LPM London calling by Natasha Rawley, Archive Document Data Storage
This article was originally featured as a column in the July issue of LPM. To read the issue in full, download LPM.
Happy July LPM readers – 2017 is really flying past us. I’m sitting down at File Queen HQ to write this column and thinking about everything that has happened over the past few weeks. One of the highlights for us was attending and exhibiting at the brilliant 2017 LPM London conference in May. We love this conference obviously because we are part of this super SME legal community – and it gives us great insight into our clients’ concerns and what challenges they’ll soon face.
By spending some time with conference attendees, including several current clients, it’s clear to see that most practice managers have three main concerns at the moment: IT security, the EU’s General Data Protection Regulation and operational costs.
We discussed information security in LPM’s June column after the horrific WannaCry attack on Europe, which had a devastating impact on the NHS. It’s clear from the conference that this issue is only growing in concern and cost. A sobering statistic uncovered during one of the conference’s straw polls was that just over half (51%) of SME legal business respondents have fallen victim to cyberattack. It was pointed out that the other 49% just might not realise they’ve been hacked – of course, there was no evidence to back this up – it was said largely to make the audience aware of how long some cyberattacks go undetected. That was certainly a very scary thought.
As the day progressed, the GDPR became the main focus of conversation. I was lucky enough to be invited to participate in a brief GDPR presentation on how it has impacted our clients and how we have helped them make changes in process and practices to prepare. I’m so happy to say the presentation, which you can download via our website at www.arcivestorage.net/GDPR had great feedback. I will mention again that no little chicks were harmed during the making of the presentation – since they were just toys. Don’t get the joke? See the presentation to find out.
An underlying yet powerful current at the conference was the pressure placed on practice managers to lower operational costs – which is even more intense than it was in the past. It seems that with the uncertainty of Brexit (how it will look, and what the impact will be), practices are becoming very concerned about the state of the economy and whether we will see an economic flatline – or worse, a dip. I’m sure this pressure has only increased with the recent election results. It is a worrying thought – it only just feels like the UK economy has recovered after years of struggle.
The impact of this issue was so powerful that in our next column we are going to be visiting some ways we have helped clients to lower operational costs internally in the past – using examples from our case studies. Remember, in the meantime if you have any questions, pop me an email at filequeen@archivestorage.net
