Accounting firms have always placed the highest priority on the protection and confidentiality of client financial information. While this commitment remains high, the practical challenges of fulfilling it are greater than ever. The increasing use of Internet-based interactions with clients and the exchange of growing amounts of confidential data from widely-scattered locations demand careful management of electronic security. In addition, federal and state laws and regulations have introduced a legal requirement to protect data.

It is imperative that firm leaders conduct a careful review of their risk in handling confidential client information and ensure that they have appropriate tools and controls in place to manage the risk. This paper will review some of the major components of this risk and suggest ways to mitigate it.

Paperwork is essential to the practice of law, but it can become a drain on firm resources over time. In addition to consuming office supplies, printing and manually filing documents requires significant time and effort from staff. Records also require valuable office space, which becomes more costly when offsite storage is required for archives.

Digital file management can alleviate some of these costs, but proprietary storage servers can become quite costly as well. This can be particularly problematic with email. Whenever a file is sent as an attachment by an employee, a copy of the file is saved with the email in Sent Messages, in addition to the original copy stored in the sender’s file system. If the file is sent internally, a third copy is saved in the recipient’s inbox, tripling the space that file occupies on the firm’s server. While the difference may only be a few megabytes for a single file, imagine how often this scenario or similar cases may happen throughout your office in even a single day. Those extra stored copies will add up over time.

Stop wasting your time with traditional FTP services that are complex. Instead, easily manage your clients and cases with ShareFile. When you sign up for an account, our design specialists will customer your ShareFile portal to seamlessly match your company website at no extra charge. You will also be able to easily send files right from Outlook by integrating ShareFile’s Outlook Plug-in into your workflow. See why hundreds of law firms use ShareFile for easy and professional file exchange.

“Basically what I was looking for was an alternative to Dropbox. One of the biggest flaws that Dropbox had was that it allowed other people (typically clients) the ability to accidentally delete a folder,” states Jim Andersen, president of Foundation Management Associates. Mr. Andersen had additional issues using consumer driven file sharing and storage. He had the opportunity for a state government agency to become a large client, but they refused his service until he switched from the consumer file sharing to a more robust and secure business solution. Foundation Management Associates presented ShareFile to the state agency as their business file sharing and storage solution of choice. “After reviewing ShareFile, the state agency allowed me to use their product. I understand from talking to others that this was no small feat, and ShareFile should be congratulated,” states Mr. Andersen.

When Doyle Raizner, a Houston-based law firm, was in search of a cloud-based solution to fit its file sharing needs, the firm wanted a system that worked seamlessly with its current system. That’s when it found ShareFile. The firm practices with 13 employees, including 7 attorneys. With ShareFile, the firm saves time, money and also remains a paperless firm. The firm eliminated the need to have a videographer in the courtroom making edits on the fly; it can now instantaneously make edits back in the office and send it via ShareFile to the courtroom.

Is your law firm stuck in practices of the past – sending mailing pieces to clients via snail mail, utilizing costly courier services to receive documents, and putting your firm’s integrity at risk by emailing confidential files? If so, you may benefit greatly by managing your clients’ information in the cloud.
You may be wondering what it means to be “in the cloud.” Cloud computing offers your firm all of the same benefits as traditional legal services do, with the convenience of being able to send or receive your files from virtually anywhere. It also offers you piece of mind knowing that the confidential case information you are storing is locked away safe online in a password-protected portal.

Did you know that ShareFile has over 100 customizable features and settings? These settings vary from desktop tools you can download, to custom SMTP settings, to sorting folders, and more. For February, we are celebrating Valentine’s Day (a little late) by helping you Fall in Love with Folders. I have five great features to share with you that will clean up your ShareFile account and organize your folders and file . Just in time for Spring Cleaning!

I recently had the opportunity to speak with ShareFile customer and Greymane Contracting President, Alex DeCouto. Alex shared some insight with me on how his company uses ShareFile to streamline daily operations.
Greymane is a medium-sized general contracting company that services the hospitality industry as well as commercial, institutional, and high-end residential markets. The company regularly bids on different projects, and exchanges a large volume of documents and drawings. “These documents frequently go out to dozens of subcontractors and suppliers for pricing,” says Alex.