If your law firm’s office went offline tomorrow morning, how long could your attorneys continue working?
For a 26–50-employee litigation firm, the goal should not simply be to prevent outages. Your firm needs a plan for continuing critical operations when the unexpected happens, whether that’s an internet failure, a power outage, a ransomware incident, a server failure, a severe weather event, or a loss of access to the physical office.
A strong business continuity plan should answer five questions before an emergency occurs: what systems are critical, how attorneys will work, how data will be recovered, how everyone will communicate, and who is responsible for each step.
If those answers aren’t documented and tested, an ordinary technology outage can quickly become a business crisis.
1. Identify What Your Law Firm Cannot Operate Without
Not every technology system has the same importance.
If a conference room display stops working, that’s inconvenient.
If attorneys simultaneously lose access to email, case documents, phones, and critical legal applications, the impact is very different.
Start by identifying your firm’s Tier 1 systems, the applications and services required to continue essential legal work.
For a litigation firm, these may include:
- Microsoft 365 and Outlook
- Clio or another practice-management platform
- Document management systems
- Internet connectivity
- Phone systems
- Secure remote access
- File storage
- Backup systems
- Time and billing applications
- Trial presentation technology
- Critical third-party legal applications
Then classify other systems as Tier 2 or Tier 3 based on how long the firm could reasonably operate without them.
Ask One Question
For every system, ask:
“If this became unavailable at 9:00 Monday morning, how long could we operate without it?”
The answer helps establish your recovery priorities.
2. Define Your Recovery Targets Before an Outage
Two numbers are particularly useful when discussing business continuity with your IT provider:
Recovery Time Objective (RTO)
How quickly does this system need to be operational again?
A firm might decide that email or critical case systems need significantly faster recovery than a nonessential internal application.
Recovery Point Objective (RPO)
How much recent data could the firm tolerate losing?
If a system is backed up once every 24 hours, a failure could potentially create a very different recovery scenario than a system protected much more frequently.
These targets should reflect the actual business impact.
For example:
| System | Example RTO | Example RPO |
| 2–4 hours | 1 hour | |
| Case management | 2–4 hours | 1 hour |
| Critical documents | 1–4 hours | 1 hour |
| Phones | 1–2 hours | N/A |
| Noncritical internal systems | 8–24 hours | 4–24 hours |
These are illustrative targets, not universal standards. Your firm’s requirements should be determined by its workflows, technology, client commitments, and risk tolerance.
The important part is having the conversation before an outage.
3. Build an Alternate Way to Work
Business continuity is not the same thing as backup.
Backup answers:
“Can we recover our information?”
Business continuity answers:
“Can our people continue working?”
Imagine severe weather makes your North Texas office inaccessible for two business days.
Your servers may be perfectly healthy, but that doesn’t help if attorneys can’t reach them.
A continuity plan should consider:
- Secure remote access
- Cloud applications
- Firm-managed laptops
- Multi-factor authentication
- Microsoft Teams
- Cloud-based phone capabilities
- Secure access to case files
- Alternate internet connections
- Mobile connectivity
- Procedures for working from another location
The Laptop Test
Here’s a simple exercise:
Give an attorney a firm laptop and assume the physical office no longer exists.
Can that attorney:
- Access email?
- Reach active case files?
- Use Clio?
- Communicate with clients?
- Join a deposition or hearing?
- Record time?
- Access necessary legal applications?
- Work securely?
Every “no” identifies a potential continuity gap.
4. Plan for Internet and Power Failures
Sometimes the office is accessible, but the infrastructure isn’t.
A construction crew damages a fiber line.
A network provider has an outage.
A storm interrupts power.
Your firewall fails.
Any of these events can effectively take a modern cloud-dependent office offline.
Consider Internet Redundancy
For firms that depend heavily on cloud applications, a secondary internet connection may provide valuable redundancy.
The important word is independent.
Two connections that ultimately depend on the same underlying infrastructure may not provide the resilience you expect.
Your IT provider should evaluate:
- Primary internet connection
- Secondary connection
- Automatic failover
- Firewall configuration
- Cellular backup options
- Available bandwidth
Consider Power
Critical networking equipment may also benefit from properly sized uninterruptible power supplies (UPS).
A UPS isn’t designed to run an entire law office indefinitely.
Its purpose is typically to keep critical equipment operating through short interruptions or allow systems to shut down safely.
5. Protect Your Recovery Systems From Cyberattacks
One of the most dangerous assumptions a firm can make is:
“If we get ransomware, we’ll just restore the backup.”
Attackers know organizations rely on backups.
A resilient backup strategy should therefore consider whether backup systems are sufficiently separated and protected from the production environment.
Your firm should know:
- What is backed up
- How often backups occur
- Where copies are stored
- How long backups are retained
- Who can access them
- How backup administration is protected
- Whether backup failures are monitored
- When recovery was last tested
The 3-2-1 Concept
A commonly used backup principle is 3-2-1:
3 copies of important data
2 different types of storage or media
1 copy kept off-site
Modern environments may adapt this model further to address threats such as ransomware.
The important principle is to avoid a situation in which a single incident can destroy both your production data and your ability to recover it.
6. Create an Emergency Communication Plan
When systems go offline, communication often becomes the first casualty.
If Outlook and Teams are unavailable, how will employees receive instructions?
Your plan should identify alternative communication methods.
That may include:
- Employee mobile numbers
- Emergency text groups
- Alternate email accounts
- Phone trees
- Emergency contact lists
- Vendor escalation numbers
Maintain an accessible copy of important contacts that doesn’t depend entirely on the systems you’re trying to recover.
The list may include:
- Managing partners
- Office administrator
- Internal IT contact
- MSP
- Internet provider
- Phone provider
- Cyber-insurance carrier
- Legal counsel
- Building management
- Critical software vendors
During an outage, nobody should be searching old emails trying to figure out whom to call.
7. Define Who Makes Decisions
Technology recovery isn’t purely an IT responsibility.
A major disruption may require decisions from leadership, legal counsel, operations, communications, insurance providers, and technology teams.
Create clear roles.
For example:
Incident Lead: Coordinates the overall response.
Technology Lead: Investigates systems and manages technical recovery.
Leadership Contact: Makes business-level decisions.
Communications Lead: Coordinates employee and external communications.
Legal/Compliance Contact: Evaluates legal, contractual, or notification obligations.
Vendor Coordinator: Works with outside providers.
One person may fill multiple roles in a smaller firm.
What’s important is deciding before the emergency who has authority to do what.
8. Prepare for a Cybersecurity Incident
A ransomware event creates a different continuity challenge than a simple internet outage.
If suspicious activity is detected, restoring systems immediately may not be appropriate until the incident is understood and contained.
Your cybersecurity incident response process should work alongside your business continuity plan.
That may involve:
- Detecting the incident.
- Containing affected systems.
- Preserving relevant information.
- Determining the scope.
- Engaging appropriate technical and legal resources.
- Recovering systems safely.
- Communicating with affected parties when appropriate.
- Reviewing what happened afterward.
The technical response and business response need to be coordinated.
9. Account for Trials, Depositions, and Filing Deadlines
Litigation creates another layer of complexity.
An outage that would be inconvenient during a quiet week could become critical during trial preparation.
Your continuity plan should account for scheduled events such as:
- Trials
- Depositions
- Mediations
- Hearings
- Filing deadlines
- Client presentations
- Expert witness meetings
Before a high-stakes event, consider creating an event-specific continuity plan.
For example:
Before Trial
- Verify laptops.
- Confirm software licensing.
- Synchronize required documents.
- Test remote access.
- Verify backup copies.
- Test presentation equipment.
- Confirm internet alternatives.
- Identify the IT escalation contact.
Your firm’s overall continuity strategy provides the foundation.
Event-specific preparation reduces risk when the stakes are highest.
10. Test the Plan, Don’t Just Write It
A 30-page business continuity document sitting untouched in a folder doesn’t prove your firm can recover.
Test it.
At least periodically, conduct a tabletop exercise with leadership and your IT provider.
Example Scenario
It’s 8:15 Monday morning.
Employees cannot access email.
Clio is accessible, but the firm’s document repository is not.
Several computers display suspicious messages.
A major deposition begins at 10:00 a.m.
Ask the team:
First 15 minutes: Who gets called?
First 30 minutes: What systems are isolated?
First hour: How do attorneys communicate and continue working?
First 4 hours: Which services are restored first?
First day: Who communicates with employees, clients, vendors, insurers, or others as necessary?
You’ll often discover that the most important gaps aren’t technical.
They’re procedural.
The 12-Point Law Firm Business Continuity Checklist
Can your firm answer yes to all 12?
☐ We have identified our critical systems.
☐ We have defined recovery priorities.
☐ We have established RTO and RPO targets for critical systems.
☐ Attorneys can securely work outside the office.
☐ We have considered backup internet connectivity.
☐ Critical infrastructure has appropriate power protection.
☐ Our important data is backed up.
☐ Our recovery process has actually been tested.
☐ Backup systems are appropriately protected.
☐ We have an emergency communication method outside our primary systems.
☐ Everyone knows their role during a major incident.
☐ We periodically test our business continuity plan.
Your Score
10–12: Strong foundation. Continue testing and updating the plan.
7–9: Good progress, but important gaps may remain.
4–6: Several continuity risks should be prioritized.
0–3: A significant disruption could leave the firm without a clear path to recovery.
This is a planning exercise—not a formal risk or compliance assessment.
Real-World Scenario: Your Office Is Suddenly Unavailable
A severe lightning storm recently struck our area, knocking out power to an entire city block, including the office building of one of our law firm clients. The firm’s 15 employees needed access to their files as soon as possible. By partnering with Datatex for its backup and disaster recovery solution, the attorneys were able to resume their work within 5 hours. The building remained without power for three full days, but our clients never felt the full brunt of that.
We repaired and restored the on-site server, and all data was seamlessly synchronized back to the local environment.
The lesson: Disasters are unpredictable, but downtime doesn't have to be. A reliable backup and disaster recovery plan can mean the difference between a temporary inconvenience and a major business disruption.
A Simple 30-Day Business Continuity Plan
You don’t have to solve everything in one project.
Week 1: Identify
Document:
- Critical systems
- Critical applications
- Vendors
- Employees
- Data locations
- Technology dependencies
Week 2: Prioritize
Assign:
- Recovery priorities
- RTO targets
- RPO targets
- Responsible people
Week 3: Prepare
Verify:
- Backup
- Remote work
- Internet redundancy
- Emergency contacts
- Communication methods
- Incident procedures
Week 4: Test
Run one tabletop exercise.
Test one backup recovery.
Test remote access.
Document what failed.
Then fix the gaps.
Done and tested is more valuable than a perfect continuity plan that never leaves a binder.
Why Litigation Firms Work With DataTex
Business continuity for a litigation firm requires understanding more than servers and backups.
DataTex has experience supporting North Texas litigation firms and the technology attorneys depend on, including:
- Microsoft 365
- Clio and legal applications
- Backup and disaster recovery
- Cybersecurity
- Secure remote work
- Business networking
- Conference room technology
- Trial technology
- Responsive technical support
We understand that during a technology disruption, the objective isn’t merely to bring computers back online.
It’s to help attorneys continue serving clients.
What Happens if Your Law Office Goes Offline Tomorrow?
You should be able to answer five questions:
- What do we restore first?
- How quickly do we need it back?
- Where will our attorneys work?
- How will everyone communicate?
- Who is responsible for making each decision?
If leadership cannot answer those questions today, that’s where your business continuity planning should begin.
DataTex can help North Texas law firms evaluate their technology dependencies, backup and recovery strategy, remote-work capabilities, cybersecurity protections, and business continuity procedures.
The goal isn’t to predict every possible disaster.
It’s to build a law firm that can keep operating when the unexpected happens.
