Legal technologies and collaborative tools – particularly cloud-based tools – can increase productivity and efficiency of workflow, which provides family law firms with competitive and strategic advantages.
By Maleeha Ahmad, Technology Blogger
The legal market is become increasingly geared towards cloud-based collaboration, and it makes perfect sense considering how the law trade entails a collaborative effort among lawyers of different fields. Cloud-based collaboration is all a matter of working smarter to reduce the amount of effort required in communicating work in process with the team. That’s why it’s important for attorneys to adopt the latest legal technologies to ensure they are in with a competitive advantage.
Let’s look at five advantages of using cloud collaboration tools.
- Documents – When co-counseling on a complex matter, attorneys will find cloud-based collaboration tools the easiest method of sharing access to important documents to make it easier to communicate about the case in question. Everything needs to be in one place, accessible from anywhere at any time so that everyone involved knows exactly what is always going on. That’s where these cloud-based tools come in so handy. Often a lot of legal project management tools will have a document management feature included, or even integrate with some of the bigger well-known document management solutions such as NetDocuments and Dropbox. When you have the right tools in place, all team members can share documents and track their edits through a highly productive and effective working platform. This will help to streamline your firm’s process with legal project management, Plus you even have the added benefit of being able to scan documents by searching keywords.
- Data security – Data security is a serious issue, especially for law firms that are responsible for sensitive and confidential client data, so naturally, it becomes an important consideration when choosing between the vast variety of legal technologies and collaboration tools. No firm wants serious damage to their reputation with a data security breach. Cloud technology is the safest solution as software providers invest in layers and layers of security to protect data from any potential hackers. Within legal project management tools, there are additional settings to allow you to specify administrative controls to control data access within the firm.
- Legal project management – Legal project management goes beyond simply sharing documents with collaborators. They are all comprehensive platforms that offer numerous benefits for sharing information internally and externally. Have all your client and matters under one system, including all documents relating to them, billing details, correspondence, client portals, and manage all of the internal productivity whilst you are at it with employee efficiency tracking and reporting features.
- Flexible working environment – by being able to collaborate on matters so easily with anyone from all types of devices means you can work on the go. Often tools come with a mobile app version to allow greater flexibility. Imagine working from your iPad no matter where you are, access all documents and client-matter details and edit them from a portable device and have all of that automatically shared and tallied with your collaborating colleagues!
- Client portal – Client portals are the most secure and ideal method of communicating work in progress with clients to allow them to become independent and reduce your time spent in administrative communications. It is so common now that clients will increasingly expect some kind of online information access to be available to them on matters being worked on, so be prepared to offer tech-savvy clients the speed and efficiency they want and need.
Legal technologies offer collaborative tools that provide firms with a competitive and strategic advantage in the legal trade. Collaborative tools will even allow communication pathways to increase with internal staff, increasing productivity and efficiency of workflow further. With the ever-evolving rise of new technologies, the need for firms to improve and adapt to modern methods of communication are crucial for the organization’s success.
Maleeha Ahmad has been writing for TimeSolv for close to two years, providing blog writing services and internal help documentation. Her background in English Literature has given her a broad base to approach various topics in different fields. www.TimeSolv.com
Related Articles
Lawyers, Cloud Computing, and Ethics
Regardless of who has access to your data or what format the data takes, the steps you take are always the same: ensure that your client’s confidential information stays confidential. The standards applicable to computer-generated are no different than those applied to digital data, even when that data resides in the cloud.
The Paperless Office
For many law offices, the days of paper files may be coming to a close, as more and more offices are “going paperless.
One Comment
Ronald Cadwell
As days are passing by technology-based work culture is getting more prominent and it has affected every sector, even legal sector also. Thus your information is very helpful and will help all to work even smoothly.