Lawyers regularly use email and other digital communication tools to share information and send highly sensitive documents. With ever greater collaboration via cloud services and increasing use of smart devices, staying up to date with the latest IT trends is vital. 

Here are five IT practices your law firm needs to consider in the future. 

1. Complying with the Law

Like many other businesses that handle personal information such as ID numbers and financial records, law firms should be committed to complying with PIPEDA, the Personal Information Protection and Electronic Documents Act. On top of that law firms will also have their own sector requirements that need to be addressed. 

2. Encryption Should Be The Norm

Ensuring that you send documents via encrypted systems is one of the more important IT trends in recent years. That means ensuring your law firm has the right IT structure in place and, more importantly, that staff know how to use it and how important it is. 

3. The Cloud is Being Used More

Security should also be a prime focus and inform the IT practices of your law firm because of thegreater use of cloud computing. While it allows for quicker and more efficient sharing of a variety of documents and communications, it also presents significant security challenges. 

4. Make Sure You Back Up

What happens if there’s a natural disaster or your data is compromised in some way? Losing important documents is not only damaging it can ruin a firm’s reputation. Another of the big IT trends is companies making sure they back up and secure their data regularly. 

5. Welcome to the Virtual World

Finally, we are fast moving away from traditional hardware to virtual environments that can be utilized as and when we need them. That not only includes cloud computing but options such as productivity and collaboration software. Virtualization can help lower costs and improve productivity, especially for law firms, as well as raise security levels.