Peer to Peer Magazine

13 WWW.ILTANET.ORG BEST PRACTICES How SaaS-based Services Impact Law Firm Business Continuity Planning Facilitating a Law Firm's Business Continuity Plan By creating a business continuity plan before a disaster happens, law firms will be able to respond more efficiently in different crisis situations, ease confusion among employees and clients via wrien procedures and ensure rational decision making. If employees know what tasks are expected of them and how to perform these tasks, then response to a crisis can be organized and controlled. Reputable outside experts and the internet provide many resources to guide law firms through the business continuity planning process. The firm should assemble a high level planning commiee and integrate the following items into the plan: » Facility recovery and backup sites: If the firm's offices are destroyed, where will work commence? » People: What are the necessary skill sets needed to continue firm operations? » Hardware: What devices are needed to return to everyday operations, and how long will it take to replace them, if necessary? » Soware: What are the necessary applications, utilities and operating systems for everyday operations? » Communication: Who and how will you communicate with employees, clients, vendors and the media, if necessary? » Fraud: How will you monitor and prevent fraudulent activities during and following the event? How the Cloud Impacts Innovation at Law Firms 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 for this purpose with a bunker mindset and significantly more resources than are available at a law firm. Enterprise- class cloud facilities provide the highest level of availability and enable 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 on-site 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, soware and staff. How the Cloud Impacts Business Continuity Planning at Law Firms When faced with a disaster, having cloud-based applications means that important information and technology is stored securely away from the office and can be accessed at any time and from any location, no maer where the disaster occurs. Cloud-based applications can address many of the items that must be contained in a firm's business continuity plan. Everything a firm previously did on-site or manually with disparate systems can now be done virtually with a cloud platform.

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