Moving Your Law Firm to the Cloud: 7 Reasons Why it Makes Business Sense Now

In a fiercely competitive legal industry, it’s critical to manage every bit of your firm’s budget effectively. And while many law firms have chosen to embrace the cloud for running their day-to-day tasks, you may be wondering if it’s the right financial decision for your own firm.

Here are seven ways that moving to a cloud-based software platform can level the playing field for your law firm, from business operations to team efficiency to client experience to a healthier bottom line.

1. Reduced IT Costs

It might seem counterintuitive that changing your platform will reduce your costs. However, migrating to the cloud means you don’t have major hardware and IT infrastructure costs eating into your capital expenditure budget. Instead, you have a predictable monthly fee on a subscription-based model that’s kind to your cash flow. In fact, the upkeep for on-premise solutions (both an Annual Maintenance Plan and hardware upgrades and maintenance) often end up costing more than cloud-based legal practice management systems.

2. Workforce Flexibility

Hiring and retaining valuable talent is expensive, and the market for legal talent has only gotten more intense. You need every tool at your disposal to ensure that your firm is a great working environment, and employees are serious about flexibility. Workers now not only want but expect flexible work options, so having an outdated, on-prem tech puts you at a disadvantage. A cloud-based practice management system means your team can work from anywhere with an Internet connection, and from any device.

3. Tighter Security

The expense, lost time, and hassles of dealing with a security breach or cyber attack can be devastating for your law firm. Cloud legal software providers know this, so they make security a number-one priority to ensure they can attract and maintain their customer base. They devote extensive resources to the tightest possible security, beating out what most firms can afford on their own to keep data safe.

4. Compliance Peace of Mind

Keeping data secure is just part of the puzzle. The rules and legislation (think GDPR, CCPA, PCI DSS and many others) around what you can do with your clients’ data and personal information, including how it’s stored, how it’s transmitted, and who has access to it are always evolving. A mistake can damage your reputation or put you in the crosshairs of regulators for fines or other issues. With a cloud-based system, you’re not on your own when trying to stay compliant. Cloud providers can provide ready-made solutions that are adapted to comply with your legal sector and geographic region.

5. In Sync with Other Software

Does your law firm spend a lot of time using Microsoft Office? What about other apps and software like Quick Books Online? If you’re not using a fully cloud-based platform, it won’t stay integrated with these other platforms for long. Microsoft’s strategic direction has clearly shifted to the cloud with Microsoft 365 and Online. To stay in sync with these Microsoft products and others, you need a practice management system that is already in the cloud and can easily connect to the tools you use every day. Trying to integrate your on-prem system with other software solutions can be very expensive and potentially impossible.

6. Increased Efficiency and Collaboration

Running your firm from the cloud facilitates collaboration among your staff and with your clients. Cloud-based platforms also ensure a consistent experience across devices and teams—your firm’s workflow will move much more efficiently when everyone is using the same version of the same tools.

For example, when your team and clients can access, edit, and share documents anytime and from anywhere, they’re able to do more together and end up with a better result. Cloud-based workflow and file sharing mean your team can access the same document, work on it together or with clients in real time, and have full visibility of the contributions of each person.

7. Freedom to Evolve and Grow

Your firm’s ability to grow is critical to your long-term success, and scalability is a distinct advantage of a cloud-based system. In most cases, cloud-based software operates on a subscription model, so adding a new staff member just means adding a new subscriber rather than additional servers, infrastructure, or other costly investments. This also means you’ll never have to worry about outgrowing the platform and investing in a new system depending on how your firm scales up OR down. Because of its inherent flexibility and configurability, a cloud-based practice management software like Actionstep is built to evolve along with you.

Where to Start?

While migrating your firm to the cloud might seem like a big change and an intimidating process, the change will free up the time and resources that you need to reinvest in your business. Plus, Actionstep is here to make the move as smooth as possible. Get in touch with our team today to find out how we can help.