The legal industry faces unique challenges with regards to Information Technology systems. Requirements for confidentiality, timeliness of communication, documentation of all communications between attorneys and clients, as well as...

...accuracy and complete capture of all billable hours and compliance with regulations regarding computer activities. All of these and more contribute to the difficulty of designing and maintaining an IT system that supports and enhances the business activities of businesses in the legal profession. GRS understands these issues and has helped law firms throughout the area implement stable, reliable I.T. networks.

Small law firms face the additional challenges of tightly constrained budgets and sometimes choppy cash flow, and a desire to avoid becoming beholden to lines of business credit, which contribute to a tendency to make IT spending the lowest priority, until emergencies force IT spending in inefficient ways. Most of the technology focuses of law firms are in the area of tracking clients and cases as well as the time applied to cases and for clients. Any downtime can be very costly due to the lack of ability to track minutes and the creation of documentation. Deadlines also are important as the flow of information from Attorney as the end user is created by multiple people in the back office from Administrative Assistants to Paralegals who perform a lot of the work.

• Software tools used are Time Matters, Billing Matters, Time Slips, Hot Docs, PC Law, WordPerfect
• Email speed and availability is critical
• Remote access technologies
• VPN connections between sites
• Imaging technologies
• Privacy Issues
• Other proprietary software
• Typically smaller number of computers and servers
• QuickBooks
• Filing is on mandatory timeframe