The Wire Instructions Email Looked Exactly Right
Law firm IT, encrypted email, secure client document exchange and trust-aware payments for solo and small firms
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Law Firm IT Support: The Short Answer
A law firm holds exactly what an attacker wants in one place: settlement amounts, closing dates, wire instructions, financial disclosures, and everything else covered by the duty of confidentiality. Most of it lives in a mailbox, and most firms have never been told what the rules actually require of that mailbox.
ABA Formal Opinion 477R sets the standard: a lawyer must make “reasonable efforts to prevent the inadvertent or unauthorized disclosure of, or unauthorized access to, information relating to the representation of a client.” It deliberately does not mandate encryption on everything. It asks you to weigh the sensitivity of the information, the likelihood of disclosure, the cost and difficulty of safeguards, and whether those safeguards get in the way of serving the client. We build the stack that lets you answer that question honestly. This is not legal advice — your state bar’s rules govern, and they vary.
Confidentiality, In Practice
Reasonable efforts, not perfection
477R rejected a fixed checklist on purpose. What it asks is that you can show you thought about it: what you hold, who could reach it, what it would cost to protect, and what you decided. A firm that has made no decision has not made reasonable efforts.
When encryption stops being optional
The opinion names the situations that raise the bar: a client agreement or a statute requiring it, information sensitive enough to warrant it, matters touching healthcare, defense, trade secrets or a transaction in progress, and any circumstance suggesting elevated risk of intrusion. Most firms have at least one matter in that category open right now.
Email you actually control
Liberation Email includes end-to-end encryption on every plan, AES-256 at rest, malware scanning and your own domain, hosted in the United States on servers we own. It works with Outlook and Apple Mail over standard IMAP, so nobody has to change how they work.
The practical test is not whether you own security software. It is whether you could explain your arrangements to a disciplinary board without discovering something you did not know.
- The closing wire is the moment you get hit Business email compromise around real estate closings and settlement disbursements is the single most targeted event in a small firm’s year. The attacker watches a mailbox quietly for weeks, then sends amended wire instructions from a lookalike domain on the morning funds are due. The email reads correctly because they have been reading the real ones.
- Attachments become a permanent archive nobody manages Financial disclosures, medical records, tax returns and settlement statements arrive as attachments and stay in mailboxes for years after the matter closes. Hub for Teams at $7.49 per user a month gives clients somewhere to submit and retrieve documents, with access you can see and revoke when a matter ends.
- Domain authentication is the cheap defence SPF, DKIM and DMARC records stop someone sending mail that appears to come from your firm. Most small firms have never had them configured. It costs nothing to fix and it is the control that blocks the lookalike-domain version of the attack above.
What A Compromised Mailbox Actually Costs
Not the IT bill. The wire that left, the client whose funds are gone, the malpractice notification, and the bar complaint that follows. A single diverted closing is larger than a decade of doing this properly, and it is the scenario every one of the controls above exists to prevent.
Firm Email, Documents And The Office
Seats that track your headcount
Partners, associates, paralegals, the legal assistant and the bookkeeper. Liberation Email from $1.95 per user a month; Mail Pro at $7.95 per user a month for larger mailboxes and longer retention. Add or remove a seat when someone joins or leaves, without renegotiating a contract.
Intake, matter and role addresses
intake@, billing@ and practice-specific addresses that route to the right person rather than into one inbox that swallows everything. When a paralegal leaves, the address stays with the firm and the handover is a permission change rather than a password someone remembers.
Retention, backups and the file you need in year seven
Client files outlive matters by years, and most states set a minimum retention period. CodeGuard takes encrypted off-site backups from $2.09 a month with per-file version history; the data center is backed up daily with seven days of retention. We will also test a restore with you, which almost nobody does until the day it matters.
- Intake forms that do not dump PII into a mailbox A contact form emailing an accident description, a date of birth and an insurer straight into an inbox is the most common unexamined leak in a small firm’s website. Route intake into a controlled destination instead.
- Practice-area pages that get found Most firm websites are a brochure with a phone number. The pages that actually generate matters are specific: the practice area, the county, and the question the client typed at eleven at night. We build those.
- One vendor for the site, the mail and the domain Most email delivery problems are DNS problems, and they are far faster to fix when one team holds the domain, the mail and the website. As a firm grows this is usually the cheapest operational win available.
Your Website And Client Intake
Advertising rules for lawyers vary by state and some require specific disclaimers or record retention on firm advertising. We build the site; confirm the wording with your bar.
- Liberation Email from $1.95 per user/mo, end-to-end encrypted; Mail Pro $7.95 per user/mo
- Hub for Teams $7.49 per user/mo for client document exchange and matter records
- SPF, DKIM and DMARC configuration on your domain — included when we hold your DNS
- CodeGuard encrypted off-site backups from $2.09/mo; SiteLock from $14.99/mo
- Website and intake build, quoted per firm
- Payment processing — scoped against your trust and operating account setup, see below
- Office network, endpoint and IT support scoped per firm
What It Costs
Published per-seat pricing, so you can work out the monthly number before you call us. Website work and IT support are quoted per firm because a two-person practice and a twelve-person firm are not the same job.
On card payments and your trust account. If you take retainers by card, the rule that catches firms out is that processing fees must not be netted out of a trust deposit. Under ABA Model Rule 1.15 the full retainer belongs in trust and the fee comes out of your operating account separately — a processor that deposits $4,850 of a $5,000 retainer has just used client money to pay a firm expense. Chargebacks should draw on operating rather than trust, and your statements need to support three-way reconciliation. Tell us how your trust and operating accounts are set up and we will tell you plainly whether we can support it or whether you need a specialist legal processor. We would rather say no than have you find out at an audit.
Law Firm IT Support FAQs
Does the ABA require law firms to encrypt email?
Not always, and anyone telling you otherwise is oversimplifying. ABA Formal Opinion 477R requires “reasonable efforts” rather than a fixed standard, and it lists the factors that decide how far you go: the sensitivity of the information, the likelihood of disclosure without safeguards, the cost and difficulty of the safeguard, and whether it would get in the way of serving the client. It also names the situations where stronger protection becomes appropriate — a client agreement or law requiring it, highly sensitive matters, industries like healthcare, defense and trade secrets, and any sign of elevated intrusion risk. Liberation Email includes end-to-end encryption on every plan, so the question becomes when to use it rather than whether you have it. Your state bar’s rules govern; this is not legal advice.
What is the biggest security risk to a small law firm?
Business email compromise around closings and settlement disbursements. The pattern is consistent: an attacker gets into a mailbox, reads quietly for weeks to learn how your firm writes and when money moves, then sends amended wire instructions from a lookalike domain on the morning funds are due. It works because the email is correct in every detail except the account number. The defences are unglamorous — multi-factor authentication on mail, SPF, DKIM and DMARC on your domain, and a rule that wire instructions are confirmed by phone to a number you already had.
Can you take client files out of our mailboxes?
Yes, and it is usually the highest-value change available. Hub for Teams gives clients a place to submit and retrieve documents at $7.49 per user a month, so financial disclosures and settlement statements stop living as attachments in a mailbox for years after a matter closes. Access is visible and revocable, which matters when a matter ends or a paralegal leaves.
How long do we have to keep client files?
That is set by your state bar rather than by us, and the periods vary considerably. What we can do is make sure the files survive that long and are retrievable: CodeGuard takes encrypted off-site backups with per-file version history from $2.09 a month, and the data center is backed up daily with seven days of retention. We will also run a test restore with you, because an untested backup is a hypothesis rather than a retention policy.
Can we take retainers by credit card into our trust account?
You can, but the processing arrangement has to be right and this is where firms get into trouble. Processing fees must not be netted out of the trust deposit — the full retainer belongs in trust and the fee is debited separately from your operating account. A processor that deposits $4,850 of a $5,000 retainer has used client funds to pay a firm expense, which is commingling under ABA Model Rule 1.15. Chargebacks should also draw on operating rather than trust. Tell us how your accounts are structured and we will tell you honestly whether we can support it or whether a specialist legal processor is the right answer.
Do we have to change our practice management software?
No. We are not replacing Clio, MyCase, PracticePanther or whatever you run — your matters, billing and calendaring stay where they are. What we host and secure is the email, the client document exchange, the firm website, the domain and the backups underneath all of it. Those are the pieces most firms have never consolidated and most often have wrong.
What does law firm IT support cost?
The per-seat products are published: Liberation Email from $1.95 a user a month, Mail Pro at $7.95, Hub for Teams at $7.49, CodeGuard from $2.09. A two-person practice that wants encrypted email, document exchange and backups is a small monthly number you can calculate from this page. Website work, network and endpoint support are quoted per firm, because the honest answer depends on how many people, how many locations and what is already in place.
Related Industries
Start With The Wire Confirmation Rule
Law firm IT support, in the order that actually matters
Most law firm IT support pitches lead with the expensive thing. The honest order is the opposite.
The three controls that would prevent the majority of losses at a small firm cost nothing. They are just nobody’s job.
Start with the three free ones
Multi-factor authentication on email. Every business email compromise begins with someone getting into a mailbox. MFA ends most of those attempts before they start.
SPF, DKIM and DMARC on your domain. These records tell the world which servers may send mail as your firm. Without them, anyone can.
A rule that wire instruction changes are confirmed by phone. Not to the number in the email. To the number you already had. This one control defeats the entire attack even if everything else failed.
None of these are products. If your current provider has not set them up, that tells you something.
Then move the documents
A mailbox is an archive nobody manages. Financial disclosures, tax returns, medical records and settlement statements arrive as attachments and stay for years after the matter closes.
When a paralegal leaves, all of it leaves in their mail client. When a laptop is stolen, all of it is on the laptop.
Moving client document exchange into a controlled space is the first thing on this list that costs money, and it is the first thing worth paying for.
What the confidentiality duty actually asks
Rule 1.6(c) requires reasonable efforts to prevent unauthorised disclosure of client information. Opinion 477R explains what reasonable means in practice.
It is deliberately not a checklist. It asks you to weigh how sensitive the information is, how likely disclosure would be without a safeguard, what the safeguard costs, how hard it is to deploy, and whether it would get in the way of serving the client.
That framing is good news for a small firm. You are not expected to run a bank’s security programme.
You are expected to have thought about it. A firm that has made no decision has not made reasonable efforts, and that is the finding that is hard to defend.
Where firms get caught on money
Trust accounting is the other place law firm IT support quietly becomes a compliance question.
If you take retainers by card, the processing fee must not come out of the trust deposit. The full retainer belongs in trust; the fee is debited separately from your operating account.
A processor that deposits $4,850 of a $5,000 retainer has used client money to pay a firm expense. Under ABA Model Rule 1.15 that is commingling, and trust violations sit at the serious end of attorney discipline.
Chargebacks should draw on operating rather than trust, and your statements need to support three-way reconciliation.
We will look at how your accounts are structured and tell you plainly whether we can support that setup or whether you need a processor that specialises in legal trust accounting. That is not a sale we are willing to fudge.
What we do not do
We do not replace your practice management system. Clio, MyCase, PracticePanther, Smokeball — your matters, billing and calendaring stay exactly where they are.
We do not give legal advice, and nothing on this page is legal advice. Your state bar’s rules govern, they vary meaningfully between states, and on retention periods and advertising they vary a lot.
We are also not the cheapest option for a firm that only needs mailboxes. If that is genuinely all you need, we will tell you.
What a two-person firm actually spends
Encrypted email for two people, client document exchange, and off-site backups with version history comes to a small monthly figure you can add up from the pricing on this page.
The free controls at the top of this list cost nothing but an afternoon.
Website work, network and endpoint support are quoted per firm, because a two-person practice and a twelve-person firm with a server room are not the same job and pretending otherwise produces a bad number for one of us.
Tell us how client documents and payment instructions move through your firm today. We will show you what to take out of email first, what to authenticate on your domain, and what it costs — and if the honest answer is that you only need two of these things, we will say so.
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