Industries
IT for law firms
Client confidence, kept.
happier IT supports law firms across Alberta, British Columbia and Ontario. Legal IT carries an obligation most sectors do not: confidentiality is a professional duty rather than a preference, so access, retention and evidence get designed first, convenience second.
Who it's for
The systems a firm actually practises on.
Practice management and document management are the two a firm cannot work without. Everything else is negotiable.
Clio
Cloud practice management, widely used across Canadian firms. Because it is browser-based, the risk sits in the accounts and the internet connection rather than in a server.
PCLaw
Practice management with trust and general accounting built in. Often the longest-serving system in a firm, so any change is planned around the accounting calendar.
Worldox and iManage
Document management, the systems that file documents and email against a matter rather than a folder. They only work if profiling is consistent, so search, indexing and workstation integration get real attention.
Outlook, which is the real filing system
Whatever the firm has bought, most matter correspondence lives in mailboxes. Getting email filed to the matter and searchable is usually the largest single improvement available to a mid-sized firm.
What's included
What actually goes wrong in a firm.
The ordinary events that create an awkward call to a client, an insurer or a law society.
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Trust records that cannot be produced quickly
Trust accounting is subject to law society record-keeping rules and to spot audits. Records have to exist, be retained, be backed up, and be producible without a week of searching.
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Access that ignores the conflicts wall
Where everyone can open every matter, an ethical wall is a policy rather than a control. Document management systems can restrict a matter properly, and doing that before it is needed is simple.
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A litigation hold that only exists in an email
When preservation is required for e-discovery, ordinary deletion has to stop for that data, including mailboxes of people who leave mid-matter. That needs a defined technical step, applied and recorded.
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Money moving on a changed instruction
Closings and settlements involve large transfers arranged by email. Verifying any banking change on a known phone number, plus email authentication so a message claiming to be from the firm is harder to fake, removes most of the exposure.
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A departing lawyer, and the files
The same questions arise every time: what access ended and when, what was copied, what must be kept, and what transfers with the client. A recorded offboarding process answers all four.
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Client security requirements arriving mid-engagement
Corporate clients send outside counsel guidelines, their own rules for the firms they instruct. The technology sections are frequently stricter than any regulation.
How it works
How we start with a firm.
Discreetly, and nothing scheduled near a closing, a trial or a year end.
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We find where matter information actually lives
Document management, mailboxes, the shared drive, a laptop, an old server kept just in case, and whatever the last matter’s review platform still holds.
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We make access match the intent
Permissions granted by role and by matter, multi-factor authentication, a second check, usually on a phone, before a login is accepted, on email and remote access, and departures handled the same day.
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We assemble the answers before they are asked
One document covering where data is held, who can reach it, how it is backed up and tested, and what happens in an incident. It is what you send a corporate client.
What it costs
Your law society sets the floor. Your clients often set a higher one.
happier IT does not give legal or professional-conduct advice, an odd thing to offer a room full of lawyers.
Each provincial law society, in Alberta, British Columbia and Ontario, publishes its own rules on trust accounting records, file retention and confidentiality, and several publish checklists on using cloud services. Work from the current version rather than a vendor’s summary.
Underneath sits ordinary privacy legislation: PIPEDA, the federal Personal Information Protection and Electronic Documents Act, with PIPA, the Personal Information Protection Act, in Alberta and BC. Firms handling medical records in personal injury or family work also touch provincial health privacy law.
The requirement that lands hardest is contractual. Outside counsel guidelines can specify encryption, retention, access review, breach notification timelines and where data may be stored. We read those sections with you.
Data residency, answered properly
“Is our client data in Canada?” is answerable per system, in writing, and it appears in outside counsel guidelines more often each year.
happier IT’s own security operations centre is in Canada, staffed by our employees.
Why us for this
What we can put our name to here.
Firms are the clients least likely to agree to be named, which is exactly as it should be.
Verifiable today: certifications across Microsoft, Cisco, Citrix, Dell, HP/HPE, VMware, CompTIA and Red Hat, and a Canadian security operations centre staffed by happier IT people. The full list is on our awards and certifications page.
Questions
What people ask before they sign anything.
Can a Canadian law firm use cloud software for client files?
Generally yes, and most firms now do, with due diligence on the provider. Law societies in Alberta, BC and Ontario publish guidance covering the questions to ask: where data is stored, who can access it, how it is encrypted, and how you get it back. The obligation stays with the firm.
Can you support Clio, PCLaw, Worldox or iManage?
We support them as platforms: the workstations and network they run on, integrations, profiling and search, accounts and access, performance, printing and backups, plus escalation to the vendor when the problem is inside the application. We are not the vendor’s implementation consultants.
What do outside counsel guidelines ask for, technically?
Usually a defined list: multi-factor authentication, encryption at rest and in transit, restricted and reviewed access, breach notification within a stated number of hours, controls on subcontractors, and sometimes that data stay in a named country.
How do you handle a lawyer joining from another firm, or leaving?
With a written process on both sides. For a joiner: accounts, matter access by role, and a clear line about what may and may not be brought in. For a leaver: access ended on the agreed day including active sessions, files retained or transferred, devices returned and wiped, and a record of every step.
What does a litigation hold mean for our IT?
It means normal deletion and retention stop for defined data, and that this can be demonstrated. In practice: identifying the mailboxes and locations in scope, applying a hold in the platform, and recording who applied it and when, including former staff whose accounts would ordinarily be removed.
Related
Where to go next.
Want to know what this would look like for you?
A 30-minute call. No slides, no audit fee, no obligation. We ask what is breaking and tell you honestly whether we are the right fit.