SOFTWARE & TOOLS USED BY LAW FIRMS TO WORK-FROM-HOME

We have to recognize that we are in the middle of a unique historical trial. This trial is a global COVID-19 pandemic where the concept of working remotely from home became an unsettling reality overnight. It is certainly intricate to categorize the tools that a “virtual” law firm needs to work remotely from home to continue to serve clients’ legal needs. Although it might seem an overwhelming task, setting your firm up for remote work is easier than ever in 2020 with cloud-based technologies available to run nearly every aspect of your law firm from any location – given that you have internet access. This computing software is expedient, cost-effective, and ethically permissible to store and transmit classified client data as long as reasonable care is exercised. The various tools for remotely working in legal profession includes video conferencing,  phone system, management and legal data accessing software, fax equipment, scanning tools and speech to text transcription tools.  The most popular options in the above categories will be addressed below.

Video Conferencing is a requisite tool to conduct client meetings in this brand new “social distancing” epoch. Various software such as Skype, Google Hangouts, Google Mail Meet, Microsoft Team, Slack, Zoom, etc., provide for secure encrypted face-to-face video meetings with clients, work colleagues, and co-counsel. The end-to-end encryption is offered by well-known venture video conferencing tools such as WebEx and Go-To-Meeting.

A consistent and steady phone system with conferencing capabilities is essential in a law firm. While they are available in the firm’s brick, it might not render to secluded work from home setting. The voice over internet protocol (VOIP) facilitates an affordable, flexible, mobile and effortless means of communication. Technology providers such as  Ring-Central, Nextiva and  Ooma, facilitates this requirement but the ethical obligation in VOIP is to methodically scrutinize the technology provider that will be hosting and storing the firm’s data.

Continuous access to law firm information such as contacts and calendars, invoicing and time-tracking, documents and other matter-related data, internal and external communications, and financial information is fundamental for work remotely. The cloud-based Law Practice Management (LPM) such as Rocket Matter, Clio, My- Case, Cosmo-Lex, etc, offers lawyers the convenience of mobile and flexible access to case-related information at an affordable price.

Online Fax Services makes it easy to send and receive documents in digital format via email, an online portal, or via a smartphone app. Some popular yet affordable options for this service include E-Fax, Metro- Fax, My Fax, Nextiva, SR-Fax, Smart Fax, etc.

A robust scanner for law firm employees working remotely will be very useful in this e-filing requirement of today’s “social distancing” reality which is also flexible, mobile, cost-effective and creates an online database. While this process might seem daunting, it can easily be implemented through hardware like Fujitsu Scan- snap iX500,  Fujitsu fi-5530C2 scanner, Brother ADS-1250W and  Fujitsu Scan- Snap s1300i  or applications such as  Scanner Pro, Genius Scan and Turbo-Scan.

Speech-to-text dictation tools aid the document creation process as it is an efficient and faster method through which the text is instantaneously created while one dictates. This voice-recognition technology includes Windows, Android and Mac – iOS in-built voice recognizers. Some external apps are Dragon Speech Recognition or the voice-recognition offerings of BigHand, Winscribe or Philips, these are efficient and also caters to specific legal terminologies.

Technology has enabled very powerful remote working tools for law firms today, at a very affordable price. But it is very important to assess one’s law firm’s needs and determine the types of tools your firm will need in order for its employees to work remotely. This would streamline your law firm’s operations and allow your firm’s lawyers and staff to work remotely as efficiently and effectively as possible.

By

Tannvi