Cloud computing should no longer be seen as just the “next big thing” in our ever-changing technological marketplace, but as a Movement that is reshaping how businesses function on a day-to-day basis. Although it is increasingly common to see law firms moving from the established ways of servers and pre-mandated IT departments to the ‘way of the cloud’, lawyers have still shown some hesitation when deciding whether to take the leap into The Cloud. In this article we will canvas the emerging world of “Cloud computing” and the top 5 reasons why law firms are practicing law in The Cloud.

1. Reduced Cost

Cloud technology is paid incrementally, making your technology costs a utility cost that you can budget for. There is no longer the need for entire IT departments and investments in servers that require hefty up-front costs, but solely the variable cost of a monthly subscription. Cloud technology also allows for the reduction or elimination of hardware and software costs.

2. Highly Automated

Along with the freedom of no longer needing servers and hardware comes the freedom of no longer needing to worry about constantly updating and troubshooting. SaaS platforms takes care of patches, updates and other administration. Software patches and updates are centrally managed by providers, with minimal and sometimes zero action required by the user. Law firms are now free to concentrate on innovation and offering differentiating business value to its clients.

3. Increased Mobility

Employees can access information wherever they are through a website on their browser. There is no longer the need to remain at a desk or to be connected to a specific wireless network. Increased mobility allows for increased productivity and satisfaction, as it allow laywers the ability to work from anywhere at any time.

4. Highly Collaborative

The ability to access all you need with just an internet connection and login allows for increased collaboration.  Applications available on various SaaS platforms are created purely for collaborative reasons and provide a venue for users to communicate and share ideas in the cloud.

5. Level Playing Field

No longer are the days of needing huge upfront capital to start a successful law firm. Smaller firms are becoming increasing popular and successful largely due to the power of technology. Cloud technology further enables law firms of all sizes to be extremely profitable by providing a unique competitive advantage. This advantage allows smaller firms the ability to play with the big guys and larger firms to cut unnecessary costs.

Everyday more and more law firms are making the transition into the cloud and becoming part of a Movement that is reshaping how business is run around the world.

Have you just started your law practice and wondering how am I going to manage my caseload? What kind of applications do I need to run my law practice? Is Outlook and QuickBooks enough for running my practice efficiently? I don’t have the money to spend on hardware and software, what do I do and how do I get my practice going? I need to collaborate with my clients and other attorneys, how do I make that work?

We get these questions from a lot of our clients and lawyers who are just starting out. We have a cost effective solution for them.

Introduction

AdvologixPM is a SaaS based solution built on SalesForce.com platform. Salesforce.com is the most successful cloud-based application. It’s the gold standard. The company, Salesforce.com, has a market capitalization of $8.23 billion and revenue of $1.24 billion. It has over 67,900 customers. The company claims that 200,000+ developers have created over 135,000 custom applications with over 1,000 applications and service listings on its AppExchange. The benefit here is there is no need to prove stability, or establish security, or prove scalability. AdvologixPM has the power of the “Force.com” behind it.

AdvologixPM is licensed for $70.00 per user per month which includes complete practice management, document automation and management, account management and billing, mobile access, workflow customization, web intake forms, mobile access to contacts, tasks and events and synchronization with Outlook. You can also add third party applications including NetDocuments and QuickBooks synchronization.

Product Highlights

AdvologixPM primary records are Accounts, Contacts and Matters. The secondary record types include events, tasks, calls, messages, notes and attachments, emails and alerts, issues, and research, billings and invoices.

Accounts are your main client record that you are going to bill to. Matters are linked to an Account and Contacts are linked to multiple Accounts and multiple Matters.

When you log in, the reminders window shows reminders for all scheduled activity that is due today and past. The Home Page shows the calendar with all your events and tasks. The past due tasks will be in red. On the calendar you will be able to see the event details when you move your cursor over the client name or the description.

The system has a customizable tab navigation which makes it easy to look at all your matters, contacts, billings, invoices, payments and the system has robust reports. When you open the matter record, you will see a quick view of all the record types and the number of records in each type. When you hover over the record type, you will see a quick view of all the records in that list. You can open an existing record or add a new record right from this view mode.

Every record type is customizable giving the developer the flexibility to customize the interface to a particular law practice area allowing the lawyer to capture information to their specific need.

AdvologixPM uses DDP (Dynamic Document Processing) for document automation. The data stored in the system is integrated into word document templates that are then converted to PDFs. Templates can be setup for mail merge and these documents can then be stored as attachments to matters. DDPS can output to PDF or the original document format (.doc, .xls, etc.) In this examples yellow fields are merged from the matter record and pink fields are merged from the related contact records.

AdvologixPM is tightly integrated with NetDocuments giving the end user the full capabilities of a fully functional document management system. NetDocuments will allow firms to take their document and data sharing at a much higher level giving the firms the power to share their information with their clients.

AdvologixPM integrates seamlessly with Outlook with AdvologixPM Connect Toolbar for Outlook 2007.

This tool bar gives the user the ability to sync their data with outlook. The user can download contacts, events, tasks, and also bill from Outlook while browsing emails and sending out emails as well.

StopLoss Billing View allows the user to capture time that they have not billed for yet. This view shows unbilled events and tasks, making it easy to look at all unbilled items and create billing items for them.

On the matter tab the user can see all the billings by viewing the billing tab, all the expenses and invoice activity.

AdvologixPM has a very comprehensive reporting package with 100s of reports to analyze information from different perspectives due to the ability to filter and sort on multiple criteria.

Conclusion

AdvologixPM is a comprehensive and powerful, extremely configurable practice management system giving you a wealth of information. The views of the records are clear and easy to navigate. There is comprehensive security, offline backup of the entire database is available, and there is import and export capability. AdvologixPM offers an offline client which allows a user to access major practice management functions without being connected to the internet. The offline client syncs with the main system when the user reconnects. The system syncs with Outlook and integrates with other web based applications like NetDocuments. MobileLite for AdvologixPM is a full featured application for Blackberry, iPhone, Windows Mobile. AdvologixPM on force.com platform is for the new breed of “Virtual Law Offices” who seek freedom.

The goal of this article is to help you put some of your fears to rest about choosing the right cloud computing application to run your business over traditional software. There are so many debates going on about the security of hosted applications and much as some of the arguments might be valid, do they all apply to every business entity? Are you really making the right business decision for your mission critical applications by listening to chatter that may not apply to you?

Technology has been evolving in the last 100 years at a pace that has always caused fear and anxiety for mass adaptation. Do you remember when cell phones first came out and people were very cautious and reluctant to buy cell phones and use them. They could not imagine getting away from the big traditional phone sitting in the office or living room. Today there are a lot of businesses that do not have traditional land lines and run their entire business on a cell phone. How secure if your information if you lose your cell phone and every person we know cannot spend a minute without their cell phone.

Choosing the right platform for your mission critical applications requires simple common sense. The problems manifest when you don’t know or have the right questions to ask. I recently had a discussion with a client and she said “you don’t know how to ask what you don’t know”. I hope this helps you ask the right questions you need to ask yourself and the vendors you are evaluating.

Let’s talk about some of the concerns.

• I have lost control of my data. I can’t get my data if it is residing on someone else’s server.

When you are evaluating vendors, ask them how easy do they make it for you to walk away with your data should you choose to terminate the service at any time. Are they going to charge you any penalties? What format is your data going to be in? Do they give you complete control to backup your data on demand (instantly)?

• I can’t access my information if I am not on the internet.

As true as this statement is, how often are you really not connected to the internet? Mobile devices all have internet connections, allowing you to browse any web site at any time. You can go to an internet café in the absolute worst case scenario. In reality you are more at a risk with the server that you have in the office going down. Alternative access with cloud computing solution is going to be far less expensive than waiting for a computer technician to arrive and fix the problem for you. The biggest value of cloud computing is access anywhere, anytime to your valuable business data. A lot of the SaaS vendors synchronize with offline calendar systems. You can also export your key data such as contacts and calendars.

Ask your vendor if they provide an offline application that will allow you to perform your most important tasks while disconnected from the internet and automatically synchronizes the changes that you made offline when you reconnect to the internet.

• I am risking client confidentiality with data residing on another vendor’s servers.

Ask the vendor what security certifications the vendor has. The right choice in a cloud computing vendor will have certifications meeting many government, banking and other regulatory requirements. A cloud computing practice management company is no different than the computer technician you have supporting your systems today. They, ethically, are allowed to work on your behalf with confidential data, as referenced in the ABA’s ethics opinion 08-451, as an example. Ask where your data is being stored to ensure the jurisdiction does not present any jeopardy to any of your client data obligations. Plus a lot of the firms now store backups offsite with accredited backup vendors. Are you breaching client confidentiality with your data being stored offsite?

• Cloud Computing practice management companies are not reliable. Will the company still be in business next week?

These are very broad statements and I believe these statements apply just as much with traditional software vendors. The reality is: traditional software vendors get bought out or are sold to other vendors, the new management makes decisions that are right for them and sometimes software is sunset not really keeping your interest in mind. We see it happen all the time. Since cloud computing is a new concept still in adoption stage, the anxiety is heightened when the same level of anxiety applies even more to the high end traditional software vendors.

• Cloud computing practice management systems are not secure.

The reality is, more than 95% of all law firms would NEVER be able to afford or deploy the level of security in their own computer systems that are provided by choosing the RIGHT cloud computing practice management system. Find out where the data is stored. Is your data encrypted? Can your cloud computing vendor access your data at all, without you providing access? Also, KNOW that your cloud computing vendor can support auditing your data. Can your vendor support requests for investigative discovery? What are their audit levels? How can you control these? Ask any and all questions that you can think of that would be a future liability. If the vendor cannot address that, then you need to look for another vendor.

• It’s safer for me to do backups to prepare for disaster?

Ask the law firms in the Gulf Coast region, who have been victims of catastrophic storms the past few years, if they think they having their server on site is more than just a “feel good” level of physical security of their data….. ALL their data. Those in this region with cloud computing systems, continued business while others scrambled to recover for months.

Are your backups truly tested or do you assume that because backup complete and you are now safe? Have you run a test restore to see if your backups work? Do you store the data offsite at an accredited data storage facility? If you really do all of this…. how much is that costing you? The almost certainty is that most firms never employ the same level of disaster recovery and data protection that is provided by the RIGHT cloud computing practice management system.

• The ultimate question is: Can you confidently answer positively to every potential risk mentioned above with your traditional in-house practice management system?

Let us know what you think…