Is Microsoft Office 365 Right for Law Firms?

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A low-cost cloud solution for the corporate world. It’s an attractive concept, and one Microsoft has been working overtime to promote in the form of their Office 365 services.

It’s a smart business move on their part: historically, Microsoft’s revenue has been tied directly to their product upgrade cycles—what better way to supplement the stream than by creating a cloud offering that provides a steady, recurring cash flow?

Besides being a game-changer for Microsoft’s own operations, it’s a solid product overall; in the spirit of old clichés turned new, nobody ever got fired for buying Microsoft.

When it comes down to it, though, does mass appeal mean that Office 365 is a wise choice for law firms in particular? For your law firm?

As a cloud provider, a Microsoft partner, and a firm that currently serves multiple clients with various Office 365 packages, we’re no stranger to the draw of the solution and all of the questions surrounding it. As an organization that has been serving the DC law firm community for over two decades, we’re also no stranger to what makes a good technology solution for that industry.

To help you assess whether or not this solution will fit your law firm’s needs, we’ll break down what Microsoft’s Office 365 solution consists of, and what factors might (or might not) make it the right solution for you.

What is Office 365? 

Office 365 encompasses a number of different Microsoft services, some of which are cloud-based and some of which are not. These services come in a number of different combinations depending upon which specific package you select.

The key elements are as follows:

  • Hosted Exchange email
  • Full Office licensing for up to 5 workstations
  • Full Office experience on up to 5 mobile devices
  • Online versions of Office
  • OneDrive file storage and sharing
  • SharePoint collaboration tool
  • Lync instant & video messaging
  • Yammer corporate social network
  • Team sites

The variable that most directly impacts package pricing is Office application licensing: lower-level packages will include the “online versions” of Word, Excel, and PowerPoint (think Google Docs), while the highest-level packages will include full licensed installation of Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Outlook, Publisher, and OneNote on multiple workstations.

What makes Office 365 a good fit for law firms?

This solution is a really nice way to purchase the Microsoft Office applications we’ve all come to depend on. Especially if you already update your software on a 3-year cycle, the pricing is going to be more than competitive to subscribe to 365’s low monthly charge.

As far as 365’s hosted Exchange services, these can also serve a law firm well (assuming you do not have specific encryption or DMS integration needs). Microsoft is very quickly becoming the market leader for hosted email services, and the pricing you’ll find in 365 packages is on the very low end of the scale. Combine this with Lync instant messaging, and you’ll have a fine basic communication system.

What makes Office 365 not a good fit for law firms?

Documents are a law firm’s lifeblood. This means that firms must have a coherent file sharing strategy in place that allows for secure, centralized versioning and collaboration. As of yet, Microsoft has not brought this element to the table with Office 365.

Take a look at this guide and you’ll see what I mean—there are multiple moving pieces in play for document storage and sharing, and the risk of confusion and improper storage is incredibly high.

This means that you’ll likely need to invest in another solution to give you that strategy, whether it takes the form of storing documents on a file server with your own file naming conventions, or using a Document Management System with its own inherent parameters.

Not only that, but if your firm is approaching Office 365 as a comprehensive cloud solution, there’s a fair bit left to be desired; while you’ll get some mobility from the online versions of Office, your firm will still need its own machines, will still need servers for your time and billing software, and may very well still need a separate Document Management System (or file server) to provide you with the functionality you need from your technology.

Through our partnership with organizations that use these services, too, we’ve personally experienced frustrations with Office 365 support, which tends to be slow-moving and not terribly responsive; you will likely need to add on additional outside support.

All told, then, firms with less intensive technology needs may find both cost savings and sufficient functionality in an Office 365 solution.

But if you were hoping to abandon your existing infrastructure in favor of Microsoft’s cloud, you’ll need to investigate some alternative solutions.


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