If you’re an attorney working at a big firm that’s making big decisions that you don’t agree with over the past few weeks, then maybe you’re thinking about going solo or starting your own small firm sometime this year or next. You need to listen to this episode. My name is Ryan Bankston.

I manage legal technology for solo and small practice law firms. Today I am absolutely thrilled to be joined by Renee Thompson, a Florida Supreme Court Certified civil mediator currently serving as the Chair of the Solo and Small Firm Section of the Florida Bar and also on on the Executive Council of the Florida Bar’s Animal Law Section. She is also an adjunct professor at the University of Florida where she teaches law practice management and technology.

Renee, thank you so much for being here today. Absolutely. Thank you for having me.

We met at the Solow and Small Firm Executive Council meeting that I sponsored in Orlando. Could you tell the audience what is most rewarding about serving on the Executive council of these two sections? So part of the solo and small firm section and why it makes so much sense for lawyers who practice in solo and small firms is that it really brings together ideas from all over the state about how to run your practice and whether you need substantive knowledge in the content area you practice or
whether you just need help with practice management in general. It is just a wealth of resources and people and networking.

Our tagline is Small Firms Big Network and we really mean that. We really bring together folks who may not have the connections outside of their practice in their daily life, but need that network in order to not only build their practice but really thrive. That’s amazing.

What do most members look for when they join? So I think a lot of our folks join because of our cles. We offer paid cles but we have a lot of free cles as well. So it’s a great deal as far as, you know, paying a yearly membership, but you are getting all of your cles pretty much for your entire bar needs.

So that part I think is where people originally join. I think they stay though, because of the networking. That’s amazing.

That’s amazing. What are some highlights from your favorite cles this past year? So we’ve had some really interesting ones. Part of my chairship was to start Technology Thursdays, which are really becoming some of my favorite.

They’re really hands on practice management tools for lawyers learning how to use. You know, the one we have coming up in September that we just scheduled is about, you know, how to get rid of your trial notebook and put it all on your iPad you know, how do you do things that make your life more efficient, less costly, less burdensome? Yeah. You know, little tips and tricks that really can change how you practice and making it more effective.

Got it. Got it. So this iPad, is that for in the courtroom? Correct.

Got it. Correct. I’ve heard about a couple of solutions there.

I’ve trained on trial director, but I think I heard of another one that is specific to iPad. Trial pad. Trial pad.

Trial pad is great. Got it. You can upload depositions, you can do kind of they call call outs, where you pull deposition quotes right out of the deposition.

And all of that can sync with courtroom technology. So there’s a lot on those software, you know, that can really bring to you an ability to hold all of your trial documents without lugging everything to the courtroom the way we used to. Yeah, got it.

Got it. So members of the solo small firm section, this is the kind of content they get from cles, like comparing trial director to trial pad or showing folks how to use trial pad or set it up. Yeah.

So we have, like I said, substantive content cles. So if you’re in a specific practice area, we’ll will handle those cles. But our technology cles have really focused on solutions for lawyers.

So we really try to look at the big picture of what’s out there, whether it’s how to make your zoom calls more effective to how to make your trials more effective, whatever it may be. We’re trying to look at the big picture from a technology standpoint. Got it.

Got it. Well, that is incredible. There’s so much material out there that’s kind of the typical sales material.

So to have that kind of hands on, this is how we use it day to day, day out, like in the trenches. I imagine that’s very valuable for a lot of us. It really is.

You know, I attended one of our coffee chats, frankly, on the way here this morning to do this podcast. And our coffee chats are just zoom meetings of solo and small firm lawyers. And we get together and talk about practice management issues.

And today we happen to be talking about, you know, know, disclosures you use as an attorney, things of that nature. And, you know, we were talking about all the different types of technology available. And as a solo, you could just sit there and list all of the technology software, but it doesn’t do anyone any good if no one’s ever used it, knows how to use it.

Is it, is it really going to work for you? So it’s nice to have a place where you can Talk to other lawyers about that and what makes the most sense for your firm and your needs. That makes, that makes complete sense. Something I’ve seen folks talking a lot about lately is pink payments and how their firm collects payments.

Right. And I have seen a lot of attorneys talk about using PayPal or QuickBooks invoices and intuit solutions and stuff. And then of course, there’s a lot of us that use or administer legal specific solutions like Clio or LawPay.

What do you think those attorneys that choose to use the non legal specific softwares are missing out on? Well, I think it’s a two prong analysis. The first is what works for you and your clients. If you have a client that works in a particular payment software, I mean, they’re the ones paying the bills.

And so you really do have to adapt to your client’s needs, assuming you’re using a program that you’re competent in. But with regard to the legal specific technologies that are available to lawyers, I’m a big fan of those. I actually think if you can avoid other payment types, you know, it’s probably preferred because I use Clio Payments and LawPay.

I use both of them actually. And I think that they have abilities that other platforms don’t have with regard to trust accounts. And because as lawyers we have so much regulation with regard to our trust accounts, I think it’s important to have a legal payment platform that really caters to and makes sure that you are compliant with those rules.

You know, my Clio Payments and my LawPay can actually link to my trust account. So if I have to ask a client to put in an advance fee into a trust account, it can do that directly from the platform. So, you know, there are things that I feel more comfortable with knowing that they are compliant with.

You know, Clio has a, an accounting software now, much like trust books, where it also is trust compliant. You know, it does all of the things that are required for Florida attorneys to make sure that their books are ethically compliant with the rules. Got it.

Yeah, I’ve seen that in action, like closing out of a matter. And it lets you know there’s still funds in trust. Oh, yes.

And the dashboards, when you put money in trust, it shows it to you on the dashboard. It shows you if you’ve requested funds. If you’re getting low, do you want to ask for more? And like it shows, kind of keeps you going along in a case if that’s how you operate in your firm.

Yeah, that makes a lot of sense. I’M a big fan of some of those kind of extra features that come with these payment solutions that not everybody uses, but when they do, it can make a big difference. Small ones, like having a payment link in the invoice you send out.

Right. I’ve definitely seen invoices that come across PDF attached to an email or. Well, there’s different ways, but.

And then there’s no link to pay. You have to, like, call someone or go in, you know, to submit that payment or mail in a check. But having that link sometimes is the difference between getting paid now or, you know, six months from now.

That’s absolutely right. And as a solo and small firm person, you know, getting paid is, you know, the backbone of keeping the lights on. So it’s really important to have those links as a convenience for your client, but also so that there’s no question that you can get paid right away.

Sometimes you don’t have time to wait for a check in the mail. Right. You know, maybe you have to cover a hearing or you have to do something for a client and you want to make sure that, you know, your firm is protected on the other side of that.

So it’s important to have that. Yeah, absolutely. And other features too, like payment reminders, for instance.

Very easy in clio. I’ve never tried to do that with like, they have payment plans too. Yeah, Payment plans is a.

Is a huge one. You know, it’s a lot easier to have that conversation with a client when you know your software supports it. You don’t have to go out there and invent a process.

That’s right. That’s right. Or keep up with it.

That’s very helpful. And then also, of course, the integrations when you bring in new hires or you’re using like a virtual reception service. Right.

Some of these platforms allow integrations where they could run conflicts checks or take payments on your behalf. If you wanted to have like an outbound campaign where your virtual reception service is making some calls to those that haven’t paid and they say, is it a good time to take that payment now? I can take it over the phone. Well, these softwares often enable that where others, you have to implement other solutions on top of what you’re using just as you get away.

Think about, like, if you charge for initial consultations, just the struggle for lawyers to get paid for those especially. What if they don’t take the case? What if it’s just a truly an initial consultation and then it’s over? You know, do you really want to be spending Time invoicing versus you got paid prior to the consultation through the platform, then you do the call, so you know, it’s guaranteed. So there are some things that just make your life a little bit less complicated with regard to
how to get paid.

And I think those benefits drastically outweigh, you know, not having the software. Yeah, that makes a lot of sense. One thing that would be interesting to talk about is the difference between practice management systems, which, you know, we’re talking about often payment is a large part of that, and then document management systems, which typically payments not, you know, integrated.

Right. These systems are both important systems to a lot of practices out there. But if you’re a new solo setting up your firm, which one should you put in place first? Well, I think as a solo you have to have both, honestly, but you have to have a way to bill your clients first and foremost.

Unless you want to do everything by spreadsheet and by hand, which I do not recommend and I think will make things very difficult for you when you go to do your accounting for the year or if a client needs something quickly with regard to billing, it’s very difficult to do all of that by hand. And I think one of the strongest advantages of these practice management programs is their billing capabilities. So, you know, they really, I think, are probably the most important thing for you to get is
your practice management software.

But I honestly, when I started my firm back in 2016, I had both. I, I’m a user of Clio and NetDocuments, which is my document software and document storage system. And you know, it’s really important because where you keep your documents and how you access your files is just as important as your ability to communicate what’s in them.

So it’s really, to me, they go hand in hand. That makes a lot of sense. Yeah, yeah, it makes a lot of sense.

So you really need both. You do. Getting paid is probably the first.

Getting paid is really important and making sure you’re able to track your time in order to do that. Right. And you know, when you work at a larger firm, maybe they have time management software built into their systems, but when you’re on your own, you don’t.

So you’ve got to have a way to capture all of that. And that’s where the practice management programs really step up. I think for the solos and the small firms.

Having the document storage solution, though, is really important long term to your firm because there will come a day where you may have to practice in another place, whether it be because of a Hurricane. Because we live in Florida, you know, on a temporary basis or, you know, if you frankly need to close your office, I mean, how are you going to access all of your files? You don’t. We don’t.

Gone are the days where we, you know, have all these big storage rooms full of documents and documents. Everything has to be portable. Yeah, yeah, absolutely.

Absolutely. Gosh, these are topics I love. And it’s interesting.

You say you use Clio in netdocuments. I’m aligned with both. I’m a certified partner with clio, Certified partner with netdocuments.

I’ve used a lot of software over the years, from Adorant to Imanage, and I like just about all of them. Sure, I had some opinions about a couple I won’t mention on this podcast. But I am currently aligned with Clio and NetDocuments because of the strength of their partner program, because of their culture and the way they treat their clients.

And their training. Yeah, and their training and their material. And that, I think is very important.

And something I try to mention to Sola’s building is that when you’re building a business, your documented processes are the architecture of that business. A lot of folks tend to think that way, like your actual document, whether it’s a new hire process, client onboarding, what have you. And so much of that is created by those technologies.

You use their documentation, their processes, and then how you use them in your practice. Practice. It becomes a lot easier than just like inventing it on paper.

It’s so true. And, you know, if you are hiring folks to your office and building your practice, you have to have the time to be able to train them on your systems. Right.

So it’s wonderful to have platforms that have those trainings built in, so if they have a question, they can reach out and talk to a live person. There are videos, there’s, you know, actually papers and articles and things that they can look up to, find the solutions and the answers to what you need or chat online with someone. So it’s just, I think that training aspect is key because they’re going to keep.

It’s going to keep other people out of your office, frankly, you know, asking those questions which you may or may not know the answer to. Yeah, yeah, absolutely. And of course, you can always look to bring somebody like me on.

I’m a certified trainer for Net Documents and I often help my clients with new hire onboarding and training because it is helpful to meet them that first day, give them their laptop, help them sign in, help Them get into their accounts, show them how to use it. And attorneys coming from big firms, you probably know how to use DTE Elite. Maybe you’ve never seen Clio before, but there’s a lot in there that will feel familiar.

There’s timers, you know, so you’ll be okay. And sophisticated calendar. One thing I was really impressed with the Clio software was the calendaring system.

Just the color coding, the ability to bring other calendars in. I would love to hear more about that. I’ve so often I see practices that bring Clio in.

They use it for billing and then they don’t really use any of the other features. What are they missing out on that’s included. So depending on what you use Clio for.

And I’m talking specifically about Clio Manage, you know, they have Clio Grow and some other things. Oh, we can talk about Grow in a little bit. Yeah, yeah.

I mean, there are other aspects of Clio, but if you just use Clio Manage. When I first started my firm, I really backed into practice management software. You know, it was for me specifically for billing.

And that is exactly why people get it originally, like I said, because you’ve got to get bills out the door in order to make your overhead. So you are kind of learning that piece first. And then you start to see, oh, my goodness, this dashboard has so many other things that I can do and so many other options that I can add on to my practice.

That just makes sense. You know, they just started, like I said, their Clio accounting, which is really back office accounting and trust accounting. And so they have other things that you can add on to basically make your life more efficient.

Right. I know they have a lot of AI now built into it. I think it’s called Duo.

I mean, there’s some other products that you can add on to Clio Manage that really kind of round out, you know, to your practice. So I think there are those things. But if you’re just using a basic Clio product, all of your calendaring, all of your uploading of documents, you can do all of that in that program, if that’s what you prefer.

Yeah, yeah. I’m a big fan of Clio and those advanced features and what they can unlock for a practice. I’m a big fan of Clio Grow.

I use it for my own practice. And I am not a law firm. I am a legal technologist.

But I love using Clio Grow for my intake forms. Sure. And there’s a lot of great features in Clio Grow.

And again that is in addition to Clio Manage, it’s essentially a CRM, a cell system, an intake process. But that intake form is so cool. You can design it, you can customize it for your practice.

When you’re bringing somebody on board, you can start the form, start filling it out while you’re on the phone with them or based on the email they sent you, save it, send it to them to finish up. And that is often so helpful. You know, one of the things I did as a new practice is I went to the CLIO conference.

They have an annual conference every year and it’s always in some fun place, whether it’s Nashville or Austin or New Orleans. You have Boston coming up. So I mean, you get an opportunity to really go and kind of sink your teeth into all of the new things that are out there.

But I love that they have kind of this vendors booth area where all of the folks that have different products for lawyers get together and they have this expo area where you can really get hands on with all of these extras that we’re talking about. I spent a lot of time at those conferences in that area because that’s where I really learned how to use these products at a deeper level and what to do with them. So if you ever get the chance to do a CLIO conference, I highly recommend it.

It’s not only really fun and they go all out on the social part of it and make it a really fun time for the participants, but you really learn a lot about what’s available and what you can use the product for. Because you know, there’s so many integrations, third party or otherwise, that you can bring into those platforms. Yeah, yeah, absolutely.

And there’s options to attend that conference virtually if you’re not able to make the trip. And if you go to other conferen like say ala’s, you know, Annual conference or Ilticon, you’ll probably find somebody from Clio there. So keep an eye out for them.

And I like that Clio and NetDocuments make their support documentation available publicly. Like you can just go to support.net documents.com you can pull up the knowledge base articles, the best practices and read them right there.

Now, I know not everybody has the time for that. That’s why folks like I have a job in a business. But if you want to do it yourself, if you really want to dig in and learn the software, read that documentation, it is available to you.

And you can also reach out to Clio to net documents, schedule trainings, attend webinars maybe they’re available through your bar section. And one of the best things I think about NET documents that I think lawyers may overlook is how you can store emails in Net documents. I mean, their format for storing emails I think is the best on the market.

I’m able to literally go in and find emails from, you know, 10 years ago. They’re live emails. I can literally reply to them today just as if they were in my outlook.

So I can archive all of my old emails, everything I need to keep for all different purposes and pull those up very efficiently. And I just think their platform for that is really, really superior. Yeah, yeah, absolutely.

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There’s a lot of features about NET documents I love. The email handling is great. One thing that I love is saved searches and how you can share those.

Interesting. That is so great. When you’re collaborating with the team, you’re working out of the same matter workspace.

Sure, you can put some folders in there. Maybe you have a folder for your pleadings, you have a folder for your client documents, what have you. But if your paralegal’s in there, they’re doing some research, they could save a search where they’re looking at, I don’t know, all documents uploaded between two dates that have some type of a, you know, proximity search where they’re looking for one term within 10 to 15 words of another term within the bodies of these documents and emails, save it as a
search.

It shows up right in the workspace like any other folder. So anybody in there working with you, your partner, your associates, what have you, they can click that search and see the same results and modify it if the right permissions are set up. And that’s really powerful.

Yeah, I mean there’s some really sophisticated things you can do on documents. Just managing and sharing files on there is pretty, pretty awesome. One of the features that I really loved about it also was the ability to search for documents.

I mean, not only does each document get us, you know, its own code and its version, so, you know, you know, you’re not playing the final, final, final game, which is why, you know, where you’re saving it as. No, this is the real final. No, this one open.

This one. Yeah. How people say things, but, you know, you can actually see what version and when it was opened and who it was opened by.

And so there’s a lot of things that make life a little easier when you’re working and modifying documents. But, you know, when you actually have to find a document, it becomes your form file. You know, I used to keep sophisticated form files when I first started practicing because I was trying to find things that I had done before.

And it does it all for you. I mean, it’s just the way to search things on that platform. It’s pretty, pretty significant.

It’s really pretty life changing as an attorney. Yeah, yeah, I imagine so. And if you’re a user of other systems similar to.

NET Documents, you’ll find a lot of similar features in Net Documents. It’s certainly not a recommendation to move. There’s great systems out there and everybody makes their choice for what, what serves their firm best.

But if you ever want to look at either of these systems, you can reach out to me, you can reach out to Renee, you can visit your, your neighborhood Solo. That’s right. And Small Firm Bar section.

Hopefully you have one of those in your state, but if you don’t, there’s a lot of great information on Florida’s website that is public. You don’t have to be a member to access some of that information. One of the things I like on the Solo and Small Firm sections website are the magazines, the Source magazine.

What could folks read about in those magazines? So this year we changed our formatting of how we did all of our newsletters to basically a live magazine. So, you know, we kind of structure our Source magazine towards three topics every year. You know, our first one comes out right around the time we do our ethics and professionalism seminar.

So we try to keep the themes of those magazines in line with our big cles that we’re doing at the same time. So the first one that comes out during the bar year will have a lot to do with ethics and professionalism. And then of course, in the spring, we do our tech up seminar, which is our big technology seminar.

Whatever’s happening in the world of technology for solo and small firms happens at our seminar. It’s usually in late February, early March. Yeah.

And so that magazine is really geared towards all the technology solutions that solo and small firm lawyers are utilizing. Ethical issues, you know, things that are changing in the world around us. And as you know, a lot of things are changing with AI.

And so this year’s seminar was really built around that concept. And then what was your biggest takeaway from that? From the tech up? Yeah, you know, AI for me, which I think AI is very exciting, is that I’m learning that all lawyers come to it in different ways. You know, some want document production solutions, you know, they want a motion to be drafted, they want a contractor to be drafted.

Others want legal research solutions. So it’s really, it’s very user friendly and focused to what their needs are. So that’s why I think there are so many solutions on the market right now.

So it’s going to be interesting to see kind of the battle of the AI. Oh yeah. How that’s all going to shape out because everyone kind of promises they can do a lot of things and I’m just kind of waiting to see who can actually do them.

Yeah, that makes a lot of sense. There’s a lot of folks that don’t want to be the early adopters because of all of the risks that come with that. I completely understand that.

There are some great systems out there though, and there’s many of them that have been around for many, many years. They’re not kind of this new hyped up wave. And I’ve talked about those on previous podcast episodes.

If you want to go back and look at some of my previous episodes, I recently had someone on that is an ediscovery specialist and they were talking about AI solutions that significantly cull the documents in discovery so that you can go from say 8 million records down to like 50,000, which that’s still a lot, but that is certainly more manageable for the small firm practitioner. It’s a lot fewer reviewers you’re having to bring in to help you out there. Right.

And AI can level the playing field for a solo and small firm lawyer. Yeah, it can bring in some really robust products that wouldn’t be accessible to someone unless they were in a much larger firm. So I mean, there’s some really interesting things going on.

So I really hope that the AI providers. When I talk about AI, I’m really talking about generative AI, because I know AI has been around for a long time, but generative AI products are cost effective. And if they’re cost effective, solo and small firms are going to use them.

They will use Them. Absolutely, absolutely. And maybe there’s a whole lot of folks that are kind of timid about using them in their work product and practice, but there are a lot of people using them for their marketing.

That’s so true. So if you’re not doing that, you should probably look into it. So we just did a CLE last week on how to use AI and marketing.

Oh, that’s wonderful. Yeah, so you can find that on our platform, you know, on our website. But you know, it’s amazing whether you’re just doing, you know, reels, whether you’re utilizing it to contact people directly.

It can just save so much time because it can help you write blogs and articles and things that you used to have to sit down and really take some time to contemplate, which can really get you about three quarters of the way there. Yeah, yeah, that makes sense. In the Ilticon space, and that’s the International Legal Technology association conversations over the past year, it’s kind of come to light that most big firms use copilot for 365 and then one other legal specific solution, maybe that spell
book, maybe it’ Harvey, et cetera.

But just about everybody’s using Office 365’s copilot. There’s a lot of reasons for that. For some folks it’s that indemnification from Microsoft that’s pretty cool.

And then others it just comes down to the features. And when it comes to integrating with your security settings and your Office365 tenant compliance reasons, et cetera, and what you’re using it for, I think a spell book, if you’re in a transactional setting, has a lot of, a lot of positives. But if you need research, maybe you need the Alexis AI.

You need something that is going to bring you exactly a different narrative. So it’s just going to be interesting to see how it all shapes out. Yeah, absolutely.

And a couple of the solutions we’ve talked about today, like NetDocuments and Clio, they both have theirs. You mentioned, I think, NDMAX in Clio Duo, it would be fun to collaborate on something for the section, if you’d like to. Yeah, we could.

What I’ve seen done in the past, not with these specific solutions but with others, is where we just set up a couple of tests, maybe we put together a couple of sample contracts and then we just run them through the paces and, you know, compare the results. Like if I put these documents in Clio Duo and ask it which ones allow assignment or what have you I’m not an attorney. I’m sure you can come up with a lot better use case scenarios than I do.

But, and then just comparing, like what, how does Copilot 365 handle it? How does ZoomDeetMax handle it? How does Clio Duo handle it? That’d be fun. It would be. You know, it’s funny you say that because I have so many friends who are signing up for all these like trials to do exactly that.

They like will if I use this program, what will it come up with if I use this one? And so everyone’s trying to do that comparison right now. So that might be really interesting to see how that all works. Yeah, absolutely.

And some of the solutions, it’s very easy to just go and sign up for a trial. Others it’s a bit more complicated because they have to set up a proof of concept for you. If you need help with that, we’re here.

So you’ve been teaching at the University of Florida for a while? I do. I have a technology class there usually in the spring. I didn’t teach it this year just because so much going on with the section, but yes.

Got it, got it. What are some things you teach in that class that you think a lot of Florida attorneys need to hear again? So part of that class is everything we talked about on this podcast, which is just the nuts and bolts of starting your own practice and learning how to manage everything from employees in a practice to, you know, picking the right software for your, for your business. So it, it really runs the gamut of, you know, basically how to hang your own shingle.

Got it. But there’s so many solo and small firm lawyers in the state of Florida that we really thought it was important. I, I co teach another attorney, Gordon Glover, and you know, we really try to bring our real life experience to what makes a difference in our day to day.

That’s awesome. What do you tell folks to look for when they’re choosing their software? So I am a big fan of finding a technologist. I really actually believe you need to have a hands on person who can help you look at all the available software.

That is because no matter how much research you do, there’s always a little bit more information that you’re going to need and it’s going to come up after your practice starts too. So you’ll be thinking, oh, I’ve got the best and I have found everything I need. Well, guess what, you stopped researching that issue.

But it’s their job to continue to research those issues. So they get in touch with you and say, hey, you might want to look at this, or hey, this issue has changed, or there’s been a rule change. You might want to look at this.

I mean, so you get some advice and some counsel throughout your practice. That I think is really important. And especially if things come up, I’ll just use ransomware as an example.

You know, attorneys in Florida deal with hacking issues quite frequently, probably a lot more than we realize, because they just don’t want to tell anyone. You know, it’s not really something that attorneys want to talk about. Right.

But having someone who can counsel you through issues like that and how to set up your system to hopefully avoid issues like that is really important. So I’m a big fan of making sure that you have someone who’s not just it, but a legal technologist who can help you with the legal side of technologies that are made for lawyers. That’s wonderful.

Yeah, thank you. I know. I feel very passionate about what I do.

So often adoption is a huge challenge. Somebody will pay for something, they’ll set something up for their firm, and then they’ll hardly use it or not use it at all. And I run across that a lot.

And sometimes it is because where the rubber meets the road, you’ve got your workflow, and some of that is going to change. If you want to get the best out of your technology, that’s going to take some practice, maybe some instruction. And having like a regular touch point with my clients after they’ve moved, we tend to get way more out of that than we do that first month.

Because now you’ve had the software for a couple of weeks or a couple of months, what are you still not using? Are you using that documents to file your emails, but you haven’t thought to link all of the subfolders of your inbox to your matters so that you can just drag and drop them into that subfolder so it files rather than you having to click the save button, search for the client, and matter every time. You know, that’s a couple of clicks, which it doesn’t sound like much now, but by the end
of the year, how much time did you lose on those three clicks per email? And especially when you, when you start a practice, I mean, you’re kind of in survival mode. You know, you can only handle the intake of so much information.

So the concept of learning everything new all at once, you can only handle certain amounts of information when you first start and then you can build on that. So as your brain allows itself to open up more, to engage in more information and allows you to use your software to a much deeper level. It’s important to have those resources and, you know, you can find those things on your own.

Yes. But I. I submit that you are better off having someone of a caliber that can bring those things to you to examine. And then you spend your time wisely.

You’re not just, you know, searching for information all on your own. Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely.

And there’s. There’s a lot of us out here, legal technologists. I’m.

I’m certainly not the only one. There’s a lot, a lot less than you think. You guys are kind of rare.

Law is a pretty small community. Yeah, yeah. I mean, there are a lot of IT people.

There are very few in my mind, legal technologists like yourself, you know, who you could trust to come into your systems, who deal with confidential information, who understand ethical boundaries and rules of lawyers, who know we have trust accounts, who deal with legal things that matter. And it matters not to just bring in someone who does it because they have no understanding of the rules that you’re bound by as an attorney. So that’s why I say it’s, to me, a rare thing to have someone who
deals with the legal space specifically.

And I think it’s really important. Yeah, I completely agree. Something I’m passionate about.

And you should listen to me on this one. If you purchase your office365 through a web host and you’re constantly frustrated by having limited features, you really need me. And your setup is probably not going to do enough to protect you from that ransomware event when it hits.

You need Business Professional and you need it deployed properly because you buy it, you put in some info, it’s set up. Well, that’s not everything. You’ve got conditional access policies that may need to be configured, sensitivity labels that may need to be configured and applied, et cetera, et cetera.

For instance, just in the convenience area, Business Premium comes with an archive mailbox, but you have to go in and enable it. And it comes with retention policies you can set up that will automatically move emails that are three years old into that archive mailbox, which, by the way, is about four or five times larger than the size limit of your regular mailbox. You need somebody to put that in place for you because it gets a bit tricky, especially when you’re starting to edit, like group
policies and intra.

That can be a bit intimidating, and it is possible to do it wrong and create some problems for yourself. So if you Want help with that, you can reach out to me. I am more than happy to help you.

A couple of things I am passionate about in this area is 24, 7, 365 active monitoring. Because what happens if somebody gets into your systems at 2 o’, clock, 3 o’ clock in the morning while you’re sleeping? You might not know until the middle of the next day. But if you have a security operations center able to respond to alerts in the middle of the night, they can probably lock those people out or call and wake you up, which is pretty, pretty darn important.

Because the reality is most folks that have something out there, it may alert them something’s wrong, but that’s about all it’s going to do. And then you got to do something about it. And if you’re busy tomorrow, if you’re at a hearing, if you’re not home, like might be a little while before that happens.

And what damage can be done between here and there. Also, another solution I really like has a 72 hour rollback. So if that ransomware hits, suddenly that shared, you know, OneDrive or what have you has become encrypted and we can roll it back.

That’s really amazing. I always tell the story when lawyers don’t believe me, how it can affect your practice. But you know, there’s this one particular firm who will name Nameless, who got hit by ransomware, paid for it to get their client files unencrypted and you know, thought everything was fine.

You know, they got over the hump and then one of their attorneys came back from vacation, didn’t know, didn’t hear about everything that had happened and hit the exact same email and locked it all back up again. So they had to negotiate with the folks who did it. And luckily the bad guys in the situation allowed them to get their files back without having to pay twice.

But it occurred to me, like how things can happen that you can never anticipate in a firm setting that who would have ever thought that after you get over the hump and you deal with all of it, that someone could just come back and lock it all back up again, not realizing it’s still out there. No kidding. Yeah, I have a lot of battle stories like that from over my years.

I know a big, big firm that of course will remain nameless. That similar situation, everything encrypted, they didn’t pay. They decided to take the time to fix it themselves.

They had to hire a specialist team to work on that. It wasn’t just one person, it was a whole team and they worked on it for months, I bet. And those attorneys had to figure it out between here and there.

Wow. Because a lot of systems were down. Right.

It’s important to have backups. And who has your client’s information. Yeah.

And who has your client information? I’m not comfortable with that. Yeah, no kidding. Now you’ve got to inform them.

Yeah. And there’s new data privacy laws in Florida starting. So.

Yeah, if you deal with more than 25,000 customers in Florida, there’s some pretty hefty fines. If you have breaches now, like $50,000 a day, I mean, there’s some crazy things out there that are just about to be instituted this coming month. And I assure you the solutions that protect you from this stuff is a lot cheaper paper.

Yeah, for sure. And so much of it is, you know, what type of programs are you using? Because had you had a cloud based system where all of your documents were being backed up and saved in multiple locations that are backed up, you know, that you’re not dealing with, it’s not on some local server, it’s literally all over the world where all of your documents are being backed up to, you know, you can access all of the things you need to access because it’s all in there. You know, if you use Dropbox
and your Dropbox gets encrypted, that could be a problem.

So you know, you know, you’ve really got to use. Well, I don’t want to pick on Dropbox. I know Dropbox has its place.

But for instance, you use something I might would set up for you, OneDrive that has the right security settings because yeah, you have to change the settings and then it’s backed up with something like Veeam. Right. And then you also have something like NET Documents for your system of record, what have you that can really help you out.

Because maybe your OneDrive gets encrypted, but your backups are fine, your Net Documents is fine. Right. You have redundancy, you’re going to be okay.

You have redundancy and life goes on. And yeah, so that’s the beauty of. I think what’s out there now is if you just take a little bit of time on the front end to be proactive about what you select and really look at the advantages and disadvantages of those systems, it’s going to make a huge difference on the other side.

Yeah, absolutely. Make a huge difference. I’ll just pass one last thing.

A lot of times when folks start looking for technologists or it outfits that say they’ll help solo attorneys. Often they get sticker shock when it comes to the price tag for those services. If you can’t afford that, don’t stop.

There’s. There’s folks out there that. That don’t price you out.

I feel like there’s a lot of services out there, and I’m sure plenty of them have good reasons where they want to remain open to solo practitioners. But they have to charge what they have to charge, and maybe that’s five, six thousand dollars a month. Right.

For. For all the features I’m offering, you know, the backups, the security operations center, et cetera. Right.

A lot of those firms will say, oh, we don’t really do that for solos. You know, that’s for, like, a firm that needs 20 or more employees. But I would ask, do your clients deserve that? No.

You probably need those same protections. Reach out to me. Reach out to folks like me.

There are folks out here that are actually accessible for you to help get started in that first year, to help you plan that exit strategy so that you can launch next year. And part of the attorney’s role in understanding technologists and working with technologists is learning what they’re talking about. And that’s where I think the solo small firm section comes in.

Because we can have these conversations because of a section like that I’m a part of. Yeah. If you had Talked to me 10 years ago, I would have said to you, what are you talking about? Like what? You are speaking Greek to me.

You know, I have always loved technology, but the reality of the situation is it changes so rapidly and there’s so many things out there that if you just are trying to get a grasp at it all, you gotta start somewhere, you gotta dig in somewhere. And, you know, it takes bits and pieces to learn to have those conversations. So that when they sit down with someone who’s an expert in their field, they know what they’re asking for and they know what they’re getting.

And that’s really where I think a section can be very valuable to train lawyers up on. You know how it all works. Yeah, absolutely.

Absolutely. Well, this has been so, so great. Thank you so much for being so generous sharing your knowledge.

Of course. For making the journey down here. Drove a couple of hours to be in studio for this.

This is my hometown. I love being here. It’s wonderful to have you.

If any listeners out there would like to get in touch with you, Renee, how would they best do that? So I’m a mediator with Upchurch Watson, White and Max. So you probably best reach me through their platform, their website. And then of course, if you just want to reach me on social media, my handle’s eagleearnee.

So I’m on Twitter, I’m on Instagram, I’m on Facebook. You know, feel free to reach out to me on that on any of those social media platforms as well. That’s wonderful.

Awesome. If you’re on LinkedIn, you look at Renee’s mutual friends, you’ll find me there. Or you can email me.

Ryanio Legal thank you for joining us today, sun listeners. You can catch me again next month. I’m not sure what I’ll be here talking about, but in between here and then, he sees me here and there, you can find plenty of great episodes by other hosts of the sunleader podcast.

We talk about all kind of things for entrepreneurs and wellness. So look at our episodes, look at my past episodes, visit the Solo and Small Firm section of the Florida Bar’s website and have a very wonderful day. Keep fighting, Ra.