Technologies Legal Services Media Services Newsletters About Accesspoint Contact us Welcome to the ‘Horizon’ October 2020 Issue Well, hello to you all and I hope this latest edition of our Horizon publication finds you well. There’s been such a lot of activity in and around Legal IT in recent times, so it was difficult to know how to use my strictly limited column space to best effect! There’s, some interesting articles in this edition particularly “A whole new world of security”. It’s an area which everybody seems to be mindful of, but also an area where people don’t really know where to start or what to do when facing the day to day realities of running a busy practice. Sadly, it seems to me that true and meaningful engagement on this, only happens when either an individual or an entire organisation has succumbed to the ever more advancing (and usually costly) exploit. It’s an area that we ourselves take very seriously indeed, but one where we are only one piece, albeit significant, in the overall jigsaw. At the root of all evil at this moment in time, email! For legal firms, the hustle, bustle and everyday pressures upon fee earners make them particularly vulnerable to email-based attacks, the most prevalent being ‘Man in the middle’, ‘Phishing’ or a clever combination of both. A man-in-the-middle attack usually involves three players. The victim, the person with whom the victim is trying to communicate, and the criminal, notably the “man in the middle,” i.e. the actual real-world person who is intercepting the victim’s communications. Critical to this scenario is that the victim isn’t aware of the man in the middle. Cybercriminals are increasingly targeting the email accounts of banks and other financial institutions. Once they gain access (usually by enticing unsuspecting users to click on a link embedded within an email – the Phishing element), they then monitor transactions between the bank and its customers e.g. your organisations accounts department. The attackers then spoof the bank’s email address and send their own instructions to your hoodwinked user, usually within meaningful context, making the intrusion even harder to detect. This in turn convinces your employee to follow the attackers’ instructions rather than the bank’s. As a result, an unwitting employee may end up transferring funds directly into the attackers’ hands. As with the last decades drive to reduce the burden of paper within our sector, today we need to look at how we drive down the sheer volume of email transactions we undertake daily, especially those where content is financially based. Every ‘type’ of email we remove from circulation is one more significant threat removed. As with the reduction of paper a long and arduous process for many, we must start somewhere. Over the weeks and months ahead, we will be sharing with you further detailed insight and the viable steps you can take towards greatly improving your resilience to such vulnerabilities. Enjoy the read and do stay safe. – Richard Roebuck, Managing Director Virtual LALY Award Show In light of the recent Covid-19 climate, this year’s LALY award show was held as a virtual event! This not only allowed the event to trial a new era of hosting and connecting with legal aid workers, but it also opened the doors to many new attendees that may have not been able to attend otherwise. It was truly a delight to watch the night unfold and to sponsor the “Legal Aid Team” category, Nicola Burgess accepted the award on behalf of the team over at JCWI – it was clear that the team had demonstrated through their tireless efforts that they go above and beyond for their clients to provide them with justice, ongoing legal support and much needed compassion. A huge well done to them! A big well done to the Legal Aid Practitioners Team for pulling off a great virtual event! New and Improved Products to Watch Out For During the past few months our dedicated team have been able to assess what a firm needs to survive the current climate and come out of the other side successfully and in better shape. As a result, we have looked at our product portfolios across all three brands and have added new and exciting products to the mix and upgraded existing website integrations to ensure a more effective online presence for your firm. Online Will Planner Website Integrations Security & Hosting Solutions What’s new? A Whole New World of Security At Accesspoint Technologies we have seen many SME firms benefit from a recent wave of new opportunities as the world enters a new digital way of life. However, along with those opportunities a new wave of security threats, have come along as well and SME firms continue to be the most vulnerable to it. Recent Data Breach Reports state that 52% of all breaches featured hacking and 71% of breaches were financially motivated. As cyber-attacks are becoming more intelligent the security solutions available must also become more sophisticated. Our team of legal IT specialists are trained to ensure that firms have the best support and maintenance available to stay protected from threats. Need to know – Cyber Essentials now form part of the Lexcel requirements, as such all Legal Aid firms will need to comply and attain accreditation as soon as possible – We can help your firm gain its certification through our partners and security consultants. Discover our Cyber Security Solutions Cyber Essentials Penetration Testing Phishing Awareness ESET Anti-Virus Mimecast Mail Protect Device Encryption Mobile Device Management Check IT Out! We have recently revamped our Accesspoint Technology website to include a wealth of new informative material as well as useful features to improve your experience and suit the dynamic needs of your firm. Check IT Out New Features Support Service The new site is equipped with an easy to use ticket request feature, so any issues our clients may be facing can be dealt with as soon as possible. Interesting Articles Our articles page is the best place to help you keep up with relevant news and industry insights from our highly experienced team, so you don’t get lost in the noise. Product Offerings Now you can have the wide range of product offerings at the touch of a button, we’ve provided an easy to read layout by creating two categories of essential legal software and innovative solutions, so picking out products is well navigated and informed for your firm. Technical Services The services page is equipped with our latest offerings in cloud hosting, Microsoft services, business continuity and device management. New Solutions As experienced legal IT specialists we make it our mission to partner with the best companies that can assist us with providing your firm essential backup options, cyber security, business and printing solutions. Online Booking For convenience with our new online booking feature your firm can choose from a range of options including free consultation appointments, booking project meetings, site surveys and more. Meet the Teams Our team’s page allows you to get a better look at who you’re dealing with and see their personal description of what makes them such an essential part of our team. Visit Our New Website Case Study Embracing the Cloud Prince Evans Solicitors LLP, is a leading West London law firm, offering a full-service range of legal advice to their diverse client base. Prince Evans work in a number of specialist areas and niche markets, their experienced team continue to provide excellent expertise in all areas of business, property and people law to include corporate transactions, commercial property, social housing and new build homes conveyancing, litigation and personal injury, private client work and much more. The issue seen in this case was that for some time, Prince Evans had been operating with a myriad of site-based software controlling the various aspects of the firm, which as a result didn’t provide the joined-up approach the firm was looking for. With a software vendor issuing end of support on one of the software provisions and their site based network infrastructure coming to its replacement anniversary, Prince Evans proactively began to investigate their desire to not only consolidate their software provisions, but also embrace cloud hosting technology. Consequently, Prince Evans explored their options and engaged with software vendors and Accesspoint Technologies who helped them ensure the best plan of action was provided to cater to the current and future needs of the firm. Prince Evans selected their new practice management software and removed a large footprint of their site-based network infrastructure. Accesspoint Technologies partnered with Dell, investing in the very latest generation of server hardware and infrastructure, based around Hyper-Converged technology in a private datacentre built a new hosted platform for Prince Evans. This combined with Microsoft’s 365 platform created, in essence, a hybrid cloud technology service available across multiple cloud environments, be that public or private, to deliver the latest and greatest best in breed legal IT platform to help drive a more secure and unified process. Through our partnership with Prince Evans we are now providing them with a broad range of services which includes cloud hosting, necessary consultancy, training and development on their new practice management software. “Our legacy systems had served us very well for many years but the lack of modern functionality and disjointedness of having separate systems was holding us back. We are very ambitious and determined to be at the cutting edge of legal IT technology, and as a result, we teamed up with Accesspoint, who we knew had a wealth of experience and knowledge in this area, to produce and implement an IT strategy which would take us on our journey and fulfil the ambitions of the partners.” – Lee Davis What’s new? Online Will Planner We understand that ensuring your clients feel secure and looked after whilst dealing with something as sensitive as creating a Will is important. Equally important is making this process easy, convenient and time saving. With all these things in mind we have developed a fully digital online Wills planning form. How does it work? Step One The cleverly designed web form can be branded and integrated into your firm’s website, it’s user friendly and provides a number of features to ensure your clients don’t get stuck or confused along the way. A clear step-by-step process guide and progress bar is provided for clients to monitor and see how much of the form has been completed, and is visible directly on the webpage. Additionally, based on the client’s input, the web form will automatically alert the user on screen if the Will is complex and requires a consultation. Step Two As soon as your clients have filled in the web form, it will be submitted to your firm where a solicitor can verify all the data before submitting it to Tikit P4W. Once the verified data is injected into Tikit P4W it will create a client entity and matter, store all of the information within bespoke Managing Partner tables and insert the Will template. Step Three Once the client submits the form, an email is then sent in real-time to the designated users for the next stage. Processing the Will template will either merge data from the form into a simple Will or trigger a series of questions and answers which, together with information captured in the web form, will then build a complex Will. What are the benefits? Quick and Easy The web-based Will Planner is created by legal IT experts so that your clients can complete basic personal information on a well-designed web form with no fuss. Remote Working Remove the need for coming into the office, as the web forms are integrated with your firm’s site and completed remotely by clients, which will then be sent directly to your solicitor. Customisable Your firm can design the web form to fit your branding requirements as well as pick and choose what steps or questions should be added to your web form, providing your clients with a tailored approach. P4W Integrated Enjoy the benefit of having completed web forms submitted into P4W, where it will be duplicate/conflict checked and used to auto populate Wills and other letters and documents. LEARN MORE Digital Client Onboarding Package The Digital Client Onboarding Package allows your firm to quickly open their virtual doors in order to engage with clients remotely and with ease to get their case moving and avoid missing out on potential business. What’s included? Web Integration Toolkit Clients can visit your firm’s website and fill the online form consisting of core details, such as names, emails etc. Afterwards, the data is pulled straight into Tikit P4W and created as a prospect. Tikit FormShare We can create an easy to use workflow by adapting the process to run via a webform that integrates with FormShare. Payment Portal A standalone portal which allows your clients to pay their deposits/initial consultation fees at the start of the process plus any outstanding fees at the end of the case Microsoft Teams Integration This feature allows your clients to initiate a conversation directly from the website with your firms own Microsoft Teams account. What are the benefits? Remote Meetings It can provide the perfect alternative to face-to-face meetings and consultations. Features such as the web integration toolkit or Tikit FormShare allow your firm to integrate its website with online forms and Formshare to collect core information provided by your clients, where the information can then be sent directly to the PMS. Competitive Edge Digital onboarding provides all the facilities that many modern clients will be looking for. Integration of the package to your firm will make the whole onboarding process as easy as possible and show that your firm is forward thinking and very much dedicated to how your clients and prospects begin their legal journey. Easy Planning This package integrates a handy Payment Portal, and the customisable feature is the perfect way to complete your digital client onboarding, as it facilitates useful monthly/annual reporting and easy editing to ensure reliable cash flow for your firm. LEARN MORE What’s new? Website Payment Portal Accesspoint’s Payment Portal is deployed as a secure, easy to use standalone portal that can be integrated with your website to facilitate client payments for greater efficiency and more convenience. There are many reasons as to why your firm should explore integrating a payment portal to its website. Offering your client’s a speedy, convenient and secure option to pay their fees will ensure your firm gains a competitive edge as well as a greater level of assurance for the future. The main features Easy to use Clients simply access the portal with a ‘Pay Invoice’ button on your website, hyperlinks on an email or even a hyperlink embedded into your letter templates. Once on the portal, simple default fields are required: payment amount, invoice number, client name and email receipt address. Once submitted they are presented with a highly secure payment page in which card details can be entered and submitted. Customisation As standard your portal will be customised to your firms branding, but we also provide a customisation service which allows you to edit the entire design to suit your requirements. Our portal is deployed with our standard data fields but can be customised to accept any data fields your firm requires. Payment Gateways Our portal integrates seamlessly with over 50 payment gateways such as Stripe, WorldPay, Sage, Global Payments and more. This allows us to integrate the portal with your current financial setup to create a streamlined payment process. Security The portal uses secure payment gateways to provide you with a PCI-compliant experience that works across browsers and devices of all sizes. No card details remain on the portal, sensitive data is tokenised and sent directly to the payment provider without passing through our servers so you remain PCI-DSS compliant at all times. Discover Payment Portal for Law Firms “Our new payment portal has had a huge impact when dealing with client payments. It’s now much easier for them to pay and it demonstrates our commitment to making their lives easier by using a convenient modern method, plus we benefit from more streamlined and traceable transactions. Accesspoint were very professional and a delight to work with” – GC (Finance and Practice Manager) at Dawson Cornwell “The payment portal for us really has been a no-brainer. It was up and running in January before the lockdown measures took hold, and has been an invaluable mechanism for ensuring that team members working from home have been able to provide a facility for clients to make payments and settle bills that are easy to reconcile for accounts purposes.” – JL (Partner) at Luqmani Thompson & Partners Web360 Integrations There is a whole world of web-based integrations at your fingertips and we believe the Web360 package is a perfect place to start! It can instantly provide clients with a modern, convenient, and effective way to stay engaged with the firm as well as provide your firm with an efficient streamlined approach to transform how it works and stand out from the competition! Our FormShare integration allows your website to be integrated with Tikit FormShare (FormShare enables firms to use PDF Forms to electronically capture client data). The FormShare PDF data fields are linked to a custom built webform on your website, allowing clients to self-start the process by populating their information digitally. This data is seamlessly injected into your chosen FormShare. Our website integration allows your firm to seamlessly link your websites data directly into your PMS. As clients populate webforms on your website, the data will be automatically injected into your PMS within seconds. Your PMS will be configured to automatically validate the enquiry against existing entities and create a prospect/opportunity from the enquiry whilst notifying designated fee-earners of the new client. The prospect will also receive email confirmation that your firm has successfully received the enquiry. Web Forensics allows you to track the entire digital journey of a client, from clicking on a Google advert or Facebook post etc, right through to the completion of their case – all within your PMS. This allows you to identify which marketing channels are providing quality leads and which aren’t. It also provides a highly tangible ROI by cross referencing the cost of acquiring the client i.e a £2 advert click (PPC) against the final matter value. Forensics also maximises cross selling opportunities for your firm by automatically sending an e-shot to clients that visit chosen pages on your website. Discover All Features of Web360 Bracing for Impact We all know the legal industry is constantly adapting and throughout these past six months, the changes have continued to come at full speed with new guidelines from the Solicitors Regulation Authority (SRA) taking effect. New opportunities as well as challenges have arisen, specifically from the advertising rule that prohibits solicitors from making unsolicited approaches to members of the public. We now find ourselves asking SME firms “are your current marketing tools enough to stand out from the competition and what could you be doing with what’s available in the world of legal marketing IT?” Branding your firm is a form of advertising in itself and is the best place to start. However, most firms think that creating a catchy slogan and delivering a good service is all it takes to have a memorable brand and as a result fail to stand out from larger competitors. Think about where you want your firm to be and now ask yourself, are you on the right course to achieve it? If not, then consider and maybe reassess your overall strategy with an internal and external audit. Identifying your firms current position and matching it with what your agreed vision is may be hard, so don’t be afraid to get help from an external source, as it will provide you with an experienced view of what to do next. Remember, addressing all of your brand touchpoints, along with exploring what you want your customers to see is only half of the battle, your branding must also be communicated and adopted within your firm to be completely effective. When people within the firm are on the same page with its vision to deliver and they meet the expectations set from the top management, it will translate to your clients and the service they receive instantly. Introducing an effective intranet portal is a great way to ensure all of the team is able to get on board with any branding strategies from the start as they can stay up to date with company updates and more. This will quickly become the best way to achieve consistency throughout the firm and in turn the service given to clients – ‘a satisfied client is more likely to spread the word of your firm, resulting in free advertising’. When done right branding can be a powerful instrument to have, keeping it at the forefront of your firm will ultimately lead to more business as it will attract the attention of new clients whilst keeping existing clients engaged and more importantly it will help differentiate your firm from the countless competitors. With all that considered, it is fair to say that many firms may have adequate branding in place but miss the trick of using their website and portals as a very low-cost advertising tool. With most offices closed in the UK it is more important than ever to focus on your firm’s online presence, having an outdated website that provides the bare minimum to prospects and clients will simply not suffice. As well as updating the overall layout of your website and portal to appeal to your audience, think about how much more effective it will be to have integrations that allow both to have a more joined up approach to your workflow, as well as attract a wealth of new clients. Injecting accurate and meaningful data straight into your PMS is certainly not far-fetched as we have seen many websites utilise webforms to collect valuable client information and enquiries. With this approach the possibilities could be endless, once it is in your PMS it can automatically validate the enquiry against existing entities and create a prospect, whilst simultaneously notifying the nominated fee earners of the new enquiry. Guaranteeing that your firm will never miss an opportunity again. In addition to this, a sure way to gain a competitive advantage is by finding a way to utilise your websites back office, to allow you to identify which marketing channels are providing quality leads and providing a positive return on investment and those that aren’t. The results can then be captured within your PMS. All of this could ensure your website is a streamlined data driven site that enables your firm to act faster and smarter. Lastly, in recent years SEO has become arguably one of the most important tools the legal marketing field has to offer in order to stand out from competition, this is because more and more prospects use search engines to find legal services that relate to them and is within close proximity and they may use a wide variation of terms and words to find what they’re looking for. Focus on creating detailed SEO strategies that suit your firm’s requirements as well as the needs of your audience, as keywords are constantly changing, maintaining the SEO on your website frequently is important to staying as the top results. Over a short period of time, you will begin to see the improvements – being able to connect with visitors who are looking for your services and eventually seeing an increase in the number of enquiries made, plus more knowledgeable insights to your target audience. The legal market is more than equipped to deal with regulations that put certain methods of advertising to a halt. With more legal marketing specialists developing new ways to ensure firms can reach their clients, the only thing left for your firm to do is explore the many options available to you. – Scott Brown, Digital Services Manager Contact us on: 020 3189 2645 - Email us here Head Office: Accesspoint, Unit 7, Ashton Gate, Ashton Road, Harold Hill, Romford, RM3 8UF Copyright © 2020 Accesspoint Group Holdings - All Rights Reserved Cookie Policy | Copyright Statement | Privacy Policy | Terms of use Portal Login OK