Deadlines are a fact of life in law firms.

Staying connected is a big part of meeting them.

Unfortunately, computer problems and downtime happen to everyone, eventually. There is no getting around it.

So why not plan for it?

And do what you can to minimize those problems and shorten the length of downtime?

Besides, your clients don’t want to hear excuses for why you couldn’t respond to their needs. Nor do courts care that your computers were down so you couldn’t upload your brief on time.

Why not take advantage of the benefits of outsourcing your IT to keep your firm’s computers up, your applications working properly, and your data and documents safe behind your firewall?

Here are five ways they can help your firm stay connected and productive.

Reduces Risk of Loss

By ensuring your network and all the individual devices connected to it are updated properly and data is regularly backed up, outsourced IT helps to prevent the risk of loss of law firm data and attorney work-product.

Anyone who has spent hours working on a document only to face the frustration of having it lost due to a computer or network failure understands the loss of time this entails.

Not only do you lose the hours spent creating the document in the first place, but additional time is also spent recreating it.

Frees Up Attorney/Staff Time

Outsourced IT allows attorneys and staff to stay focused on getting their work done, rather than getting pulled away into issues involving IT, which they may not even have the knowledge to solve.

Allowing your attorneys and non-technical staff to keep working on the job they were hired to do, they can stay productive and work on income generating tasks.

Keeps Your Firm Connected to Your Clients

In our current world, clients expect to be able to reach you at any time and, more often than not, that is via email.

When your network goes down or something has gone wrong in your network’s back end that keeps your clients’ emails from reaching you, your firm has no way of knowing which of your clients is trying to reach you.

Your clients’ get frustrated, even if this only happens once. If it happens with any regularity, your firm begins to lose your clients’ trust.

If client trust can be lost due to not sending out an invoice on time, imagine how they feel when your firm fails to even reply to their email on time.

By having managed IT services monitoring your computer network 24/7, and their anticipation of possible issues before they happen, they help keep you connected to your clients.

More Effective Security

Even some of the more internet-savvy users can be duped into thinking an email attachment (or a link inside an email) is safe to open.

Emails containing phishing links, attachments that contain viruses and ransomware are just some of the security issues facing law firms.

A managed services benefit of having your programs/apps up-to-date and your firewall/network secure can go along way toward minimizing downtime for security reasons.

Information Technology (IT) Is Their Specialty

Law firms have their specialties, Managed IT for Law Firms have theirs.

Just like lawyers have to keep up-to-date on laws and court rules that are constantly changing, managed IT service providers have to keep learning, too.

Keeping abreast on all the latest software and hardware developments that affect your business is time-consuming.

Plus they get the benefit of seeing IT-related issues among their other clients, so they may even be able to make adjustments to your network and devices before you have to suffer them. If not, they will likely already be aware of what is causing your computer issues and how to get them fixed, faster.

Stay focused on your specialty and let them handle theirs for you.

Take Advantage of the Benefits of Outsourcing

Don’t wait until you’ve experienced a serious network breach or worse. Be proactive and get your network the attention it deserves.

Take advantage of the benefits of outsourcing your IT, so they will be there for when you need them, 24/7!

Of course, there are other things not to do that will upset your clients, but do what you can to keep IT-related issues from being one of them.