COVID-19 has been hugely disruptive for the legal industry. Courthouses have been closed, trials have been delayed, and numerous other legal functions have been called off or postponed. As a result, legal experts have needed to pivot to new technologies to stay afloat. But not just any solution is the correct one, and when it comes to legal UC, there are so many choices. For this reason, 1Path put together an expert panel to discuss law firm technology solutions that will help businesses weather the pandemic and what comes next.
Preparing for the Unexpected
Discussion began with Paul Kanjorski, Firm Administrator at Sessums Black Caballero Ficarrotta. His firm had recently adopted new technologies that would prove essential during the outbreak.
“The firm itself has been around for thirty plus years,” he said, “and we’d invested in various hardware technologies that had begun to really age… I began a systematic process to decipher (our outdated tech), and one of those processes included partnering with 1Path to come up with a new implementation plan to upgrade… In the summer of 2019, we began to aggressively swap out all of these various technologies. And COVID hit essentially right in the middle of that process. We were uniquely positioned to take advantage of some of these unique tools and to know what to do when it happened.”
Carson Corley, Legal Assistant & Manager of Technology at Barnes Law Group, also expressed the importance of being prepared. Even with the pandemic, the legal world hasn’t slowed down, and being able to adapt to new challenges is key for business continuity.
“The biggest challenge for us right now is there was a lot of misinterpretation of the guidelines from the Georgia Supreme Court,” he said. “Some judges were still ruling on orders, some weren’t moving any at all… and now we’re doing virtual mediations, virtual hearings. We haven’t done a trial yet, but we’ve been pushing for some judges to allow that. We’re moving forward, and for our firm, it’s (now) about leveraging and getting our cases ready to go to trial and continuing to do as much as the courts will allow us.”
Why 1Path Cloud PBX?
The webinar ended with a presentation on 1Path’s current legal UC offerings. Alysha Forsythe, Product Manager at 1Path, broke down our Cloud PBX solution and explained how the different options would benefit different businesses.
“One of the things we can offer is a mix and match scenario,” she said. “Our Engage solution is really designed for people who need access to voicemail and who need to receive calls and make calls. They don’t need web conferencing, web faxing, or access to unlimited minutes. They’re really more of an office user. Our middle package, which is what we call Accelerate, is relevant to most of the people in your office. You’re looking at users who need no restrictions on calls they can take or make, and they also need access to a chat function… You actually have the ability to send out SMS texts or have chat functions internally in a company. We also offer what we call a full UC seat, which we call our Optimize package. And this package includes every feature we have to offer in our Unified communications platform… voicemail, unlimited local and long distance, AnyMeeting, WebFax… from a Cloud PBX standpoint, what you’re looking for as a company is something that’s features-rich… (and these different solutions) give you the ability to connect people as physically as possible when we can’t be in the same place. Having a platform that allows that intimacy every morning is extremely important during something like this… Another thing I think is highly important about our offering is it’s extremely reliable. 99.99% reliable. So long as the internet doesn’t go down, our solution is going to stay up.”
If you’d like to see more of our webinar, click the link above.
