Microsoft Office 365 for Law Firms to Enhance the Legal System
Not only in the field of healthcare or IT industry but, cloud computing spreads its magic in legal industries also. An updated level of mobility, security, and reliability enables lawyers to collect more and more pieces of evidence as much they can. Executives in legal industries are mostly busy with the bundle of paper documents. They have to go through a hectic schedule, having not even a single time to take a relaxing breath for a minute. Switching your work to cloud with data management and collaboration plan makes life easier for lawyers. Here comes the emergence of Office 365 that is available for the legal system. This post is all about the role of Microsoft Office 365 for law firms on daily basis.
Why Office 365 For Legal Organizations?
Below enlisted points will describe the major benefits of law firms who are adopting Microsoft Office 365 platform:
1. Digital and Modern Functionality – Microsoft Office 365 for lawyers renders a broad range of functionality, which could be utilized by enterprises to complete the work in a quick and efficient manner. One will be benefited with OneDrive feature of online document storage, SharePoint solutions for content sharing, etc. Also, SharePoint renders the profit of edition control and complete record management with security and compliance features. Associated metadata model provides a means to organize searches and deeply analyze the things. Apart from OneDrive or SharePoint, following Office 365 applications prove themselves useful for legal firms :
- Delve analyzes the collected information from different Microsoft software.
- Microsoft Team and Yammer enables integration with team members and colleagues to edit, share, and create essential files.
- MS Flow is available to develop workflows and automate the enterprise activities.
- An efficient and quick data visualizing and analyzing is performed via Power BI.
All the described online applications contribute to streamlining law associated activities and conduct an insight data analyses. Also, Microsoft Office 365 for law firms provide Skype for Business. This enables officials to conduct a meeting or web conference with different teammates and clients from any corner of the world.
2. The advantage of Scalability & Mobility – The core feature of cloud computing i.e., mobility, permits lawyers to work with files from anywhere at any instance of time. Through the use of Office 365 environment, officials can access their legal documents from home, client’s place, coffee shops, office, etc. Suppose a person forgets to bring copies of essential documents then, she can have a look at the up-to-date edition of those documents on her cloud storage. The same type of documents from several devices can be utilized for more ease. It is possible to retrieve back the original file in case some data is lost from the current local version of the file.
In all the above-illustrated cases, cloud approaches prove themselves cost effective. The scalability of Microsoft Office 365 for law firms enables enterprises to add or remove the resources as per the demand for meeting the operational needs.
3. Data Compliance and Security – Many legal organizations are shifting their work on the cloud by having awareness regarding security and compliance. A survey concluded that 90% of enterprises in the USA are making regular use of cloud infrastructure. From all around the world, 64% of firms think that online storage is more secure and reliable than that of on-premises infrastructure.
At the time of right service selection, the legal executives need to make sure that data storage and management comprises of robust security. They should comply with the trending requirements of regulatory. One need to ensure that there is not even a single hole, which poses like a threat for the data breach. GDPR (General Data Protect Regulation) has now been implemented on 25th May 2018, which means that organizations need to cross-check the IT firms and cloud services.
4. Online File Storage Management – Applications like iManage, NetDocuments, etc., are considered as the legal way of content management but, Microsoft Office 365 for lawyers is equally popular. The recent statistics show that O365 platform stores more than the half of all confidential information, stored on the cloud. This data can be in form of Outlook email text, Word files, and Excel sheets. Microsoft products like Exchange, OneDrive, and SharePoint are getting firmly adopted by lawyers around the world. All these software are accessed for saving and sharing files on the server, allowing them to to be accessible from any corner of the world. These applications provide a centralized management of legal template and help in keeping the record of the confidential files being accessed.
Microsoft kept the requirements of industries in mind and developed a Matter Center for Office 365. This is the SharePoint associated file management and an integrated approach for all the customers. It is programmed with the purpose of integrating existing online suite apps like Outlook, Word, Delve, OneDrive, and Power BI to render all the useful features. These things go beyond these products for rendering some additional benefits to the legal team like:
- Ease in organizing legal files by matter and associated clients
- Reviewing and searching the online saved legal documents
- The broad range of legal compliance
- Security to confidential items
Conclusion
Use of cloud concept in the field of law agencies is quite beneficial for professionals working there. Microsoft Office 365 for law firms is released with aim of slowing down the burden of lawyers. It provides additional advantages to their customers and eliminates the hassle of managing paperwork. Whenever required, the documents get availed for the lawyers on their cloud storage account. All that can be concluded is that ‘Microsoft Office 365 for lawyers ease their life by making most of the things automated in a secure manner’.
