Managed IT Services for Law Firms: What Your Firm Should Look For

More billable hours and less wasted on admin tasks, more efficient workflows, confidentiality, cost reduction, and fewer errors — if any of these are on your goals list, you should definitely take a look at managed IT services. 

However, much like law firms, not all managed IT providers are the same, have the same skills, work in the same way, or will have the same relationship with their clients. And much like law firms, in order to have a successful partnership, a lot rides on trust. At Marco, we’re proud to have a number of longer-term partnerships with law firms, but that doesn’t mean we’re the right fit for everyone. So, when I meet with a new prospective client in the legal industry, here’s how I advise them on what a good IT partnership can and should look like. 

Why More Firms Are Considering Legal IT Support

A lot of law firms begin with having one tech-savvy person who can troubleshoot most office tech. 

And maybe ten or 15 years ago, if your firm remained relatively small, there wouldn’t be a need for much more. That’s all changed, whether you want to remain small or grow your business. It’s changed for a number of reasons, but here are the top three: 

1. Advanced technology, including cloud solutions, is now the way critical work gets done
2. Cybercriminals around the world have figured out how to carry out devastating attacks, especially on small businesses using cloud solutions that lack the expertise to secure them
3. Cybercriminals have found out that law firms are more likely to be willing and able to pay ransoms when their reputations are at risk 

The benefits you get from outsourcing your IT needs aren’t limited to cybersecurity, but that’s a big one. I’ll elaborate on that further below, but also explore a few other big benefits that have made a number of IT firms very, very happy they partnered up. 

How IT Support for Law Firms Can Be Transformative

Law firms have unique IT needs and challenges, so it may sound counterintuitive, but outsourcing those IT needs is often the key to helping a firm grow quickly. Here’s how an experienced IT provider can help. 

Protecting Client Confidentiality

Where you find sensitive data, you also find an attractive target for cybercriminals. And where you have a smaller organization, you also typically find lax cybersecurity protections. Incidentally, K-12 schools, colleges, and universities are also targeted for the same reasons. However, they’re not targeted in exactly the same way. 

Law firms are often targeted by social engineering and phishing scams, where a cybercriminal will attempt to trick an attorney into sharing sensitive data (including user names and passwords), clicking on a malicious link, or even wiring money to a fraudulent account. 

8% of law firm employees failed phishing email simulations in 2023, which is actually a much lower rate than you’d find in other industries. But when your reputation hangs on protecting data, it’s not nearly good enough. 

An IT provider that’s kept up with modern cybercrime tactics can help your firm safeguard its systems and data from hackers by implementing multifactor authentication and security awareness training, among other cybersecurity best practices. Your law firm doesn’t need to be Fort Knox, but in 2025, your cybersecurity posture should be sufficient to ward off your average cybercriminal. 

Adding Document Management Solutions (DMS)

Client files, court submissions, evidence, and more add up to a mountain of documents, which can be very difficult to manage and secure. A managed IT partner that understands the legal industry can help you set up systems that make handling all this paperwork much faster and easier, and also far more secure.

With the right tool, not only will your staff spend less time searching for documents or fixing data entry errors. And adding a DMS solution that integrates with eDiscovery software can also help you speed through a notoriously time-consuming process. 

Simplifying Compliance

Law firms face a unique and tangled web of compliance requirements, from GDPR and HIPAA to state bar ethics rules to client-specific demands. Also, these regulations can be difficult to interpret, and if that weren’t enough, they’re also subject to change. 

Nowadays, keeping up with compliance can require quite a lot of research time, translating rules into effective tech solutions. And this is another area where an IT partner experienced in these matters can shine. They should be able to implement practical security measures and workflows that fit your compliance needs, and also how your attorneys actually work. 

And as a side benefit, your attorneys will no longer have to spend their time or their mental energy on compliance. They’ll be able to focus much more of their attention on their clients. 

Helping You Meet Tight Deadlines

Many business leaders who haven’t worked with an IT provider in the last ten years think of their services as essentially fixing what’s broken quickly. 

If an IT provider has kept up with the times, fixing what’s broken shouldn’t be their major selling point. Their main selling point should be setting you up with a reliable tech infrastructure that won’t fail you and can help you work more efficiently. 

In that respect, an IT provider that has experience with other legal clients should be able to bring a lot to the table about what tools and solutions tend to work well for firms like yours, where bottlenecks tend to occur, and what tech updates will bring you the most ROI. 

Lowering Overhead Costs

Every business is different, but generally speaking, managed IT tends to save organizations a decent amount of money. In fact, according to a recent survey, 50% of companies that partnered with an IT provider saved 1-24% in annual IT costs, 33% saved 25-49%, and 13% reported savings of more than 50%.

Those numbers might raise some eyebrows unless you understand the biggest ways managed IT providers cut costs: 

• Right-sizing and optimizing your tech stack
• Offering you insider pricing on equipment and software through strategic partnerships
• Replacing on-premises tech with more cost-effective cloud solutions
• Providing a roadmap for tech updates that are most aligned with your budget and your goals 

What You Should Look for in a Legal Managed Services Provider

Now that you know what you can and should be getting from a provider, here’s what I’d say about finding the best one for your firm: be picky. 

In order to provide the most value, your provider is going to have to get familiar with your organization and how you work. So I’d say to keep an eye out for the following:

1. Industry expertise (obviously)
2. Flexibility to adapt their solutions to how you work 
3. Cultural fit
4. Cybersecurity expertise 
5. A SOC 2 Type 2 report
6. Transparent pricing that aligns with the experience you’d like to receive 

If you’ve read this far, I’d like to think that the first four make perfect sense. The fifth — a SOC report — means that an independent auditor has verified your provider is consistently following best practices. This report should be a must-have for any client, let alone a law firm with special cybersecurity and compliance needs. 

So that just leaves the sixth, which is pricing. An IT provider’s pricing model can tell you a lot about how they will act as a partner. Will they make a lot more money if you experience an emergency, or will they do better when you do better? I wish I could say that every IT provider will act in their clients’ best interests 100% of the time, but if you’re in the legal business, chances are that you know how some human beings and some businesses can fall short of that. 

There are a number of pricing models that IT providers use. We price our services per user, which means we’re affordable for small businesses, and we’re naturally incentivized to help our clients grow. We also don’t make a profit when one of our IT clients suddenly experiences an emergency, and we’re not incentivized to recommend more tech than our clients actually need. If that’s the kind of partnership you’d like, I’d recommend looking for that pricing model. 

If you’d like to explore more about what our style of partnership could do for your firm, I’d recommend taking a look at the case study below.