Office 365 for Solicitors: Work Smarter not Harder

Published: 12 September 2016

For many legal companies, compliance, security and access to documents are likely to be high the list of priorities. However, many practices are reluctant to utilise cloud applications due to fears they will expose them to greater risk. But what if a cloud solution, like Office 365, could help you to work smarter, not harder, reducing overheads and increasing billable hours while ensuring data security and compliance?

Why Office 365 is the smarter choice

Office 365, with its abundance of features, allows you to address your business challenges and avail of the business applications that you already know and love- plus many more! Take a look at how Office 365 can help you to:

Access your case files on the move

Have you felt the pain of arriving at court or an important meeting, having forgotten an important document? With Office 365 you can reduce the amount of paper you need to carry, and the time spent searching for the latest version of documents. Introducing One Drive for Business- your digital briefcase!  One Drive allows you to access documents whether you are online or offline, and enables you to share them both internally or externally with clients.

You don’t need to worry about keeping track of correspondences which take place outside of your case management system, or forgetting where files are stored. SharePoint provides you with a full document management application allowing you to store, retrieve and update documents with ease. For important or sensitive documents, you have the ability to utilise version control and permissions to insure confidentiality and traceability.

Collaborate with colleagues

Drafting and re-drafting correspondences often lead to extensive paper trails, and can take up quite a lot of time too.  Take advantage SharePoint, which will allow you to collaborate on effectively on documents in real-time; whether it be with your legal secretary, or a senior partner who is working from home.

With lots of knowledge sharing taking place among legal professionals, the ability to collaborate is highly valued across the industry. Skype for Business will enable you to communicate more effectively than ever before by breaking geographical barriers. When you need to touch base with a client, or collaborate with another solicitor, you can do so by using the video, conferencing, calling and instant messaging features within Skype for Business. And… when you’re on the move, having Skype for Business means you can still be reached on your mobile device.

Ensure world-class security & compliance

For compliance reasons, legal firms typically store documents for a specific length of time. Office 365 Enterprise E3 for example, allows you to ensure your documents are safely archived with advanced email. Should you receive emails with sensitive or highly confidential client information, data loss prevention (DLP) policies enable you to lock down emails, so that they cannot be shared or forwarded.

By nature, your practice will be challenged to meet specific security and compliance criteria. When you move to Office365, its one less thing you need to worry about. Office 365 is compliant with wold-class industry standards, including ISO 27001, BAA and FISMA. And even in today’s ever changing business environment, your Office365 solution will always update to the latest security requirements- one less thing you need to worry about!

And Finally…

If you didn’t already know, Office 365 has vastly become the most deployed application in recent years. According to Business Insider, more and more companies are jumping on to the Microsoft Office 365 Bandwagon.

If you think it’s time to bring Office365 to your practice, or simply want to see how it would work…

Request an Office 365 Demo today!

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