As it has for large swaths of the economy, the novel coronavirus pandemic offered many U.S.-based law firms their first opportunity to truly put their business continuity plans to the test. Whether firm leadership relied on established, written-down plans or winged it with ad hoc fixes as problems arose, the sudden issuance of various varieties of stay-at-home/shelter-in-place orders (and the still-ongoing reopenings) has driven home the need for planning to continue operations under a variety of less-than-ideal or expected conditions.

We invite individuals employed by U.S.-based law firms to reflect on your firm's response to the COVID-19 pandemic by completing our survey. Your responses, in addition to the results of your colleagues' feedback, will help you evaluate your firm's ability to deliver client services during crisis conditions.

In our second most popular blog post this year, we celebrated our 30th anniversary by reflecting on the changes we've seen in the legal technology industry since Innovative Computing Systems opened for business. 

In mid-2019, we held our first online security summit bringing together legal, cybersecurity and IT professionals to discuss law firms' responsibility to manage cybersecurity, including risk management, potential future threats and steps firms should take to ensure the security of their firms' and clients' data. Our third most popular blog post from 2019 was the invitation to the summit. 

Our fourth most popular blog of 2019 falls outside the strict theme of "business continuity" as it was a recount of a personal phishing attack I experienced (and have experienced again since). Nonetheless, it is just these personal attacks that lead to cybersecurity breaches of larger organizations. In fact, cybercriminals are often able to reuse the credentials they discover in successful cyberattacks against individuals' personal data to access corporate and other accounts.