entirely in secure, redundant off-site locations specially built with a bunker mindset and significantly more resources than are available at a law firm for this purpose. Enterprise class cloud facilities provide the highest level of availability and enables law firms to focus on business operations vs. recovery operations.

In its current mature state, the cloud is scalable and reliable, offers a depth of functionality, and allows firms to create a virtual business online. Everything a firm previously did onsite or manually with disparate systems can now be done virtually with a cloud platform — desktop applications, document management, time and billing, new client or case intake, document creation, and even a phone system can exist with VOIP in the cloud. These services mean law firms can experience the high availability cloud vendors provide but none of the cost of highly capable networks, servers, software and staff.

The Cloud's Impact on Law Firm Business Continuity Planning

When faced with a disaster, cloud-based applications mean that important information and technology is stored securely away from the office and can be accessed at any time and from any location, no matter where the disaster occurs. Cloud-based applications can address many of the items that must be contained in a firm's business continuity plan.

Consider the possibility of an earthquake or a hurricane like Florence or Michael destroying the firm's building. The firm would need to replace computer resources, restore networks, possibly replace employees and find a new site to get the firm running again. With cloud-based applications and a solid business continuity plan, law firm staff can be up and running from remote locations using their home computers and devices as soon as personal needs are addressed and electricity and Internet connections are restored. Cloud-based applications can store all the important applications and information a law firm needs to operate, including:

• Time and billing
• Accounting
• Case management
• Document management
• Contact management
• Communications

Business Continuity in Action: Hurricane Irma Tests Florida Law Firm

The recent spate of natural disasters around our country has had the potential to cripple businesses and has put cloud technologies to the test. The Florida law firm of Ayo & Iken is a prime example of how operating in the cloud can make all the difference when business continuity is threatened by matters beyond our control.

Several years ago, Ayo & Iken eliminated all local software and moved everything possible to the cloud. After opening multiple offices, they needed a solution that provided all staff access to the firm's systems to replace an original setup that had included local servers stored in a single location that was not scalable, and with no assurance that its backup measures had integrity if something went wrong.

With its case management system, document storage, private messaging system and phone system all based in the cloud and distributed across multiple offices, Ayo & Iken could create a fully functional office from anywhere that has an Internet connection.

When Hurricane Irma hit Florida in September 2017, the firm's cloud-based systems were put to the test. The expected damage was severe, and the firm had more potential exposure than ever. With offices across the state and all of Florida potentially in the storm's path, avoiding damage or losses entirely seemed impossible. The firm's business continuity plan called for employees to wait out the storm, take inventory of the offices after it passed, and then, once they determined people were safe, direct staff to where they could work with power and Internet access.

As the storm rolled through, the firm used its remote desktop control program, cloud-based alarm, and security camera systems to monitor every office. Various locations went dark as the night went on, but thankfully the firm's main office in Tampa stayed secure, never losing power or Internet. The following morning, all employees were offered food and water if needed, and then plans were made for everyone to either work from home or come into the main office where there was extra space.

Achieving Business Continuity and Innovation with the Cloud

Having the firm's entire infrastructure accessible via the cloud enabled Ayo & Iken to keep working in the wake of Hurricane Irma, one of the worst hurricanes Florida has ever seen. Had the firm still been relying on on-premise systems, they would have lost data and all access to calendars, case information, documents, and billing systems. Like many businesses that relied on traditional infrastructure, they would have been at the mercy of the utilities companies and unable to conduct business until all power was restored, jeopardizing client relationships and impacting the firm's bottom line.

All Clouds Are Not the Same

Most application software in the cloud is delivered via a software-as-a-service (SaaS) model; the law firm subscribes to application services on a per-user basis and populates the application service databases with the firm's data. The application service would be leased in this manner with the law firm retaining all data ownership but no software or server ownership. This scalable model allows the law firms to benefit from great application services without the hassle of owning, maintaining, upgrading, recovering or managing software or hardware.

There are many permutations of cloud platforms and cloud application vendors who deliver software for law firms. Two primary models are most likely to be in the path of successful migration to the cloud.

Single Vendor SaaS Delivery

There are independent software vendors that provide both the SaaS application and are responsible for the hosting services. They may utilize an infrastructure-as-a-service vendor such as AWS or Microsoft, however, they are responsible for the entire stack. These types of organizations should be highly vetted and preferably are large well-established vendors.

SaaS Delivery on hpaPaaS

High Productivity Application Platform as a Service (hpaPaaS) is a category of cloud delivery technologies that provide very high performing, secure and high availability computing platforms. In addition, the platforms are open to independent software vendors. This provides the ability for innovative software vendors to deploy their solutions on what is essentially diamond-plated infrastructure.

The software vendor can provide unique solutions or known market category software and the client of that software can benefit from both the software and not having to worry about the platform being maintained by the application vendor. The platform is maintained by a major player in the industry. A reliable source of information on hpaPaaS is the Magic Quadrant for Enterprise High-Productivity Application Platform as a Service (April 26, 2018; ID: G00331975).

Analysis

The one thing that can truly hurt a firm's bottom line is a business interruption. Even small interruptions can drain finances enough to cause concern, while major, catastrophic events like the ones we've witnessed just recently can potentially destroy a practice if its leaders have not planned and taken steps to set up business continuity processes. Scientists expect the effects of climate change to continue to produce extreme weather, and while catastrophic events certainly highlight the power of cloud-based systems, it doesn't take a natural disaster for the benefits of the cloud to be seen.

By using business continuity as the impetus for re-architecting your firm to be cloud-based, you can eliminate the costs of IT infrastructure and staff, be operating on the latest version of platforms without the disruption of making updates, be able to scale on a moment's notice and can offer greater access to important business systems.

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Jonathan Reed is the CEO and co-founder of AdvoLogix. An enterprise software executive with experience at several high-growth, enterprise software organizations, Jonathan currently leads AdvoLogix growth in the SaaS marketplace. He also serves as the chief security officer for the company and advises Fortune 50 clients on cloud-security compliance and ongoing governance for enterprise SaaS applications. He can be reached at [email protected].