Law Practice Tips

The Lawyer Thinks About Disasters
By Jim Calloway, Director OBA Management Assistance Program

Everyone has been horrified by the attack on the World Trade Center. We've spent hours watching the television coverage, talking about it with colleagues and friends and wondering what is ahead for our country and our world. The unthinkable has happened again.

The magnitude of this tragedy is immense and the motivation of the hijackers is beyond comprehension for normal people. Our lives have been changed forever.

Among all of the extensive media coverage, one item noted that the impacted businesses would have an easier time recovering than they might have because of the prior attack on the World Trade Center. It seems that because of the prior attack there is no doubt that all of the businesses had instituted off-site backup data storage plans. Faced with the staggering loss of life and property, it seems almost irreverent or trivial to discuss off-site data backup. But the fact is that disasters are a part of life, although hopefully none of us will ever have to deal with one on this scale again. There will be fires and tornadoes in some of our futures. We will all have to deal with deaths of loved ones and associates. This week hundreds of computer hard drives will crash across the country, rendering their data unrecoverable.

So perhaps one way to deal with all of our emotions is to spend some time planning for our businesses to recover from disasters and to avoid and prevent disasters. Almost four years ago, I published an article in the Oklahoma Bar Journal entitled "Are You Prepared for a Real Disaster?". Most of the concepts covered there are still valid and those who have never instituted law office disaster planning should refer to that article as well as this one.

Let's discuss a few areas where planning is required.

1) Your employees - If one of your employees had a medical emergency, do you know who to notify in their family? Do you have their spouse's name and phone number? Do you know who should be contacted to, for example, pick up their children from school in the event of an emergency? If there is no power in your building to run the computer network, is there a paper copy of this information and does everyone know where it is located? Is the information updated regularly or is the new employee missing from this file? Do you have a backup copy of this information at home so that you can contact everyone if weather or other circumstances cause you to decide to not open the office on a particular day?

2) Your personal life - Now turn around and ask the same questions in reverse. Do your employees know who should be contacted to pick up your children from school should you be rushed to the hospital? Do they have that extra personal contact information like your spouse's mobile phone number? One firm luncheon would provide an opportunity to gather and preserve this information for everyone. It might not be the most pleasant topic for a luncheon discussion, but it could turn out to be the most important luncheon that you ever had.

3) Your documents and data - Finding and using them - If your trusted legal assistant is incapacitated, do you understand enough about your computer system to locate, open and complete that brief which is almost completed and due today? Do you understand the file naming conventions and folder structure he or she uses well enough to know where to look for a particular word processing file? In fact, since it is your office, did you participate in setting up the location and naming conventions? In a small office without a computer network staff person it is also important to know the password used to access a workstation or at least know that the password is written down in some secure location.

4) Your documents and data - Protecting them from loss - At this time there should be no doubt that lawyers now professionally live and die by the data and information that is stored on their computers. As we continue to enter more and more data into our computer system, it becomes apparent that the real value of technology is not the hardware or the software, but the data we store. Whether it is legal forms, file work product, client contact information, research materials, or our calendar, if the data is lost or corrupted, the office will most assuredly grind to halt and lose thousands of dollars in the attempt to reconstruct just a part of the data.

All of the hard drives on all of your computers will fail eventually. Let me repeat: "All of the hard drives on all of your computers will fail eventually." The only question is whether you replace the hard drive or stop using the computer before the hard drive fails. It is absolutely critical that you do a data back up of all your data on a daily basis. It is also critical that you do a data backup of your entire system (including all of the software programs) at least weekly and store this backup off site. If your office burns to the ground it does not matter how religiously you performed your tape backups if they are now smouldering within your former office building.

Tape backups still provide the best alternative for most lawyers. We believe in complete backups rather that "spot' or incremental backups.

At the 2001 OBA Solo and Small firm Conference, Oklahoma attorney Sheryn Bruehl, Ross Kodner of Microlaw.com and Sheryl Cramer of Cramer Consulting in Lawton did a presentation entitled "Things that Go Bump in the Night: Backup and Electrical Protection." The computer slide show that accompanied that presentation is online at http://www.microlaw.com/cle/otherindex.html. This deals with not only back-up, but surge protectors and other technology issues. It is a very comprehensive program. The 2001 ABA Techshow version of that program is also online at the same address.

5) Back-up counsel - For solo practitioners, you need to have arrangements and instructions of what should be done with various files in case of death or disability, e.g. family law cases referred to attorney "A" and workers' comp cases to attorney "B," and young attorney "C" may be retained for minor court appearances. Many solo lawyers have a "buddy system" where they agree to take over temporary responsibility or answer questions for staff if their buddy is temporarily "out of action."

6) Disaster Recovery Files - This is a review of what we wrote in 1997. It is very important to develop a set of disaster recovery files.

The disaster recovery files should be stored on site in a secure (hopefully fireproof) location with a complete copy stored off-site in a very secure location.

These files should be useful for the minor disasters as well as major disasters. Sometimes a very minor disaster can become a major disaster if it occurs when the law office manager or trusted legal assistant is on vacation or otherwise unavailable.

For minor disasters such as computer hardware breakdown, there should be a copy of all service contracts and the address, name and phone number of the person contact for service for all office equipment.

For the minor disaster of a lawyer losing their wallet or purse, there should be the name and account number of every credit card and the account number with the 800 number to report the loss. You may want to include the phone number of the bank and the account for every bank account. (Now you see why it is very important that this information be stored in a secure location.)

The Disaster Recovery Files may also include the following:

Name, address and phone number of all clients for all open files and the case numbers

Your docketing information (you may be the judge as to how frequently you wish this to be updated)

Emergency medical information and contact information including phone numbers of relatives for all attorneys and all staff as well as special instructions such as child care or relative not to notify by phone

Specialized medical information that employees want you to have (due to the Americans with Disabilities Act, employees should be assured that they are not required to provide any confidential medical information to the employer if they do not wish)

Registration/license number on all software owned by the law firm (including that which came pre-loaded with the computers as they were purchased)

Serial or registration number on all hardware and office furnishings

A list of all major purchases (non-consumables) including the date purchased and the approximate price.

7) Developing a plan - For most busy lawyers this is the hard part. You have to take time out of your schedule to develop a plan, a disaster recovery file and a series of checklists. We have given you the initial tools here but there are certain issues that only you can handle personally and that are different for every law firm. You may need to include in your information for your personal disability who to contact to feed your cattle. You may handle the backup of office data personally and need to provide step by step instructions for someone else to do if you are temporarily incapacitated.

As the old saying goes, the longest journey begins with the first step. Just block off some time or schedule a meeting and get started.

8) For further study - The Association of Legal Administrators has several books for sale about disaster prevention and recovery in the law office. Information is online at http://www.alanet.org/education/mrc/facility.html

9) Recovery - If a disaster strikes, there are many steps that must be taken quickly. One thing will be almost certain. You will soon find out that items have been omitted from your disaster preparedness planning. There are resources, such as companies that specialize in trying to recover data from damaged hard drives. My counterpart at the Tennessee Bar, Suzanne Rose, has a great immediate recovery checklist online at http://www.tba.org/tnbarms/disaster.html.   This relates to major physical damage to the office like floods and tornadoes. You should also feel free to contact us at the OBA Management Assistance Program for aid.

Please accept my wish for you that all of your disaster recovery plans will never be used.

Originally published in the Oklahoma Bar Journal Oct. 6, 2001 - Vol. 72; No.29