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Paperless Law Offices Need to Back Up Their Data

Even as more law offices try to transform into a paperless law office, best law firms keep failing to realize the nature of computers … they can and do fail. In addition, there are thousands of viruses floating on the web, which can send your system crashing by penetrating through your antivirus software and firewall.

Too often with many top law firms, the reality of needing to back up their data hits home the moment they discover it's gone. Data loss usually happens without warning. Unfortunately, this is a lesson that many law offices have come to learn the hard way. But paperless law offices can take solace in this piece of good news: irretrievable data loss is completely avoidable. By backing up your data, you can retrieve all or most of what you lose.

A Paperless Law Office Needs to Back Up the Clients Files

The heart and soul of law offices is the client database. Inside the files are all the case details including administrative information such as contact names, addresses, etc. It is equally important to back up your employee payroll records.

Store Your Backups Off-Site

The backup medium (tape, CD, or DVD, etc.) should be removed from your law firm website to be on the safe side. If you are backing up to a CD, for instance, and you leave the CD in the machine, your data will be protected if the hard drive fails. But if the equipment is stolen, or the office burns to the ground, the backup will be lost. This may sound elementary, but it bears emphasis since too many top law firms fail to take this point to heart.

Backing Up Your Paperless Law Office with Tape

Tape has been the medium of choice for a number of years. Tape backups are relatively slow, but the process can be automated. Your paperless law office can schedule the backup to take place, for example, when you are sleeping. Tape drives have a capacity of 10 to 40 gigabytes, with the data uncompressed. Most advertise that they will hold twice as much if the data is compressed. It's true that they can hold more compressed data, but you are unlikely to get double the storage for your paperless law office. Some file types just do not compress.

Most tape drives cost several hundred dollars and tapes are relatively expensive as well, but considering the emotional and financial burden law offices endured when they did not backup their data it is money well spent.

Other Backup Options Your Paperless Law Office May Consider

Use a CD or DVD drive. Neither holds nearly as much data as a tape. If your paperless law office decides to go this route, be sure your software allows automated backups. A CD or DVD will work well if your data is not voluminous. CDs will hold up to 700 MB; most DVDs will hold 4.7 GB.
Use a Zip or Jaz drive. Both are made by Iomega. Zips hold 250 MB of data; Jaz holds 2 GB.
Use an external hard drive. External hard drives run U.S. $200-$300 and hold a vast amount of data. They attach to the computer via high-speed connections such as USB 2.0 or FireWire. Hard drives are fast, so the backup would not take much time. But the external hard drive is relatively bulky, so you might tire of carrying it home.
Your paperless law office could use a second internal hard drive, although that would mean leaving the backup in the office. Massive hard drives can be had for less than U.S. $100. Windows automatically accommodates multiple hard drives. You could simply copy your data from the master hard drive to the second one, known as a slave.

Consider an Online Backup Service

If your paperless law office is especially concerned about safety, you might want to consider an Internet backup. There are many firms on the Web that will store data for your paperless law office, for a monthly fee. You can run the backup automatically. Most analysts recommend that only businesses with a high-speed Internet connection consider this option, because backups by dial-up model could tie up your phone lines for several hours at a time.

Backup, Backup, Backup!!!

Best Law firms need to remember the practice of law is intangible in nature, and to have all of the data that was so diligently gathered throughout the years vanish completely is nothing short of frustrating and consequently depressing, not to mention the possibility that unacceptable negligence with valuable data could lead to malpractice. Therefore your paperless law office must explore all options to protect the security and integrity of your data. Only a reasonably fail-safe data backup system will help your paperless law office avert a possible data-loss crisis.

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