By Gabriella Colasacco Hermey

Stone

Carpet

By Micki Mersky

Portray a strong employer brand

Be flexible in your requirements

By Canon Solutions America, Inc.

Prioritize Document Control and Security

1. Documents are stored, managed and accessed within the perimeters of a secure ecosystem

By Vincent Finaldi

In the VoIP industry, one of the most common questions we are asked is, “How much does a cloud-based VoIP phone system cost?”  The answer is…it depends—primarily on three main factors.  To help you get a sense of how pricing is determined in the VoIP industry, we’ve openly and honestly discussed those three factors below.

VoIP Pricing: A History Lesson

By Rich Kukla

The Cloud—Past, Present and Beyond

The Cloud Ahead

By Stew Smith

These days, data breaches have become almost commonplace.  It’s no longer if you get breached, but rather when you get breached.  While prevention is still key, it is important law firms implement procedures to quickly detect breaches and contain the damage once confirmed.  Likened to fire preparedness in an office building, cyber-security should be a non-negotiable component of a responsible workplace, regardless of size.  Don’t have a plan in place?  Here is a checklist of items to get you started: 

• Review your state’s data breach laws and make a list of entities you have to contact.
• Contact law enforcement or consumer protection agencies, if your state law requires it.
• Contact your data security specialist or IT consultant.  If you don’t have one, you may want to hire someone to perform an IT security audit so you’re less likely to experience another data breach in the future.
• Reach out to your insurance company if you have cyber liability insurance.  Your cyber liability insurance provider will pay for some of the costs associated with responding to a data breach, including (depending on your policy) crisis management, credit monitoring and data breach investigation.
• Investigate the breach, compiling information as to where it occurred and what data was lost.  (If you’re not particularly tech-savvy, hiring a security consultant to perform an audit may be wise.)
• Repair any security weaknesses, but keep records and evidence of the breach (which you might need to turn over to law enforcement agencies later).
• Contact a credit monitoring company about fraud and IT theft prevention services you can offer your customers.
• Set up a telephone line or e-mail address to handle incoming questions and concerns from customers.
• Post an announcement on your website about the data breach and how customers may contact you with questions.
• Notify individual customers (via e-mail, telephone or mail, in accordance with state regulations).

Post Assessment & Planning

• Assess gaps and evaluate effectiveness of plans, procedures and staff training.
• Adjust security and response plans and processes; communicate and train accordingly.
• Stay current; test your plan often and remain aware of changing threats and law.

By Jim Weber

Color.  It can make you feel.  Make you pay attention.  Make you remember.

While the topic of color theory, color psychology and the effects of color in advertising is broad, we will focus on the top three colors used in large law firm branding, and how those colors can influence a potential client's impression.

By Douglas Concepcion

Based on the historical trend established over the last few years, it is expected that the number and sophistication of cyber-attacks will continue to increase.  54% of the professionals in the cybersecurity space anticipate a successful attack against their organization within the next twelve months.  Even though security budgets have been increasing over the last several years, the return on the investment has been decreasing, i.e., what is known as the trickledown effect.  This means that nation states and sophisticated actors (all black hat hackers) have been developing very powerful tools over the past (approximately) ten years, and as with all technical development, the tools eventually make their way into the public space.  In these cases, very innovative malware is now being used by criminal actors to circumvent the cybersecurity (hardware and software) of organizations.  Due to this level of concern, most organizations, on average, are increasing their security budget by 21% in the coming year, with a focus on securing planned or existing cloud infrastructures, applications, training and education of staff and mobile devices. 

The biggest hurdles experienced by organizations is lack of knowledgeable or skilled employees in cybersecurity; with an overall shortage worldwide of about 800,000 at the present time, that number is expected to increase to 1.7 million unfilled cybersecurity positions globally by 2020.  This shortage is causing organizations to increase training of existing staff in cybersecurity, and to contract with companies that offer Managed Security Service Provider (MSSP) and Managed Service Provider (MSP) services.  A primary reason for the outsourcing to one of these organizations is that these service providers already have a dedicated staff in place 24/7, with the required skill sets for managing cybersecurity.  This removes a large portion of the security personnel burden from the organization, while also sharing the responsibility of security operations.

By Andy Surtz

Since before 2018 even began, you could not turn on the television, radio or computer without seeing or hearing news of another person falling victim to harassment in the workplace.  The #metoo movement is long overdue, though it is taking the world by storm.  A conversation that should have occurred in every workplace for decades is now happening consistently.  The idea of a safe work environment is not new.  However, it can be guaranteed that this idea is not going anywhere any time soon.  Employees, as well as employers, are taking notice of issues that may have been swept under the rug or laughed off in the past.  Here are five tips to help make sure you are creating a safe and inclusive work environment.

By John Remsen, Jr.

According to recent surveys conducted by The Managing Partner Forum and others, far too many smaller and mid-size law firms are doing little, if anything, to evolve and adapt in the face of rapid and accelerating change in the legal services industry.  What little innovation does occur is driven by the client in almost every case. And that’s not good if smaller and mid-size firms want to survive.

By Jerry Colasurdo

A common buzzword in the last few years, compliance is a top priority for many law firms.  In the process service industry, we’ve seen a significant increase in compliance requirements, especially in the financial sector.  Whether mandated by federal or state rules and laws or put in place due to increasing pressure from clients, securing confidential information is critical for law firms of every size.  Being compliant requires a proactive approach that covers all the bases. 

By Amanda Sexton

Process service isn’t something every office manager has to deal with on a regular basis.  But with the potential to impact client satisfaction, staff workload and timelines for cases, it should be on every administrator’s radar.  Below are some helpful tips you can use (or pass along to your staff) to make sure subjects and entities are getting served as quickly as possible.

By Kevin Roth

The probability of a malware attack on the legal community is higher than ever.  In 2015, Cisco ranked law firms as the seventh most-vulnerable industry to “malware encounters”.¹ Bloomberg Law reported in 2015 that at least 80 of the 100 biggest [law] firms in the country, by revenue, have been hacked.²  Cybersecurity firm, LogicForce, recently released a report that revealed over 200 U.S. law firms faced hacking attempts for confidential client data between 2016 and 2017, and 40% of the firms didn’t even know the attack had occurred.  Additionally, the LogicForce report found:

By Anne Itri

The number one rule of business development is to always impress your clients.  Happy clients will continue to give you their business and are much more likely to give you additional business and referrals.  The number two rule of business development is to always impress those with whom you work.  Eventually, they will have a need for your services and remember you.

By Joe Donohue

Unless you’ve implemented a print policy in your office, there’s a good chance your print volumes and costs may be higher than you think. Like high blood pressure, high copy and print expenses left unchecked can have a negative impact on the overall health of your company. Even in today’s economic climate that demands expense visibility and control, the avoidable waste associated with office printing is eye opening, to say the least!

By Dana Nalbantian, Jennifer Ellis-Rosa, IIDA, LEED AP ID+C and Rosemarie DeCiccio, CID, IIDA, LEED AP

Gensler, a global interior/architecture design firm with a focus on law firm design, hosted an NJALA workshop at its Morristown, New Jersey office on Wednesday, February 28, 2018.  The session gave a glimpse into the design process for creating law firm workspace.  The Gensler design team led participants through three activities to simulate the preliminary phases of the design process. 

By Joe Miller

If you're reading this, you might have already heard about rules-based printing, and then you're wondering how it can help you.  Beyond the productivity, control and information gains that a rules-based printing environment brings, you can also reduce your overall print footprint (a footprint that determines how large your printing expenditure is and will continue to be).  Shrinking your print footprint is the only sure-fire way to lower your overall costs.

There are 10 major ways that rules-based printing can be leveraged to reduce print costs: