How to Purchase the Best Software for
your PI Law Firm?
There are many options out there when it comes to choosing software for your law firm. It can often feel overwhelming, and you aren’t sure which metrics are the most important and which software will help you grow your firm.
A PI firm, similarly, is only as good as its software. It affects everything you do in your firm. From the speed your intake team can onboard a new client to the efficiency your paralegals and lawyers can achieve whilst building a case, to your ability to oversee your firm, to the analysis of which marketing efforts are working for you. Put bluntly, it’s incredibly important, and when choosing which software is right for you, you need to get it right.
That’s where we come in. In this E-book, we explore the different software options for PI firms; we will point out the essential metrics to use when comparing software and give you the critical questions you need to be asking.
Chapter 1
Henry Thoreau
And talk to The Cloud, you must. When choosing software for your firm, the first choice is to decide whether you are going to host it in your office or use a cloud-based system.
There is only one correct answer—the Cloud.
The Cloud is better than a self-hosted system in a number of ways, and we will go into some of them in more detail in later chapters, but here’s an overview of the main differences between a Cloud-based and self-hosted system:
| CloudLex and Cloud-based Systems |
vs | Self-hosted Legacy Systems |
|---|---|---|
Secure servers hosted by Microsoft. Space, equipment, and IT team costs are met by Microsoft, not you. |
1
Servers |
The actual server and networking equipment are pricey. |
Significantly lower costs. No expensive hardware. Pay for what you need only. |
2
COST |
Significantly lower costs. No expensive hardware. Pay for what you need only. |
Significantly less time and costs associated with setup. |
3
Support |
IT support— including ongoing support for daily issues, as well as more significant issues like hacks, accidents, lost laptops, etc., will all have to be funded by your firm. |
Data backups across many locations = more security from breaches, acts of God, environmental factors, etc. |
4
Data |
Server replacement: The “useful life” of your server is about 3-5 years, and replacement costs need to be taken into consideration. |
24/7/365 proactive security monitoring performed by cybersecurity experts. |
5
Security |
Security personnel to watch over the physical premises 24/7/365. |
Anytime, anywhere, immediate access across multi-devices and platforms, leading to greater efficiency in collaboration and tracking. |
5
Scale Up |
Costly to scale up if new staff or offices are added to the firm. |
Access to data is restricted and often not available across multiple devices or platforms. |
7
Device |
Costly to scale up if new staff or offices are added to the firm. |
As you can see, in the modern world we live in now, there’s no reason to take a backward technological step with your firm’s software and use a self-hosted system. The Legal Cloud is the option that is easiest, cheapest, most-efficient, and will help you to grow your firm too!
Chapter 2
As with all industries, there are inferior versions of cloud-based software. Including some that aren’t even genuinely cloud-based. Now you’ve decided that cloud-based software is the right choice for you, it’s essential that you do your research to choose a cloud-based solution that will really give you all the benefits of the real Cloud.
Just because a solution is “hosted by your vendor” doesn’t make it a true cloud-based software solution. Nor does paying a monthly fee to your vendor make it a true “SaaS” (Software As A Service) solution.
Real Legal Cloud solutions are built on the latest, most-sophisticated web technologies from the ground-up. Meaning, the application is conceived, conceptualized, designed, and developed as a cloud application right from the start.
The “cloud” cannot be retrofitted to legacy hosted solutions developed decades ago. However, many try (these are some of the inferior software we are talking about).
Simply put, a real legal cloud solution is designed in a way that gives you the reliability, security, scalability, availability, and usability that outdated practice management solutions can never provide.
When looking for your personal injury cloud-based case management system, ask vendors these questions:
- To test their application’s security, ask them if they can ensure HIPAA compliant application
and data security? - When was the last time they conducted proactive vulnerability tests for their application?
- To test their solution’s scalability, ask if they can set up 500 users as seamlessly as they can
set up five users? If it is a repackaged legacy product, the answer will be “no” or “it will take
additional time.” - To determine the real cost of their system and root out any hidden fees, ask them if you will
need to add additional servers, databases, and software licenses or if you will incur
additional maintenance and manpower costs as you grow? If it is a repackaged outdated
solution, you will incur additional costs (beyond the standard per-user fees) as you grow. - Ask if they can ensure 99.99% uptime?
Chapter 3
As a personal injury attorney, you realize the importance of the venue. Well, in the case of cloud solutions, the “cloud hosting venue” is a significant factor when choosing your new software.
There are five major Cloud Infrastructure Providers:
These providers have invested billions in creating state-of-the-art server farms across the globe.
A typical data center for these providers:
- Runs hundreds of thousands of servers,
- It is as large as ten football fields,
- Uses as much electricity as a small town.
This is not something any office-based software can keep up with! Nor can any smaller legacy-hosted systems.
These providers have compiled a huge array of cloud hosting services and platforms supported by their immense resources.
To discover where a potential solution provider is hosted, ask them:
- Where do they host? A “mom-and-pop” or “regional data center,” with only one or two
locations, should concern you. - Do they have “geo-redundancy”? Meaning if one data center goes down, then other centers
located in different locations automatically kick in. - How do they back up your data?
- How do they manage ongoing maintenance, monitoring, and upgrades?
Simply put, if a provider is not using one of these top 5 infrastructures, then stop considering them as an option. They will not be able to provide anywhere near the same functionalities, security, geo-redundancy, and support as a system hosted on the big 5.
Chapter 4
a few minutes of cyber-incident to ruin it.’
Stephane Nappo
Your entire reputation (in addition to your legally obligated requirements) is staked on your firm’s security level, so this is an incredibly important consideration when choosing new software for your firm. Understandably, security is one of the biggest concerns when moving to cloud-based law practice management software.
They recruit and employ only the best and brightest engineers and cybersecurity professionals. Regional data centers may not be able to adhere to such stringent levels of security, nor do they have access to the same level of professional resources, leaving your firm and client data open to hacks and putting your business at risk.
Mature cloud service providers have a global reach with a vast selection of recovery options. Leading cloud services like Microsoft Azure backup six copies of your information in at least two geographically dispersed data centers, which assures 99.9% availability of data and backups.
Their ongoing monitoring program not only ensures high performance but also ensures the security of your data. Unlike small data centers, leading cloud service vendors like Microsoft Azure and Amazon Web Services employ a team of experts to monitor their data centers 24/7/365 to assure seamless cloud connectivity for all their clients, regardless of size.
Simply put, small regional data centers simply don’t have the technical expertise, capital, resources, or skills to offer the security, reliability, and availability that your personal injury law firm needs.
Chapter 5
attorney” colleague?
The answer, of course, is an emphatic “No”.
Personal injury is a specialized practice area of law that requires unique skills, expertise, and experience. So is the field of technology development. Developing legal cloud solutions requires a team of expert technology professionals, including cybersecurity experts, software engineers, designers, architects, and systems experts.
If you really want cutting-edge legal cloud software, then go to expert software engineers who truly know both the personal injury space and cloud technology, not to a lawyer who develops software while running his practice.
In the real world, lawyers are not supposed to be software engineers (unless they hold a dual degree in computer science and have written millions of lines of code).
Ask your solution provider these questions to determine their expertise:
- What is the background of their founders and their key legal experts and technology experts?
- How big is their software engineering team? How many architects, product managers, lead
engineers, database engineers, front-end developers, back-end developers, cybersecurity
professionals, etc.? - Is their software development outsourced, or do they have their own in-house team?
- How many years of experience do they have developing software technology, specifically
cloud technology and legal industry technology? - Do they have any Silicon Valley venture capital funding?
- Do they have any official associations with tech giants like Microsoft?
You need a reliable and robust organization with teams of development engineers, testers, architects, designers, analysts, and support engineers who develop and maintain the product day in and day out.
In addition, you need an organization that employs lawyers to bring subject matter expertise to every step of the design process. This is an area where an association with technology giants like Microsoft, the involvement of sophisticated Silicon Valley venture capital firms, and teams with advanced, sophisticated pedigrees really do matter!
Chapter 6
See how CloudLex has helped its clients build, manage, and grow their practice.
From either my computer or phone, I could manage my practice with a sense of confidence and relief with the help of CloudLex.
Adam Handler
Pollack, Pollack, Issac and DeCiccio, LLP
Managing Partner| New York
We were so glad to have CloudLex as opposed to a premise-based case management system.
Angela Bobbit
Parker Law Firm
Office Manager| Texas
CloudLex has allowed us to make a seamless transition from working in the office to working from home during the pandemic.
Monica R. McKinnon
Alpert Schreyer Poe, LLC
Firm Administrator| Maryland
The system is easy to use and required very little training. The staff is friendly and quick to respond to any questions that I have had over the past year. Great customer service.
Patrick O’Hara
O’Hara Law Firm
Managing Partner| Texas
CloudLex is a true cloud-based system built by expert software engineers, with PI lawyers present for every step to ensure it operates exactly as you need.
CloudLex is hosted on Microsoft’s Azure servers, protected by a 24/7/365 expert cybersecurity team.
CloudLex is HIPAA compliant, disaster-proof, and, crucially in current times – pandemic-proof. PI firms using CloudLex didn’t skip a beat as they moved their entire firms to working-from-home.
And there’s more, CloudLex is more than just a legal case management system—it’s a next-gen solution to solve all your problems. It allows you to build, manage, and grow your PI practice seamlessly from intake to closure and beyond—from within one single platform.
From the moment you open CloudLex, you can easily access your favorite apps and features through our navigation screen: Launchpad.
Our comprehensive personal injury platform includes the following apps:
Matter Manager
The hub of the CloudLex platform, it provides a bevy of case management tools for better collaboration and organization—and macro-level analytics to help make your PI law firm more efficient.
Intake Manager
It gives you an effective process to attain and manage leads. Our intelligent forms guide you through the intake, so you don’t miss anything—and our marketing reports help you operate informed and boost your profits.
Digital Archiver
It frees up the space and resources you need to grow your PI law practice. All data from your closed cases (even digital correspondence) can be archived for a period of 7 years on a secure and HIPAA compliant server.
Microsoft Office Online(R)
CloudLex® seamlessly integrates with MS Office Online—meaning you can make changes to your Word, PowerPoint, and Excel documents without ever having to leave CloudLex®. Any updates are reflected immediately across all platforms and devices, so members of your team always have the most up-to-date versions of files.
Referral Engine
Let’s you send out and take on referrals from a growing community of plaintiff attorneys. Partner firms can execute fee agreements, share case info, and track changes to referred matters seamlessly in the app.
…and that’s just the tip of the efficiency iceberg. CloudLex delivers you an infinite-course menu of apps, features, integrations, and tools that go way beyond case management software and satisfies all your personal injury needs.
If you are using a legacy self-hosted system, it is time for a change. And a serious upgrade. If you would like to see just how CloudLex could help your firm, sign up today for a free demo.
