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Back to basics – a Business Briefing for Lawyers: Managing Performance

July 9th, 2012 Posted in Cloud Computing Explained, Managing a Law Firm

Welcome to the latest edition of Back to Basics — a Business Briefing for Lawyers. This month the focus is on Managing Performance. It is essential that every firm has a range of Performance Management tools—not only of a financial nature (although those are very important) – but more wide ranging.

Armed with these tools, firms will be able to make decisions based on factual foundations rather than on “gut feelings” or “instinct” which, sadly, can prove disastrous. We will touch on just some of those tools in this month’s Briefing. You should not only check your performance for the current month but also over a period of time to help you gain an understanding of the way your business is working and what trends there are that are affecting it. If you need any help in creating systems or tools to assess your performance, please get in touch with me—I’d be delighted to help.

Performance Managing

You see them vying for victory every week during the F1 season – trying to improve their performance week on week. They try things to see if they work, and if they do, they keep them and if they don’t they discard them and try something different. The whole team knows what it’s trying to achieve and they all have a part to play. They measure everything that goes on because they know that by doing that they will find ways of improving that will help them win the race. In your business, there is no difference between what they do in Formula 1 to what you need to do.

Every business needs to have a range of Performance Measurements against which it can test its progress. There are the obvious financial measurements in the form on budgets and projections which you can compare to actual results. You can measure the number of new cases that you opened this week, month or year against the same period last year. You can count the number of new clients that you’ve taken on— and where they came from. Are your Sources of Business continuing to perform as you expected them to? You must identify the information that is important to you and once you to that you must check your progress against that. Are you going to make the effort to improve week on week or are you just in the race to make up the numbers?

If you can’t measure it you can’t manage it!

It’s well known in the world of management that you can’t manage something if you can’t see it—and if you don’t set any performance measurements then there’s nothing to see. It is an essential element of running any business to set performance measurements. Without these you will have no accurate idea of how your business is doing. Simply relying on the bottom line in your bank balance will not give you a very good idea of which parts of your business are performing well and which are performing badly. To do this you need to introduce a range of performance measurements. There need not be a huge range of measurements—but you do need some. As I mentioned earlier, it is prudent to have a range of financial measurements. You really should set out a budget for your financial year (and if you’re part of the way through the financial year and haven’t set a budget—set one for the remainder of the year). Every month you should compare how you’ve done against your budget. You should look at which areas performed well and which areas performed badly—and, in each case, work out why. You should also benchmark your results against the Cost of Time Survey conducted by The Law Society. You will find a range of Financial Ratios in that Report against which you can test your own results.

If you are intent on growing your business profitably, you will be interested in where your new clients are coming from and to compare how many new cases are created by new clients against the number of new cases generated by existing clients. A monthly Source of Business report is a good barometer as to whether you have solid connections that supply you with new cases month after month—and whether a once successful Source of Business is now in decline.

Reading rows and rows of numbers can be difficult and don’t necessarily help you to spot trends. Try putting the resulting into a Chart to compare your projections against your actual results or, in the case of Source of Business Reports consider establishing trends over a period of time to see if there is an improvement or decline from your various sources of business. As can be seen from this chart, existing clients and client referrals are performing well, referrals from the firm’s Web site are increasing month on month, Yellow Pages produces a very small number of cases and might not be worth the money and there is a declining trend in IFA Referral work. This assists you in making decision about which areas you should focus on for growth.

Simon says…..

If I was a budding Olympian (I wish!) then the term performance management would be an oft used phrase. If I was CEO of an FTSE company it would be part of the furniture. So is it something only associated with participants that are at the peak of their chosen field, or, is it something to do with how you attain the heights of capability. The above have teams of dedicated people to measure, analyse and report, which of course isn’t the case for your average law firm in Scotland. Having said that, I reckon you only need the teams of experts if you are trying to win a medal or keep investors happy. The average law firm in Scotland can be informed about its performance much more easily – simply use modern Practice Management software that takes a holistic approach to the firm rather than just the Cashroom.

The most common tool to measure a law firm’s performance is probably the cash accounting system. Unfortunately far too many cash accounting systems were designed for cashiers to use, which means they pander to the needs of the few rather than the needs of the many. Compliance isn’t difficult to achieve and it’s certainly not an aspect to be feared or shrouded in ignorance. Any decent Practice Management System (PMS) will make Compliance transparent to all and automatically alert Partners as to how Anti –Money Laundering and Cash is performing – and, it will show you how your Fees Rendered and Fees Recovered are performing – although don’t be one of those people that think Fees Rendered is the goal; it isn’t – only Fees Recovered (i.e. cash in your bank account) is of practical use to today’s law firms. A good PMS will reveal how quickly you fee (by Work Type, by Partner, by Department) and how quickly you get paid; by revealing the number of days it takes to be paid – then starts you thinking about how you can reduce it. It will also show you any clients with a £500+ credit balance — and show you any clients with a Credit Balance and Fees Outstanding if your Terms of Business says you can take a fee if sufficient client’s funds are available, then call client and let them know you are taking it. If your Terms of Business doesn’t say this – change it. If you are currently using the Bank Statement as your primary performance management tool, then have a look at a modern Practice Management System; you will get a very pleasant surprise if you do. You may be one of those that waits for the accountant to tell you what’s what after the financial year end. The difficulty with this is that by the time you find out there’s a problem; it’s too late to do anything to improve things in the relevant financial year.

Many firms are trading on an overdraft, in which case the bank has probably taken a proactive role as far as reporting is concerned – in many cases this was because the firm itself wasn’t proactive. However, don’t simply be feeding the bank with what it wants to know; understand how good your business development is – report on new clients introduced and new instructions received as these are the things that will feed through into your cash figures in due course. Understand the dynamics of your business: what number of cases lead to what level of income, what are the overheads and expenses that underpin which levels of work type; How are they performing? Is a good question. How can they perform better? I would suggest is the goal.

Fee Earner Performance

Because of the nature of legal firms, it is very important that Fee Earners have their performance measured. In many instances Solicitors are not only the owners and managers of the business, they are also the prime producers of the firm’s income through the work they carry out to generate fee revenue. You should consider measuring the number of cases a fee earner is dealing with at any given time, when it is likely that these cases will generate an income—and how much. You will be interested in the number of fees the Fee Earner renders each month and, most importantly, the number of fees the Fee Earner recovers each month. You can look at the averages of both the number of fees raised each month as well as the average value of fees rendered and recovered and by doing do make a reasonable projection of how much a Fee Earner is likely to generate over a future period.

You can also test what the effect would be of either increasing the average number of fees raised or the average value per fee (or both) or, more worrying, what the impact of a decrease in either of these figures would lead to. To follow this process to its logical conclusion, you will be able to set costs against the Fee Earner—not just the Fee Earner’s salary but also Employers NI and the share or overhead that is attached to the Fee Earner for use of the office space and systems –and the cost of any secretarial or administrative support. By doing this exercise you will be able to calculate Fee Earner profitability. This is a very useful measurement to help you with your decision making. It may seem from taking a “top line” approach based on the value of Fees Rendered that a particular area of work is valuable to the firm but when you analyse out the cost of that work you may well discover that when the cost of carrying out the work is applied that the profitability is simply not there. This may help you to determine how that can be dealt with or whether the firm should continue to do that particular type of work.

Brian O’Neill LL.B MBA, Business Consultant, t. 01294 833220, m. 07855 838395, e. brian@drakemyre.co.uk

Simon Greig is Sales Manager of LawWare Limited, Edinburgh. Contact Simon on simon@lawware.co.uk

Back to Basics for Lawyers, Brian O'Neill, Case Management for Law Firms, cloud computing for law firms, law firm, Matter Management for Legal Practices

Back to Basics – a business briefing for lawyers: Marketing made simple

June 25th, 2012 Posted in Cloud for Law Firms, Managing a Law Firm, Social Media for Law Firms

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Welcome to the latest edition of Back to Basics — a Business Briefing for Lawyers. This month the focus is on marketing—and it’s not just advertising that we’ll be talking about. Marketing touches every aspect of your firm. It starts with your ability to deliver to your clients what you say you’re going to deliver and ends with winning new business through a process of designing systems and methodologies that allow you to provide services that are fit for purpose and then telling the world at large about them.

Gone are the days when a solicitor could depend on having a “client for life”. There are very strong competitive forces out there—and the worrying thing for lawyers is that their competition is no longer just other lawyers, but other more commercially minded enterprises— and that’s before we even have to consider the impact of ABS! This edition will look at marketing as a tool to help you improve your business performance by ensuring that you’ve done the ground work and then proclaimed your capabilities to the world at large.

Marketing is not a “One-off” activity

The are many anecdotal stories of solicitors conducting a “Wills Campaign” and then declaring “It didn’t work for me”. Well, there’s a very clear difference between sending out a mass mailshot to a whole bunch of people who you believe are still clients and conducting a well thought out, structured and continuous campaign to ensure that those of your clients who might not have a Will think about making one—and those of your clients who do have a Will, review it on a regular basis.

Whatever else Marketing is, it is an activity that must be undertaken on a continuous basis—and that means that there is a need to ensure that it is properly resourced. I don’t mean by this spending a lot of money on expensive advertising. What I mean is that someone in the firm needs to take responsibility to ensure that whatever the firm does to design and promote its services , it is done, properly, professionally and, most importantly, continuously.

The four Ps of marketing—Product, Price, Place and Promotion apply just as much to the legal profession as they do to any other commercial organisation—with the P of Products being replaced with the S for Service. So, try this for a very quick exercise: Review the Services your firm provides, determine the Price at which you will provide those Services, decide where you want to Place your Services and then Promote them sensibly and continuously. You need to plan this carefully and engage with others in the firm to do this. And once you have your plan it’s not always necessary that a lawyer has to actually run it—some would say that it would be best if the lawyers weren’t involved in the aspect of running it at all!!

Don’t keep your services a secret

How often have you heard one of your clients say “I didn’t know you did that”. This is not unusual in the legal profession because lawyers are not particularly good at promoting their services to their clients. This also raises the question of who are your actual clients and who should you be promoting your services to.

The legal profession has a tendency to count as its clients those people for whom they’ve carried out a piece of work. So, if you bought or sold a house for someone, say, 5 years ago, it is likely that you still count that person as a client. As a result of some accident, rather than anything else, your “client” contacts you at the end of that 5 year period to say that he’d like to use you to sell his house—and that he’s using “Such and Such Estate Agent” to do the marketing. While you’re on the phone to the client taking his instructions he tells you that since the last time you met he’s made a Will through another solicitor (or, even worse, through a “Will Writer”), arranged the winding up of his mother’s estate through her solicitor even though he was the Executor, used a “no win, no fee” company to help him claim compensation for the accident he had 3 years ago and, then, remortgaged his home last year on the expiry of the fixed term mortgage that he had when you bought the house for him in the original transaction. When you tell him you also provide estate agency services the now infamous words “I didn’t know you do all of that!” are uttered! In this case, just think about the amount of business (and money) you’ve lost by failing to keep in touch with this client.

If your client was aware that you provided all of the services he needed over the years there is every likelihood that he would have used your services rather than going elsewhere. Don’t keep what you do a secret. Let your clients know the range of services your firm provides. Keep in touch with your clients on a regular basis. Don’t fall into the category of the “can’t be bothered”. It costs you far more to win a new client than to keep and continue to provide services to an existing client. Do this: work out what services your firm provides (yes, this is a good idea—some firms are not entirely clear what services they do actually provide), set them out in an easy to read format (either electronically or on paper) and devise a means of communicating them to your clients. It is absolutely essential that you are in touch with your clients on at least 2 occasions every year—3 is better but as a minimum you need to be in touch more than once. Make the effort—if you don’t, someone else will. If you can’t allocate the time to this, outsource it—but make sure that you do it in such a way that you retain control of the activity AND the cost—marketing has a tendency to run away with the budget if you let it. Finally, use whatever means possible at your disposal to market to your clients—electronic as well as paper—and best of all, a combination of the two. Solicitors have a “lead list” that commercial organisations would give their eye teeth for—you should use this to this maximum extent possible.

Simon says…..

I wrote an article for the LawWare Newsletter (Winter 2011) which took a cursory look at the current state of legal marketing in England, as they are further down the ABS line than we are, and noted the influx of professional marketing organisations entering the market using TV advertising to communicate with the target market and the Internet as a delivery base for the service, highlighting QualitySolicitors and Wigster as examples.

The approach of these professional marketeers is very different from that of legal firms themselves. The approach of Legal firms both north and south of the border is similar – either they know what they do and can communicate it, or, they don’t and don’t. I went on to develop a few points – Once the English marketing model is established – the marketing machine won’t stop; it learns, it develops, it gets better. Other suppliers come into the market, offering slightly different services, but at a better price point. And so the marketing machine gathers momentum and pace. Scotland will be regarded as just another target audience and the numbers will be crunched, the strategies written and executed. And remember – your ‘Client’ is someone else’s ‘Prospective Client’. The two examples of change I highlight are both Internet based.

The Internet is the medium of choice for demographics A1-3, B1-3 and C1’s to find potential new suppliers and services – these are the people that have any kind of disposable income. The sort of people firms should be trying to attract! Change is often powered by IT. It is usually delivered by IT. But it is rarely because of IT. Change occurs when someone wants to achieve an objective, understands how to achieve it and can convince others to back the objective.

None of these characteristics are ‘Legal’ – they are ‘Entrepreneurial’. So as well as being good legal analysts and good business managers; Partners of Law firms have to be Entrepreneurial too. So YOU might have to change, maybe develop new skills, maybe hone existing ones. This is not a bad thing; to develop oneself is an admirable personal aim. There are many books and courses that can help. Perhaps look at the CPD requirement in a slightly different shade of light – the personal development requirement is there for good reason and I think it is time that we all got better at this side of our roles.

We are here to; provide a service; different clients require a range of services to suit their needs, and so we must develop and adapt those services as our clients’ needs change or are changed, and, we must attract new clients. It’s up to us to secure the future of our organisations, especially so when the future changes faster than it ever did before. So for this new year I resolved to be a bit more entrepreneurial and I encourage you to be too, for your own good and your clients. Simon Greig is Sales Manager of LawWare Limited, Edinburgh. Contact Simon at simon@lawware.co.uk

It’s the little things that matter

Just saying “Thank you” to a client can reap huge rewards. As an absolute minimum, you should thank your client on your engagement and on completion of the transaction—and for goodness sake, don’t say “thank you” at the end of a case and at the same time try to ram further services down his throat! Leave a decent space between completion and the offer of any new services you can provide to the client—and always remember—if the client should happen refer someone else to you, you must thank the client for that referral.

Is social media the answer?

The Internet offers a fantastic opportunity for lawyers to communicate with their clients, no more so than through the use of social media. The Facebook and Twitter phenomena means that people are in touch with each other on a daily basis and by using blogs you can get your opinion out to the masses. Professional media sites like LinkedIn give business people the ability to make contacts and the old words like “networking” and “making friends” seem to have gone by the board. This is all very well—and it is good to use social media, blogging and other online tools to promote your business—but it pays to make sure that you are able to capitalise on the opportunities that this medium offers—and that you don’t ignore more traditional marketing routes. If you do engage with social media, please make sure that you do so professionally, respond to enquiries promptly and that your online presence is managed. Doing this will ensure that your services are being promoted continuously and in the right way. Stephen Moore of Moore Technology Limited is an expert in this field and his advice is that before embarking on any online strategy it pays to decide what you want to achieve, how you want to achieve it, how you keep it current and how you manage the resulting enquiries. Visit Stephen’s web site on www.moorelegaltechnology.co.uk

Contact us

Brian O’Neill LL.B MBA, Business Consultant, t. 01294 833220, m. 07855 838395, e. brian@drakemyre.co.uk

Simon Greig is Sales Manager of LawWare Limited, Edinburgh. Contact Simon on simon@lawware.co.uk

Back to Basics for Lawyers, Business planning for law firms, cloud computing for law firms, Forward planning for lawyers, marketing, marketing for law firms, social medial for lawyers

LawCloud: Helping to create more agile and responsive Law firms

March 9th, 2012 Posted in Cloud for Law Firms

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LawCloud is a new generation in Practice Management Software for law firms in the UK and is brought to you from the developers at LawWare Ltd. Established in 1998 and now serving more than 200 law firms from its HQ in Edinburgh, LawWare has established a strong reputation for an innovative and forward looking approach to the business of running a Law Firm

Since its launch in March 2010, LawCloud now hosts over 65 law firms on its platform representing almost a third of the LawWare user base. Many small law firms lack the IT infrastructure to support the latest systems and find the upfront costs of new IT prohibitive. LawWare now rarely installs its on premise system and over the last 18 months, 95% of its new systems have been LawCloud.

Depending on who you are talking to, you may hear this kind of technology referred to as hosting, SaaS, Outsourcing, Cloud and more. At the heart of the offering, they refer to a very similar thing and the terminology is simply stylistic. Our preference is Cloud. In our experience, any perceived risks associated with the Cloud clearly outweigh its benefits. Law firms appreciate peace of mind. Their confidential information is backed up and protected with a level of security that is often out of reach for smaller organisations. All data is stored in one of the foremost data centres in the UK which falls under data protection laws.”

LawWare has enhanced relationships with its customers by simplifying their IT and as a business is more agile and responsive. This flexibility is a hallmark of LawCloud. Users can access it from anywhere they have an internet connection”. This new future technology has levelled the playing field, allowing smaller organisations to compete with bigger firms in new ways. The legal technology market has seen a great deal of consolidation over the last few years and the legal services industry is also consolidating and fragmenting. This presents an opportunity for lawyers and smaller technology suppliers to offer a real value added personal service to their clients that some of the bigger firms find may have lost sight of.

cloud computing for law firms, Cloud for Law Firms in the UK, cloud for lawyers, law firm software, Legal Practice Management Software

LawCloud’s Blog named as a Top 10 Best New Blog of 2011

January 6th, 2012 Posted in Cloud for Law Firms

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We are pleased to announce that our LawCloudComputing blog has been listed by Computer Weekly as one of their top 10 best new blogs of 2011.

As Computer Weekly notes, “Blogging has become part of the everyday consumption of information, this category looks at those blogs created in the past two years that have delivered something new and fresh to what is now a crowded and highly competitive space.”

They note that:-

“LawCloud is a new generation in Practice Management Software for law firms in Scotland and is brought to you from the developers at LawWare. Established in 1998 and now serving over 200 law firms in Scotland from their HQ in Edinburgh, LawWare has established a strong reputation for an innovative and forward looking approach to the business of running a Law Firm.

LawCloud is at the forefront of transforming the way that lawyers in Scotland work and is clearly leading in the legal cloud. Since its launch in Feb ‘11, it has grown from a standing start to now hosting more than 50 law firms in Scotland on its secure and robust Cloud servers and this number is growing by the week. LawCloud really is more about business transformation than technology.

The number of Law Firms in Scotland transitioning to the Cloud is growing at a tremendous rate and the opportunity is here today for the small to medium sized high street law firms to start using best of breed software (traditionally reserved for the bigger firms) delivered directly to their PC, laptop, Mac or iPad at a low fixed monthly subscription, with no upfront capital expenditure .

Out of the box, LawCloud offers lawyers a new way of working that has never been so easy to reach, offering real benefits like Flexible mobile working, linking branch offices, Peace of mind, cost savings and truly simplified technology.”

We are pleased to be included in this list, which follows on from our inclusion in a list of the top 100 bloggers on cloud computing.

We look forward to providing our audience with more useful cloud updates in 2012 both through our blog here, our LawCloud website and growing @LawCloudUK Twitter account here. Please contact us on 0845 2020 577 if you’d like to speak to us direct.

Happy New Year and best wishes for 2012.

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Meeting of Minds – Law Society Cloud Event

November 10th, 2011 Posted in Cloud Computing Explained

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There’s nothing better than marking real change with a landmark occasion to pinpoint that moment when a new innovation comes along that changes the way we do things and on Wednesday 9^th November 2011, The Law Society of Scotland hosted such an event at The Hollyrood Hotel in Edinburgh focusing on the Cloud Computing for law firms in Scotland.

The event was intended to be informative and to stimulate awareness of Cloud and around the Law Society of Scotland’s soon to be released Cloud Computing paper, a set of advisory notes for the profession and which is currently in draft form.

The event really was a meeting of minds and with over 80 delegates attending from wide ranging backgrounds (almost a third of the delegates were IT technical experts in their fields advocating Cloud), the balance of lawyers in the room had real wealth of expertise to draw from.

Paul Motion, bto & John Craske, D&W opened the event by setting the scene and attempting to define and demystify exactly what the Cloud is and what it means for lawyers in Scotland. This proved to be a challenge and it was clear that fixing a single definition proved too limiting for such an expansive and developing subject area. Craske went on to conclude that Cloud is a trend and a move from self-ownership and management of own systems, to subscribing to a set of services supplied and maintained by experts in that field. He compared this to the historical move from cottage industries to scalable services from national corporations such as the move from generating your own electricity as was not uncommon, to plugging into the national grid. Examples of current systems in the legal sector were presented and exhibitors including LawCloud had stalls set out alongside the event.

The Law Society’s own Neil Stevenson followed with an enthusiastically presentation on the main key benefits of Cloud focusing on opportunity, innovation and the future. This was followed by a more technical presentation from Iain Stevenson who presented a thought provoking variety of concerns, unintended consequences and risks surrounding the Cloud. Iain went on to quote Larry Ellison from Oracle, who in the early days stated that Cloud was the latest fashion trend and even more fashionable than women’s fashion, however, he soon “Cloudified” his own systems when the seriousness of Cloud was fully appreciated and this is now a pinnacle of his business.

A series of round table case study based participant workshops followed the morning speakers with a facilitators from technology, legal and risk backgrounds stimulated interesting discussions surrounding the legal cloud environment.

All in all, the event was informative and engaging and there was a real energy about the place. For a conservative profession, the willingness to embrace this new form of technology experience was refreshing.

The penny seems to be dropping that access to sophisticated systems needn’t involve ownership any more nor be as expensive or daunting as it used to be when. When management is delegated and compliance assurances are guaranteed by a responsible service provider, risks are minimised.

Cloud represents one of the newest turning points in the never ending mission of technology, to facilitate change and improvements in the way that we work, communicate, live and play and to me, that means happy days.

The Law Society’s guidelines are a welcomed piece of collateral for the profession at a time when guidelines are well needed and I look forward to working alongside these advisory notes to offer the comfort that practitioners need in order to make the most of emerging innovations and trusted technologies…

It is anticipated that The Law Society’s advice will be focused around a number of key areas including

Understanding arrangements with Cloud providers such as SLA’s

System availability, accessibility, licensing
Provisions for your Data

How safe it is, where is it stored, who owns it
Compliance & assurances

Are you unknowingly breaching any laws such as data protection
What can go wrong and what happens if things do go wrong

cloud computing for law firms, cloud computing for lawyers, Risk Management for Law Firms

Majority of law firms in the US use some kind of cloud computing

November 10th, 2011 Posted in Cloud for Law Firms

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Cloud computing is being embraced on a wide scale by law firms on both sides of the Atlantic. In the US, the sixteenth annual survey on law firm technology by the American Lawyer revealed that 65% of respondent law firms were using some aspect of cloud computing for their firm.

Further, almost half (47%) of the law firms reported that they were using cloud computing more this year than they were last year.

The survey revealed that those who had yet to take to the cloud were concerned mainly about security implications, but of those firms who were using the cloud, 77% reported having a positive experience with the technology.

Cloud for UK Law Firms

For law firms in the UK, LawCloud has, in a White Paper on Security in the Cloud, outlined best practice considerations for using cloud computing in the UK. These considerations indeed also apply to non-legal businesses.

Additionally, on Wednesday this week, the Law Society of Scotland hosted an event on cloud computing for law firms.

The Law Society stated that “Cloud computing providers claim to offer law firms the chance to save money, work more efficiently, and respond more quickly to changing IT demands. Many firms are already benefitting and, on the face of it, many more could. However, as with every development there are also new risks and new concerns, from data security and data protection issues, through to regulatory compliance, business continuity, technical support and IP.”

Through the event, the Law Society and expert cloud providers, including LawCloud itself, spoke about ways of determining the best cloud provider for law firms with additional discussion about security concerns. For more, see our blog post on Law Society’s cloud event.

Should you have any queries about the Cloud and whether it is right for your law firm, please do not hesitate to ask us either in the comments section below, on Twitter at @LawCloudUK or @LawWareUK , through our LinkedIn group or by calling us on 0845 2020 577 for a free initial consultation.

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Cloud Computing for Law Firms: Law Society of Scotland Event

October 21st, 2011 Posted in Cloud for Law Firms

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The Law Society of Scotland is welcoming lawyers from across Scotland and, indeed, the rest of the UK, to attend an upcoming event on Cloud computing for law firms. The CPD event is scheduled for 9th November 2011 with further details available here: Law Society Cloud Event.

The synopsis of the Law Society event states:-

“Cloud computing providers claim to offer law firms the chance to save money, work more efficiently, and respond more quickly to changing IT demands. Many firms are already benefitting and, on the face of it, many more could. However, as with every development there are also new risks and new concerns, from data security and data protection issues, through to regulatory compliance, business continuity, technical support and IP.

This event will help you decide what might be right for you and your firm, hearing the full story from providers and experts in the field of Cloud”.

LawCloud welcomes the Law Society’s initiative in this respect. In advance of the event there is also a continuing discussion on LawCloud’s LinkedIn group regarding Cloud Services in respect of a Procurement Guide for the Legal Profession, to which additional contributions, thoughts and questions are also welcome.

Additionally, in advance of the event, please do read our White Paper on Security in the Cloud for Law Firms in the UK.

We look forward to the event and in the meantime if you have any queries please do not hesitate to ask us either in the comments section below, on Twitter at @LawCloudUK or @LawWareUK, or by calling us on 0845 2020 577 for a free initial consultation.

Case Management Software for Law Firms, cloud computing for law firms, Cloud for Lawyers London, Cloud for Scottish Law Firms, Law Society of Scotland Event on Cloud, Practice Management Software for Lawyers

A secret in Cloud Success

October 18th, 2011 Posted in Cloud Computing Explained, Cloud for Law Firms, General Cloud Computing for UK Lawyers, Law Cloud News, LinkedIn Debates, LinkedIn Discussions

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Sat on a busy morning train, laptop on table, connected to 3g checking emails, just plugged in the headphones into my Window 7 smart phone to listen to a podcast, plugged the laptop into the power socket on the train, sip of a coffee from Nero and I literally feel “all wired up”. What has the world come to…

Interestingly, the podcast is Radio 4’s click-on and it’s called a world without wires and it’s talking about the amount of radio waves now flying around us covering all sorts of data information and the up and coming superfast 4g technology that is already taking Sweden by storm.

Yesterday, The Guardian published a Cloud Technology supplement on printed page and online
The Guardian Newspaper – Cloud Computing

Whilst there are many Cloud publications, this one seems to condense the current state of play into a very readable feature. One thing that really stood out for me was the comment from Rise that “The Cloud is more about business transformation than technology”.

I was impressed to see The Law Society of Scotland taking the lead with their Cloud computing CPD event scheduled for 9th November Law Society Cloud Event and their discussion on Cloud Services – Procurement Guide for the Legal Profession at Procurement Guide Discussion

The Guardian’s Cloud feature includes an interesting article entitled “Steps to get ahead in The Cloud” and poses the single question – where, exactly, do you start?

• A first pointer suggests a close relationship between your business and the company providing the Cloud technology is a good start.
• Next, look for good quality marks as well as reference site. Signs such as ISO 270001 (an industry standard information security certificate) and the CIF Mark (Cloud Industry Forum) are recognised.
• Then there is the question of whether your data is stored in a location that adheres to the Data Protection Act. The DPA in the UK covers data sovereignty whilst US companies will be subject to the Patriot act in their legislation which outranks our legislation.
• Another Cloud advocate suggests that you should take a phased or at least calculated approach to Cloud adoption. Focus on the business need to become more productive or save money. You may want to focus on generating more business, link branch offices or communicate better with remote staff, in which case you should ensure that your solution is designed around that focus.
• It has been suggested that an important factor is working out the divorce with your Cloud partner before you work out the marriage. “If someone is going to be holding your corporate crown jewels in the cloud, how would you exit?”… Think about the end game before from the start of the planning process.
• Finally, you shouldn’t get carried away. Very few providers can supply a complete real time application of all information on the Cloud, so check what you want is there but also ask whether you need it because it does cost.

All of this reaffirms my most recent post Journey to the cloud gains momentum which cites that a very high proportion of small to medium sized law firms are already adopting Cloud, giving them the flexibility to be more efficient and competitive in times that are changing faster than ever for lawyers.

Andy Burton, CEO of The Cloud Industry Forum states that “The David’s of the business world can now truly compete with the Goliaths on a level playing field, thereby changing the face of competition for good.”

Opportunities have never been more prevalent for innovative practitioners to embrace changes in the legal world alongside the technology industry to create something envious.

The LawCloud business has transitioned alongside these changes and in only 18 months, having transformed LawWare from a long established, traditional supplier of on premise software systems to lawyers in Scotland, to LawCloud – a company leading the way in the supply of Cloud technologies to law firms throughout the UK. Social media has helped extend our reach and generate a new wave of online business that was not possible before the advent of LinkedIn, twitter, Facebook and more recent popularity of blogging.

Benjamin Disraeli said “The secret of success in life is for a man to be ready for his opportunity when it comes.”…

This article is also published in The Firm Magazine online at The Man Who Knows

Case Management for Law Firms, cloud computing for law firms, Practice Management for Law Firms