6 Reasons Why Cloud-Based Legal Tech Is A Necessary Next Step

In this digital era where new technological advances are popping up every minute, cloud-based law firm software is proving to be an essential step for most. Law firms around the world are realizing that the old school option of having programs installed on physical servers is counter-intuitive and poses high security risks for data breaches. 

If you want to give your law firm a competitive edge over others, here is why cloud-based entity management will be the necessary next step in your corporate roadmap. 

#1: Cloud-based technology is accessible and available at any time. 

If 2020 taught us anything, it’s that remote work will not be going away any time soon. Even after the pandemic, many law firms will be maintaining remote work in some capacity. The use of cloud-based entity management makes platforms available anywhere, at any time, as long as you have an internet connection. This means that in the future, your law firm will be able to scale regardless of where your paralegal team needs to work from. Data can be shared easily between nation-wide teams, improving collaboration and allowing one platform to be a “single source of truth”. 

#2: Data is secure and retrievable. 

It would be a disaster if you lost client data because of a server failure or computer breakdown. This happens more often than you think; on-premise entity management platforms run off of a physical server, and are therefore more prone to data loss and security breaches. Cloud-based technology however, is held to extremely high security standards. Entity management platforms like Athennian have greater investments in security infrastructure, real-time threat detection, and proven methods to migrate data securely. 

‍

‍

‍Athennian is SOC 2 Type II certified to give your law firm, and therefore your clients, peace of mind.

‍

‍

#3: Cloud-based technology is cost-efficient. 

Law firms like yours have already jumped at the opportunity to better economize entity management, because that means more profit. The use of cloud-based legal technology minimizes the capital expenditure of law firms, because it is no longer essential to spend the majority of IT budgets on hardware and maintenance. Law firms are also able to better package entity management services due to Athennian’s ‘per active entity’ pricing structure.

#4: Cloud-based legal tech has frequent and automated software updates.

Software updates can be frustrating. They are even more frustrating for law firms using outdated entity management solutions because valuable time is lost while the update is taking place. Further, it is rare that outdated entity management solutions even have regular updates. A lot of them were built in the 90s’, and haven’t been touched since then. 

Cloud-based entity management is updated automatically and frequently, saving your law firm time and ensuring that your team is working off of an optimized tool. 

Athennian is automatically updated every week with bug fixes and features based on user experience and feedback. 

#5: Cloud-based entity management is scalable. 

This goes hand in hand with #4, above. Cloud-based entity management can grow with your law firm, in a way that on-premise software just can’t. For example, you can create and auto-populate document templates with 1 click, pull reports based on large sets of data in seconds, add unlimited users, easily create new entities, and manage data seamlessly. Outdated software does not let you have this kind of control, therefore stifling your law firms’ growth. 

In this recent case study, we discussed how Athennian helped a national law firm in Canada migrate data from two regional databases to create a collaborative, scalable and secure cloud-based entity management environment.

#6: It could be required soon. 

For industries that are heavily regulated by the government, the cloud could soon become a requirement. In the medical industry, US government policy demanded the move to the Electronic Medical Record (EMR). It is possible that this could expand to legal and financial industries soon, with many others to follow. It’s important to get ahead and work towards adopting the cloud before it is potentially mandated. 

Final thoughts...

For law firms like yours and the legal industry in general, adopting cloud-based software is inevitable. It will save you money and time, which are arguably two of the major determinants for the success or failure of any business. Read our Law Firm Use Case to see how modern law firms have already upgraded to Athennian’s cloud.