Industries · Law firms
IT for law firms and legal practices
A missed limitation date, a mailbox someone else is reading, a trust disbursement sent to the wrong account — the failures that hurt a law practice are the quiet ones. We support firms across Greater Vancouver and the Fraser Valley, with your confidentiality and records obligations built into how the systems are set up.
IT priorities
- Multi-factor authentication on email, remote access and practice management
- A written agreement with every provider holding firm records, and a clear answer on where those records physically sit
- Backups of both the document store and the practice management database, with restores tested on a schedule
- A phone call to a known number before any trust disbursement or change in payment instructions
- Offboarding that removes access the day someone leaves, including articling students and contract staff
- Calendar and limitation-date systems that sync reliably and survive a lost device
Overview
Technology for law firms
A law practice runs on a handful of systems that have to work every day: practice management software carrying the matter list and the time and billing, a document management system holding every version of every document, a calendar carrying limitation dates and court deadlines, and email. Around them sit dictation and transcription, the court's electronic filing portal with its own accounts and payment details, and — in litigation — e-discovery volumes that arrive as tens of thousands of documents at once.
The obligations are heavier than most small businesses carry. Law Society Rules 10-3 and 10-4 govern records held with a storage provider — which means anything outside the firm's own office, paid or not. The firm keeps custody and control, ownership does not pass, there is a written agreement, and the records must still be produced on demand in a readable, exportable form. Rule 10-4 adds reasonable security arrangements against loss and unauthorized access, and immediate notice to the Law Society if a lawyer believes records have been improperly accessed.
We support law firms remotely first, which matters when a filing is due and something will not open, and on site across the region when equipment needs hands. The work is ordinary and specific: sign-ins locked down, a document store that is backed up and provably restorable, remote access that does not scatter copies onto home computers, and a verification step that happens before money moves rather than after.
Scope
What we look after
What we keep running
- Practice management, time and billing, and the matter list behind them
- Document management and the years of closed files it holds
- Court filing portals and the accounts, credentials and payment details they require
- Dictation and transcription, and the handoff between lawyer and assistant
- E-discovery and litigation support, and the storage a large production needs
Microsoft 365 for a firm
- Email with multi-factor authentication on every account, staff included
- SharePoint and OneDrive organized by matter, not by whoever saved it
- Shared mailboxes for reception, accounts and conveyancing enquiries
- Retention settings that match your file-closing and destruction policy
- Independent backup of mail and documents, held separately from the tenant
Security that fits the obligation
- Protection against mailbox takeover and payment redirection fraud
- Email authentication so your domain is harder to spoof mid-transaction
- Encrypted, managed laptops for hybrid work, court days and after hours
- Access that ends the day a lawyer, assistant or articling student leaves
- Restores tested against the document store, not just backup reports
Pressures
What makes IT different for law firms
Confidentiality is the product
The duty of confidentiality is strict and privilege belongs to the client. Every decision about where files sit, who can reach them and what a third party can see has to be defensible rather than merely convenient.
Records you may have to produce
Under Rules 10-3 and 10-4 the firm must keep custody and control of records held with a storage provider, have a written agreement with it, and still produce records on demand — printed in a comprehensible format, opened read-only, or exported. Trust and accounting records must be retrievable for at least ten years from the final accounting transaction.
Dates that cannot be lost
Limitation dates and court deadlines live in a calendar and a practice management database. A sync failure, a departed assistant's account or a restore that quietly loses two weeks becomes a professional problem, not an IT one.
Trust funds are actively targeted
The Law Society has warned that a BC firm redirected millions in sale proceeds held in trust on instructions from a fraudster whose email address differed from the real one by a single letter. Its advice is to satisfy yourself that any change in payment instructions is legitimate through direct contact with the person who sent it.
Hybrid work, one file
Lawyers work from home, from court and from a second office. The file has to be reachable from all three without copies accumulating on personal laptops, USB drives and consumer file-sharing accounts.
Privacy law sits on top of all of it
BC's Personal Information Protection Act requires reasonable security arrangements for the personal information the firm holds, and the Law Society's cloud computing guidance tells lawyers to advise clients when their records are stored outside British Columbia.
Priorities
Where we start
- Multi-factor authentication on email, remote access and practice management
- A written agreement with every provider holding firm records, and a clear answer on where those records physically sit
- Backups of both the document store and the practice management database, with restores tested on a schedule
- A phone call to a known number before any trust disbursement or change in payment instructions
- Offboarding that removes access the day someone leaves, including articling students and contract staff
- Calendar and limitation-date systems that sync reliably and survive a lost device
Other sectors
We also support
Every sector is supported across Greater Vancouver and the Fraser Valley.
FAQ
IT for law firms: questions
Can we keep client files in the cloud?
Yes, and most BC firms now do. The Law Society publishes a cloud computing checklist and due diligence guidelines that set the bar: know where the data is stored, keep custody and control of the records, have a written agreement with the provider, be able to produce and export records on demand, and advise clients when their records sit outside BC. The Law Society does not maintain a list of approved vendors, so the diligence is the firm's. See cloud services.
How do we stop a trust payment going to a fraudster?
Layer it. Strong sign-in security so mailboxes are not taken over, filtering and domain authentication so lookalike domains are caught, and alerts when a new forwarding rule appears. Then the part that actually stops it: no change in payment instructions is actioned without a call to a known number. Our cybersecurity checklist covers the technical half.
Will you work with our practice management vendor?
Yes. We look after the workstations, servers, permissions, backups and network that practice management, document management and time and billing depend on, and we deal with the vendor's support when the application itself is at fault. Version upgrades get planned around your calendar rather than dropped on the firm during a filing week.
What about lawyers working from home?
Give them one path to the file instead of several. Managed, encrypted laptops, sign-in that needs a second factor, remote access to the document store rather than copies on personal machines, and the ability to wipe a device that goes missing. It has to be no harder than working at the office, or people will route around it.
Can we use AI in the practice?
Carefully. The Law Society's guidance on generative AI is direct: confidential client information should be kept out of tools the firm does not control, the lawyer remains responsible for work product the technology produces, and AI tools deserve the same scrutiny as any other software under the records rules. For correspondence, summarizing and administrative work there is real value. See AI consulting.
Services
Services for law firms
Managed IT Services
Help desk, device and Microsoft 365 management, security and backups — your outsourced IT department under one agreement.
Learn more->Cybersecurity
Security assessments, MFA, endpoint protection, email security, backups and staff training — the controls that stop common attacks.
Learn more->Cloud Services
Microsoft 365 migrations, Azure and AWS infrastructure, cloud backup and server replacement — planned, migrated and managed.
Learn more->
Guides
Guides for business owners
[Security]
Cybersecurity Checklist for Small Businesses in BC
A cybersecurity checklist for BC small businesses built on the Canadian Centre for Cyber Security’s baseline controls, plus what to do after a breach.
[Security]
Backup and Disaster Recovery for Small Business
Backup, retention and disaster recovery for BC small businesses: the 3-2-1 rule, what cloud suites don’t cover, RPO, RTO and restore testing.
[Cloud]
Microsoft 365 Migration Checklist for Small Businesses
A Microsoft 365 (Office 365) migration checklist for small businesses: migration types, licence choices, DNS and cutover steps, security settings and timelines.
Get in touch
Talk to us about IT for your law firm
Tell us about your business and what you need from technology. We reply within one business day.
Tell us what's going on
Send the form or call. A rough idea of your team size and current setup helps us come prepared.
A 30-minute conversation
We ask about your people, systems and goals, and flag anything urgent we notice along the way.
A written proposal
Clear scope, a plain-English plan and pricing laid out line by line. Nothing starts until you approve it.