The legal industry is booming, and experts predict the global legal services market to grow at a compound annual growth rate of more than 10% in the year ahead. We also know there’s a legal talent shortage right now coupled with incredibly high demand.
Another way to translate this market landscape: you’re busy! Law firms of all sizes are more pressed for time than ever before. There’s yet another challenge out there: the rising threat of a cyberattack on your firm. Just as finding the best legal talent is a key success factor, so too is finding the right cybersecurity strategy to protect your people and your clients.
The good news: Outsourcing your information technology (IT) needs to a managed service provider (MSP) can help you navigate the current landscape, from freeing up staff time to unlock growth potential to protecting your people and your reputation from the latest threats. Here, we look at seven ways that partnering with a trusted expert can benefit you and your firm.
1) Control your Technology Costs
Outsourcing your technology services will, of course, present a new and additional cost for your firm. However, with a managed services provider, you pay for what you need, and nothing more. The alternative is to hire an additional IT staff member, which carries an arguably higher price tag for your firm, not to mention the time it takes to recruit, onboard, and retain someone amidst a talent shortage. In short, an MSP can reduce your overall labor costs, since you don’t need to make an additional full-time or part-time hire.
Top-notch MSPs, like N8 Solutions, will offer a predictable and transparent cost structure. When it comes to paying for technology expenses, more firms are pivoting from larger, less frequent capital expenses (CAPEX) to small, recurring operational expenses (OPEX). With an MSP, you can budget and pay for what you actually use to ensure predictable IT spending with low initial investment.
2) Strengthen your Cybersecurity
Even if you have a modest in-house technology team at your firm, you know that they do a lot—implement tools and services, set up new staff members, manage end-point devices, stay on top of the latest threats, and so much more. It puts pressure on the team and it stretches them thin.
We also know that law firms have a lucrative appeal for hackers. Your firm deals with confidential, proprietary, and valuable data, and it’s not just a threat among large, global firms. Nearly 25% of ransomware attacks in the first quarter of last year targeted small and medium sized law firms. Working with a third party expert relieves this pressure on an already-strapped team. With expert attention from an MSP, you can more effectively manage your network security risk and protect your firm. Custom services can span from password management and email security to backup and recovery solutions and always-on network monitoring.
3) Maintain Compliance
As we mentioned above, your firm hosts a treasure-trove of sensitive and protected client information. On top of protecting this data from nefarious actors or accidents, you’re also responsible for increasing and ever-changing data and compliance regulations. You are keenly aware that failing to maintain such compliance can result in significant reputational and monetary damage. Partnering with a legally-knowledgeable MSP will ensure that your data not only stays protected but also remains in compliance with the current regulations in your specific sector and geography.
4) Boost your Productivity
Even before the pandemic, you worked from everywhere: the courtroom, the office, whilst traveling, and from home. Your team needs reliable and secure access to legal documents from all of these locations. The right MSP can help you implement managed cloud services to enable your team to safely access information from the cloud, when and where you need it. With cloud services, you’ll be unencumbered by location, all without having to connect via a virtual private network (which presents its own security considerations). An MSP can also help your firm leverage the latest productivity software and tools to continually improve your work systems and set the stage for scale and growth.
5) Extend your Expertise with a Built-in Team
When you partner with a managed services provider, you’ll gain instant access to a team of experts, which means that you’ll extend your existing internal team without adding significant cost. By nature, MSPs offer highly trained professionals who can manage your IT operations efficiently and cost-effectively, all in partnership with you. With N8 Solutions, for example, we not only deliver technology expertise, we also understand the specific needs and considerations of the legal industry. If you wanted to build your own in-house team, you also probably know that it’s hard to find talent these days. We expect to see a continued cybersecurity skills gap in 2022, with not enough skilled technology professionals to meet the demand.
6) Implement New Technology Quickly
Digital transformation is key for the modern legal firm. But rolling out new technology is often a cumbersome project that is continually side-lined by other urgent issues. To fully transform your firm into a digital agency requires that you find, hire, and train the right people and provide them with the right resources along the way.
This might be the most surprising benefit of working with a managed services provider: With the right partner, this is 100% included. Meaning that, when it’s time to implement a new technology or service at your firm, your MSP is ready to help you assess, implement, and manage it, whether this means a new client management database, a shift to the cloud, or employee training on how to spot and stop ransomware. As a result, your firm will save time and money and ensure greater and more secure adoption of new technology.
7) Stay Focused on your Firm
In this growing legal market, we all have a role to play. With the right MSP, you’re able to focus on what you’re good at: running a successful legal practice and delivering for your clients. Let someone else do what they’re good at: managing your technology infrastructure and protecting your firm from the latest threats. At N8 Solutions, we’re here to help you stay focused on your firm and your clients, while we seamlessly manage your information technology, when and how you want us to.
So, we ask: Are you busy? Do you worry about the threat of a damaging cyberattack? Do you want to maximize how your firm functions in the year ahead? That’s exactly why we’re here. Please get in touch today to learn more about our best-in-class legal managed services. Call (262) 288-1501 or complete this simple form.