Top 5 IT Headaches for Administrators of Small Law Firms

By Kraft Kennedy

Administrators of small law firms share many of the same headaches when it comes to IT. 

How do we know? 

When firms sign up with Kraft Kennedy’s Support Practice Group, our onboarding process entails a review of their challenges and inefficiencies. 

This helps us not only make an immediate, meaningful impact for the particular client but also to better understand what small-firm IT administrators as a whole are facing today.

As a result, we have collected some of the challenges administrators faced before we started working with them. When analyzed, definite patterns emerged. Below, we also share some suggestions for these familiar headaches. 

1. Vendor management

One Firm Administrator told us, “All these vendors would ask very specific questions about configurations in our infrastructure and so on. It was really a pain to have to track down all the details from various sources.”

A good way to streamline is to find one IT partner to serve as a single point of contact for purchasing, design decisions, and troubleshooting. Administrators find that they reclaim valuable blocks of time once they centralize vendor management.

2. Licensing renewals 

So many options, so many ways to over- or under-buy. Licensing is complicated and the application list of the average law firm is staggering. To make matters worse, non-compliance penalties can be stiff.

The best solution? Find a licensing expert. There are people out there—believe it or not—who actually enjoy the licensing puzzle. They can help you extract maximum profitability from a volume plan. In many cases, firms have saved a great deal of money by finding and eliminating redundant or inappropriate licensing. Look for a team that can proactively monitor licensing and warranty deadlines.

3. Remote access 

Bad things seem to happen at the worst time; late at night, holiday weekends, etc. A sleep-deprived attorney is working remotely on an urgent matter in the middle of the night when remote access goes awry. This scenario was all too familiar for many of the admins we spoke with before they became clients. 

To combat dropped connections and locked-out users, look for a technology team that is up-to-speed on the latest designs for a seamless remote experience. Check for certifications in technologies such as Citrix, VMware, and Microsoft. It also helps to have round-the-clock support so that attorneys can get timely help when things go wrong (and so you can get a decent night’s sleep). 

4. Security

Keeping the firm safe from viruses and hackers ranked high on the list of administrator headaches.

Legal administrators are well aware that law firms are being targeted by hackers, that the consequences of a breach can be dire, and that the administrator will ultimately take responsibility.

Going over client feedback, we found that administrators appreciate preventative and reactive security services, such as 24/7 monitoring, security awareness training, malware protection, and state-of-the-art firewall defense. 

5. Not having cover when being out of office

With no backup and a great deal of responsibility on their shoulders, many small-firm administrators dread the prospect of being out of the office. Some of our clients hadn’t gone on vacation in years before signing up with a Managed Services group. 

As one of our clients, the head administrator of a 60-person firm, put it, “I was able to take a vacation without having to be on-call or bring my laptop. It was really helpful knowing that Kraft Kennedy could handle any issues that came up in my absence.”