Hurricane-Proof Your Law Practice

Date: September 19, 2005
By: Anton Hopen, U.S. Registered Patent Attorney

The 2004 and 2005 Hurricane seasons have demonstrated the need for disaster preparedness.  Florida attorneys are faced with this seasonal threat year after year.  Attorneys formerly practicing in New Orleans can testify to worst-case scenarios.  Many of those law firms may cease to exist or will completely relocate.  Florida law firms that do not protect their data and cannot come back online rapidly may lose their clients to better organized firms that can accommodate power outages, Internet interruptions and temporary relocation of working facilities.

Primary issues for law firms under hurricane conditions include:

• Safety of attorneys and staff;

• Protecting of client files and data; and

• Maintaining communications with employees and clients.

Safety of Law Firm Personnel

Tropical storm information including revised office hours should be posted on the firm's website.  Click the image above to view.

Law firms must keep personnel informed as to office closings so that evacuations can be planned well in advance.  By the same token, office re-openings should be communicated as quickly as possible to minimize disruption of service.  One of the most effective means of accomplishing this is by posting this information on the home page of the law firm website.  At the time of writing this article, 2005 tropical storm Rita threatens the Florida Keys and could potentially take a northerly turn towards the Tampa Bay area.  Our firm posts:

1. An image from NOAA updated in real time;

2. Any modification to our office hours; and

3. The time and date the information was last updated.
    

Both our staff and clients know to look to our firm's home page for any change in schedule.  In the event our office closes temporarily due to a storm, our staff will likely evacuate to numerous locations.  However, they all know to return to our website for information on when we will reopen.

Protecting Client Files and Data

Unless your firm is a "paperless office" you will have valuable data in both electronic and paper media.  For physical files you must evaluate the resilience of the office building and/or your off-site storage facility.  Data backup and safeguarding is a billion dollar industry.  It would be impossible to discuss the near-infinite options available.  Accordingly, this article can only address several generalized levels of safeguarding information:

 

A flash or "jump drive"

Personal Data Protection:  File backup has evolved from floppy disks, Zip disks, and CD-ROMs.  The direct backup media of choice for personal files are USB jump drives.   These are solid-state (i.e., no moving parts) devices that can fit on a key ring and store gigabytes of information.

If you have recently delivered a PowerPoint presentation at a legal seminar you will already be aware that presenters no longer haul their own notebook computers to the front of the conference room.  Rather they hand their "jump drive" to the seminar IT person who quickly uploads the presentation to the seminar laptop.

These drives are widely available and are also known as "flash drives" which describe the "flash memory" used to store information.  They are available from any computer retailer such as Amazon.com, Buy.COM, eCost.com or the like.  Recommended: 1-gigabyte jump drives are available for less than $100.

In the event that a hurricane is likely, it makes good sense for the attorney to copy important files onto a personal jump drive.  Even if you are in a large firm with a sophisticated backup system, there is no guarantee when IT staff will bring the firm network back online.  In the meantime you may lose valuable access to your information.  As a member of the Florida Bar you are ultimately responsible for your services and should not readily relinquish this obligation.

A word of caution: unless you encrypt your files, your jump drive may present a security risk.  Be sure you treat this device with the same precautions as any other privileged material.

Small Firm Data Protection:  Most small firms will run at least one file server which may include a tape backup or network attached storage device (a separate server device that stores files on one or more hard drives). The system will backup all files on a daily basis in the event there is a catastrophic failure to the system.  However, if the office server and backup equipment is destroyed by wind or water damage, then all may be lost.  A safeguard is to have the office data backed up to a remote location every night.  A small firm might have 2-10 gigabytes of client data and work product.  A number of companies offer affordable rates to store this amount of data:

• IBackup.Com - 10 GB - $34.95 per month

• Itronis.com - 10 GB - $49.95 per month

• Servare.net - 10 GB - $39.95 per month

Midsize Firm Data Protection:  Firms of this size will generally have a full-time IT staff.  However, even well-informed IT staff may be constrained by budget pressures and maintaining legacy (old) equipment.  Probably the safest system for protecting data against hurricane outages is co-locating the firm's servers at a special facility.  Rather than keeping your office server in your building, the server is located at a secure facility and connected through a secure, high-speed Internet connection.  These facilities generally include:

• Locking cabinets to store the firm servers

• Redundant power feeds

• Battery and diesel generator power backup

• Redundant HVAC systems with monitored temperature and humidity

• Fire threat detection and dry fire suppression

• 24x7x365 monitored, manned facilities

• Hardened structures able to withstand Category 5 hurricanes

• High-speed Internet access

The firm's server can be co-located anywhere.  Certain locations (i.e., Maryland) are desirable due to their proximity to major Internet backbones.   These solutions can run from $115 per month and higher.  Companies such as hostventures.com provide a number of co-location products.

In the event that a catastrophic hurricane threatened the law firm's infrastructure, firm staff and attorneys could simply move inland and access their server which would be unthreatened and unaffected by the storm.  This is one reason that the terrorist attacks on the Twin Towers did not disrupt many companies in those buildings.  Manhattan office space was so expensive that those firms co-located their servers in New Jersey.  Even though the towers were destroyed the data remained safe.

Maintaining Communications With Employees and Clients

Designate a firm "emergency operator" and forward your firm's main telephone to his/her cell phone.

In the event a hurricane closes the office, a staff member should be designated as the emergency operator.  The main line for the firm should be forwarded to his or her cell phone.  The emergency operator will then relay any critical communications to the home phone or cell phone of the responsible attorney.  An emergency contact sheet should be updated at least every quarter and distributed to all firm employees.  Delegating this job out to an answering service may be unwise, particularly if the service is local and similarly affected by the hurricane.

Attorneys should be aware that their Blackberry devices may not operate if the server running the necessary Blackberry software is offline during the storm.  Staff and attorneys may also agree to designate an emergency email contact if the firm's email system goes offline for an extended period of time.  The emergency email contact might be a Gmail, Yahoo! or HotMail account that is accessible from any computer connected to the Internet.  All firm members know to check in there for further instructions and to disseminate information on the state of the firm.

If you have an active matter such as litigation, call the client and provide your cell phone number to them.  Call the judge's J.A. and give them your cell phone contact as well.  The court may be back in session before your office lines are back up. 

Conclusion

The 2005 hurricane season has not relented and we have another two months of activity to contend with.  How our practice survives the next major storm depends on the actions we take now.

* Trademarks references above are the property of their respective owners.  Smith & Hopen, P.A. does not endorse or guarantee any of the products or services mentioned in this article. 

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