At some point, your law firm will have IT questions, whether it’s because of a workstation error or some kind of connectivity issue to the internet. One of the most beneficial ways you can save productivity time is by contracting with a managed help desk to help your users get quick access to answers to their IT problems. The dedicated help desk also saves time for your local onsite support, especially if you’re a small law firm relying on another staff member to answer questions.
Why Downtime is So Costly for Law Firms
Without access to critical systems, your law firm could lose thousands every hour. One attorney might charge $500 per hour and up to $1,000 per hour (realistically, attorneys charge anywhere from $150 to $1,000 per hour). Attorney rates vary, especially by state, but some technical downtime affects the entire office, putting multiple costly attorneys in a place where they can no longer work on their cases. Let’s say you have only 5 attorneys working at $500 per hour. The downtime would be $2,500 per hour, and a daily loss of $20,000 (assuming 8 hours of productivity). The cost of lost productivity is significant for small law firms and even more devastating to revenue for large law firms.
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Most case management and government applications work in the cloud, so you need internet connectivity and a working internal environment to stay productive. Having a help desk and managed service provider for any IT issue will lower the risks of downtime. When you only have a few attorneys on staff, it might seem insignificant, but as you grow to 10, 20, or 100 staff members, stable environments are a must. Large law firms could lose up to seven figures a day in downtime with enough staff left unable to manage their clients and cases.
What a Managed Help Desk Provides
Instead of relying on another attorney to answer IT questions and struggling to resume productivity, a managed help desk provides you with dedicated support professionals with experience in common IT issues. Even the simplest of issues can be overwhelming for someone inexperienced with infrastructure and help desk support alleviates this stress.
For example, suppose that your entire office loses connectivity to the internet. Your ISP tells you that the downtime is not coming from their end. ISP support will only manage the router from your office to the ISP, so you need to figure out why the network is down. In many cases, this could be a Wi-Fi router issue or a damaged internal switch. A simple reboot could fix the problem, or you might need to reconfigure the router for better connectivity strength. Instead of relying on someone to take hours to figure out the problem, an experienced help desk person can more quickly identify the issue and walk you through configurations, saving time on recovery.
A few benefits you get with managed IT services:
- Access to experienced IT professionals without the high costs of local onsite staff
- Immediate support for staff for all their workstation issues
- Collaborations with onsite staff to repair infrastructure
- Proactive maintenance of hardware and software to avoid bugs and data breaches from known issues
- Quick response times and recovery during critical downtime
- Monitoring for any cybersecurity events and proactive alerts after the detection of events
- Backups and disaster recovery for quicker resolution after an event
How Managed IT Services Ensure Case Management Software Runs Smoothly
Managed IT services are more than putting out fires. They also help you stay proactive with your hardware and software. For example, keeping your software updated and installing antivirus software on all staff devices is a proactive way to avoid data breaches and malware. Both these tasks take time from normal productivity and often require a dedicated IT staff for larger law firms. A managed service provider –including help desk services– performs these tasks in collaboration with your onsite staff to keep your case management software working smoothly.
Your managed service provider also has service level agreements (SLAs) that they must adhere to. The number of hours –sometimes minutes– for a response depends on the severity of the issue. For example, if your whole office can’t access the internet and can’t work, this might be a tier 1 severity, meaning a response is necessary within 30 minutes (for example). The provider will then give you an estimated time of resolution, which would be a priority for them. A lower-level severity that does not interfere with productivity would have a longer timeframe for contact and recovery. SLAs are invaluable to any law firm that needs dedicated support for any critical downtime to limit monetary damage and revenue loss.
Predictable Costs and Scalability of a Managed Help Desk
As with most businesses, the idea of having a managed help desk might sound like an unnecessary expense. Good managed service providers will give you estimated costs so that IT support stays within your budget. Costs are often calculated per seat and the nature of your environment. This gives you a set flat-rate cost to include in your budget, and businesses can scale IT costs as the law firm grows.
Corporate Technologies makes it easy for you to determine costs. You can use our managed IT services calculator to estimate your monthly IT budget. You aren’t limited to remote support either. You can add on-site IT support if you’re limited on staff and need someone to help scale infrastructure or prefer a hands-on approach to support. Knowing your future IT costs is essential for budgeting, and any good managed service provider will mold a contract to fit your budget, expectations, and scalability.
Also Read: Cybersecurity Policies for Small Businesses
To determine if having an outsourced IT help desk is worth it, ask yourself these questions:
- Does your staff spend an unreasonable amount of time figuring out their computer problems?
- Do you lack on-site staff to support computer and network problems?
- Has IT downtime affected your case management or attorney productivity?
- Is your law firm growing and current IT infrastructure insufficient to support new staff?
- Are you finding it difficult to know what you need from IT to support your law firm?
How Can You Get Started with a Reliable Managed Help Desk?
If you answered yes to any of the above questions, you should be looking for IT support. Local staff is expensive, and each IT professional has their own set of skills and experience. With a managed service provider, you get several professionals with experience in several different fields to help support your law firm.
To find out how Corporate Technologies can help you, contact us today.
FAQs
A managed help desk gives law firm staff the ability to call for IT support and walk users through fixing various common issues with their computers, printers, and network hardware.
Instead of relying on a local staff member who might not be an IT professional, a help desk person is a professional with experience in various IT questions and issues. The help desk person walks users through their problems to fix workstations and software bugs more efficiently and quickly than an inexperienced person.
Hiring onsite staff costs include time, salary, benefits, and real estate. It easily adds up to six figures a year for a single staff member, but outsourced IT support comes at a fraction of the cost.
Although law firms typically work normal business hours, 24/7 IT support is necessary for any issues that could happen overnight. Detecting these issues is performed with monitoring solutions.
Costs for managed help desk and IT services depend on the number of users and infrastructure. You can estimate costs with a managed service provider calculator.
