With natural and man-made disasters becoming more prevalent, let's talk about law firm emergency preparedness
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With the recent hurricanes hitting the southeast, we’ve seen some dramatic and honestly horrific damage done to some of our cities and towns. Which also means that many law firms got hit.

So while we work to rebuild the cities and the firms that have been damaged, let’s take a look at some of the early lessons that you can implement to make sure that your law firm is prepared for the next emergency – from natural disasters to more man-made disasters.

Why Your Firm Needs An Emergency Plan

Just like your family needs an emergency plan, so does your business. And especially your law firm. Because we often have heightened fiduciary duties to our clients that many other business types do not. Things like trust accounts, statute of limitations and other court deadlines, and privileged client files all make us more sensitive to major disasters and emergencies.

Also, it may be required by your malpractice carrier. Because being prepared for emergencies also is more likely to mean you are prepared for the everyday stuff and are less likely to make major errors there.

Finally, it’s just good business practice. We may not know what the emergency is going to look like, but we can take steps to address the most common scenarios that we are going to face.

Have Business Insurance that Covers Typical Disasters

Not every business needs to insure against every potential disaster out there. But every business is likely to be subject to several risks, depending on their geographic areas, that should be insured. The key is to determine which are the most likely risks and insure against them.

Everyone should have general property insurance, which will insure against things like tornadoes and hurricane wind damage. Whether as part of the property insurance or other general insurance, look for a policy that has business interruption insurance. This insurance will pay out if you have to close your offices for an extended period of time, funds which are helpful to continue to pay employees and vendors.

Using Hurricane Helene as an example, if you are near a body of water – river, lake, ocean, etc – then you should have additional flood insurance which is usually not covered by general property insurance. And with the increasing severity of storms, areas that haven’t flooded in the past are now areas that potentially could.

Every firm should also have cyber insurance in case of a cyber attack. Because not all disasters are physical disasters, and that cyber insurance can be a big difference in whether you survive an attack.

Before the Disaster

It’s not enough to have the insurance policies. You also need to know when and how to file claims.

Many policies have a certain amount of time post-trigger for you to file a claim — for example, property damage claims typically have a 1-6 year period post damage to file the claim.

However, with things like cyberattacks, you want to notify the insurer right away to take advantage of all that the insurance policy offers. For example, specialized legal counsel and IT support services are often part of the policy (and there are some big legal traps there if you don’t know what you are doing).

Most insurers also offer guidance and advice on how you can prepare for the events that they insure. Again, using the cyber insurance as an example, they offer advice on implementing anti-phishing technologies and multi-factor authentication protocols. And even template policies for responding to incidents. It pays to reach out to them before the disaster to get their advice and implement as many of their suggestions as you can.

First Aid Kits for the Office

You never know where you’ll be when the disaster hits. During a hurricane where you have plenty of notice, you may decide to camp out at home as the storm approaches. But earthquakes and tornadoes, not to mention terrorist attacks or gas explosions, can happen at any time.

Every office should be equipped with a well stocked first aid kit. This goes beyond the normal band-aids and aspirin for normal everyday needs, but to things like masks (at least N95 style) for airborne issues (like the recent BioLab explosion in a suburb of Atlanta). There should also be plenty of sterile gloves and wound closures strips, as well as gauze and even CPR masks.

I’m also a big fan of employees getting trained in first aid. It’s one of those team building activities that people feel good about and know that they can help people in the community. In a disaster, it is great to know how to do things like close a small wound, use a tourniquet, or wrap a sprain. (Yeah, this is a reminder that I need to go for refresher training).

Cross-Train Employees

There are tons of benefits of cross-training employees, many of which have nothing to do with disaster preparedness. But when a disaster strikes, having cross-trained employees can be so useful.

For example, if you have a secondary person that can run payroll, that means that employees can get paid on time even in the middle of a disaster. And when they are evacuating or otherwise displaced, those funds come in real handy.

While in normal day-to-day life, a marketing person may control the Google ad account, having a law firm administrator or COO that can step in to turn on or off campaigns, could be very useful to save money during a disaster. And having access to social media accounts and knowing how to post can be great to prevent a marketing misstep (think about ill timed posts that go forward because they were planned before the disaster).

For law firms, having lawyers that know enough about the other cases that they can step in to cover a hearing or deposition can be very valuable for normal operations. In a disaster, having a lawyer that can file the papers needed for extensions and also communication to clients and opposing counsel.

Ideally, a least one other person knows how to do and can do every aspect of a job in the firm. But focus first on the critical things that are needed to keep your firm running.

Have an Employee & Client Contact Plan

Did you hear about the school in North Carolina where the administrators took the initiative to reach out to each individual student (or their families) to make sure that they were accounted for after Hurricane Helene? It took emails, multiple phone calls, and even trips out to some homes to make sure that each person was accounted for. How did that make you feel? That the principal and team took the time to make sure every student was alive.

Now, as an employer, you should have a similar outreach plan for the immediate hours and days after an emergency. Can you reach each employee? If not, can you reach their emergency contact?

You can also establish a policy that each person check in when they are able. It might honestly take both before you reach everyone.

Don’t Forget About Law Firm Clients

Your law firm should also have a plan to reach out to your clients, to ensure that they have survived the storm and reached the other side safely.

Just reaching out to say “hey, I care about you. I want to make sure you are ok” after an incident goes a long ways to making people feel seen and heard. And appreciated as a client.

While the first step is to make contact with the clients, the second step will be updating them on their cases and matters. While you may not have that information in the first hours or days following a catastrophe, make sure that they know you’ll be in contact when you have that information. For example, once the courts announce that they will be closed, you’ll reach out with that information.

It’s Not Just the Locals

It’s also worth mentioning that we often have staff and clients distributed out across the country and even the world. I try to keep an eye on what is going on wherever my staff and clients are.

Earlier this year, there was a mass shooting on the same block as a company that I represent. As soon as I heard, I reached out to make sure that all their people were safe and accounted for.

Being in Atlanta, you know that I had lots of clients in the path of Hurricane Helene (it was initially forecasted to be headed right for me in Atlanta before it went further east of here). I spent a lot of the days after landfall making sure to check in with clients (as well as friends and family) to make sure all were ok. Fortunately, all my clients and their employees were safe.

Have Contact Information Offline

One thing I learned during a ransomware event at a former company was that your normal systems may not be available. Same can happen during a natural disaster or terrorist event.

While you may have phone or text capabilities for communication, your access to your cloud systems may be limited or unavailable. You should keep a contact list that needs no internet connection to get to.

When something like a hurricane is coming, you’ll have time to download a list. But it may also be useful for the unexpected events to have a fairly recent contact list available outside any cloud software so you don’t need access to the internet to get that contact information.

Backup Your IT Systems

With the catastrophic floods that hit North Carolina, you know that a lot of firms lost their IT systems and client files.

When you have on-premises systems though, you need to have a backup system that backs up to an off-site location. Preferably not in the same geographic regions.

Now that we have the option, I generally recommend that people use cloud-based systems. But even these systems should be backed up regularly. After all, you ever know when they will get hit with their own floods, cyber attacks, or just go out of business.

One thing to consider is how you will access these backups in case of an emergency. Is the information in a proprietary system that is no longer available? I generally recommend that firms try to backup as much as possible in formats that are generally accessible by many different programs — PDFs for documents, Excel and CSV for databases.

Designing IT with Potential Disasters in Mind

We can actually design our IT systems to be more robust during a crisis, long before a crisis hits. For example, being able to work-from-home is a great benefit that employees love but during a crisis may become a necessity.

Think back to COVID when we all went WFH. Was your firm or company ready for it? One firm that I know had VOIP phones, but they were premises based, not cloud based. That meant that they only worked in their offices and they were not ready for WFH.

Similarly, do you use desktops or laptops in your firm? If you provide staff with laptops, you are much more resilient during a crisis, as people can literally pick them up and take them to work from a remote location. While it is possible with a desktop, it’s much easier and quicker with a laptop.

Cloud-based systems are much more resilient as well. Distributed systems can spread out the risk for many potential disasters, although you do have to be aware of potential risky entry points for cyberattacks.

Even things like digitizing your files and going paperless is a big part of designing your law firm to withstand disasters. All those things that provide flexibility and are employee benefits during normal times become critical firm-saving features during a disaster.

Preserving Client Confidentiality

We all know that the hallmark of the attorney-client relationship is that our discussions are confidential. Even through a disaster, we have a duty to preserve client confidentiality.

This means that our systems need cybersecurity protections so that even if a third-party gets a hold of your laptop, they cannot get to the data. This means that we need to be aware of what happens to paper files in the event of a flood or earthquake, where the structural integrity of our file rooms is at risk.

This is another example of where having a robust document retention program is very important — by regularly purging old client records that you no longer are required to keep, you reduce the risk of a breach of confidentiality.

This duty is also important in how we go about post-disaster recovery. We need to be aware of what client information could be exposed to contractors that are helping us clean up our offices or recover our IT systems.

Save Costs Where You Can

During the middle of a disaster, you are going to be spending money. Hopefully, a lot of it will be reimbursed by your insurance (you have insurance, right?).

But there are some things that you can do, if you have the mental bandwidth or often you can delegate to those team members or vendors that are less impacted by the disaster.

For example, you’ll want to pause or reduce many of your marketing efforts. You don’t want to be advertising for new matters when you cannot answer the phones or take on new clients. Your Google and Meta paid ad campaigns for example may be greatly reduced, allowing you to stretch your resources further.

Of course, this may be practice area dependent — if you are in personal injury or property damage type of practice areas, you can get a lot of cases — if you are able to answer the phones and take on new matters.

If your office has been damaged, you should contact your landlord or mortgage holder. Many may be able to provide temporary relief, especially for renters where the premises are not in good condition.

One thing that I typically do not recommend, as much as you are able, is to cut salaries. I know it is not always feasible to continue on indefinitely, but to the extent you are able, if you can continue to pay your employees, do so. It creates so much goodwill in your staff, that you are taking care of them, that you will be able to recruit anyone going forward. It also helps the community get back to normal faster.

Representing Clients Through Disasters

After disasters, our clients will be looking for help. Since you are their lawyer on one matter, it will be common that you’ll get asked about a lot of other issues too, some that you may not feel confident in giving advice on the topics. Think about insurance claims, rent or mortgage relief, workplace conditions, and unfortunately, even probate.

Under Rule 1.1 for competency, we cannot give advice in areas that we are not competent in. During these emergency situations, you’ll likely be leaning heavily on your network of attorneys so that you can make referrals or bring in other counsel to help you.

Getting Extensions and Communicating with Courts and Opposing Counsel

Depending on the severity of the situation, you may have to take action to protect your client even without their instructions. Think about the situation in North Carolina right now, where many communities still remain without consistent communication weeks after the storm hit.

You may have to take proactive steps to protect your client’s case, even without their instructions — asking for extensions from the court and/or opposing counsel. In widespread situations, like the aftermath of Hurricane Helene, the Courts are likely to make a blanket pronouncement about closing courts and extending statute of limitations and deadlines for ongoing cases. This is exactly what North Carolina has done already, using the state Supreme Court’s statutory authority to extend deadlines by one month and noting that additional extensions may be issued as needed.

In almost all natural or widespread disasters, you will find that courts and opposing counsel are generally willing and able to help you in these matters. But be prepared to make emergency filings as needed to protect your clients’ interests.

Useful tip: have templates that are approved by the managing attorney ahead of time. Junior associates and/or paralegals can then help complete these templates and even submit them as necessary. Even as a solo, having one less decision that you need to make in a time of disaster will be a welcome relief.

Protecting Client Property and Funds

For those of us that serve as a trustee over client property, even temporarily in most cases, we have a duty to safeguard that property – especially through a disaster. As the immediate aftermath of a hurricane calms, clients will be looking to use their funds as part of their recovery efforts.

Please make sure that all your trust accounts are fully reconciled and the records are available to confirm amounts and make distributions. You may also need a good old-fashioned checkbook to write checks, if you normally use software to print checks. In the immediate aftermath of a storm or disaster, you may not have access to the software or the necessary printer.

Getting Up and Running After a Disaster

I’m not going to lie, a disaster – whether natural or man-made – is a stressful situation. Many companies never make it back after big disasters. Some firms will just go through the process of closing down.

But if you have a strong plan before the disaster and have done what you can to prepare, you’ll be in a much better position to continue forward after. And knowing that there are many in the community that want you to succeed will help you.

Part of your disaster plan has to be the plan to get back open and to fully operational.

Communicate to the World You are Open

The first step is to let the world that you are open. In the first days and weeks, you are likely just trying to answer current clients and take care of their matters. But as you get back to fully operational, you need to let potential clients know that you are taking new matters.

Use those social media accounts and email newsletters. Depending on the specifics of the emergency and your firm, hosting an open house can be a great way to get the word out. And it doesn’t have to be overly fancy — having a grill with some hotdogs and cold drinks to welcome people back can be sufficient and welcome among the chaos.

Temporary Office Space

If your main office has been destroyed or even lacks power, you may have to find temporary office space. Many of us can now work from home, which is a great benefit after a disaster if our homes are in good, working condition.

But also don’t be afraid to reach out to your local business community, especially other attorneys. Even in areas of widespread damage, there are usually pockets of businesses and homes that are fine and have power (business districts, especially near hospitals, hotels, and grocery stores, are often the first to get power back since they may not have as many trees to fall on power lines, the grid is stronger and the area is dense to get the most help to the most people the fastest). Many of these places will welcome others to setup some temporary office space in their offices.

Resume Full Marketing Efforts

Once you are ready to take on clients again, you can resume your full marketing efforts, including the paid campaigns. Often, firms want to start slow on these, ramping back up to full marketing spend. Especially if part of their staff are still unavailable.

Consider Counseling and Other Employee Assistance Programs

After a disaster or other traumatic experience, we are often left with a very heavy emotional burden. Whether survivors’ guilt or a loss of the sense of security, we need to be aware of potential issues in ourselves and our team members that could lead to a loss of productivity, burnout, or even leaving the firm all together.

Look at your health plans to see if there are counseling or mental health services available. If not, or if they are not sufficient, then look to see if you can get a deal for your firm to do group and individual sessions.

Bonus tip: lead from the front, by using the services yourself. And give your employees the time to take advantage of those services. You, as the law firm owner, supporting the mental health of your employees in the aftermath of a disaster can go a long ways to everyone fully recovering.

In addition to mental health, look to see if there are other employee assistance programs that you can provide or promote. Some may be as simple as flexible work arrangements so that employees can deal with the insurance adjusters for their own homes or extra mental health days. But also gyms, catered meals, and helping the community as a team. You can get creative here and even seek input from your team members to see what would help them the most.

One example would be a team-building event where everyone is trained in field first aid, which can help people feel like they are taking control back and won’t feel as helpless next time.

Do an After-Action Report

After things have settled down and you are back to “normal” or the “new normal,” take the time to do an after action report. Talk with your team about what went right and what you could do better next time.

Then, put it on your priority list of things to work on to improve for next time. Because there will be a next time.

But do remember to not fight the last war. The nature of the disaster may be different the next time around. We should plan for resilience in the face of whatever is thrown at us.

And no, we will never be perfect. We just want to get better each time.

Need Help Creating a Law Firm Disaster Preparedness Plan?

Springboard Legal can help! Kimberly DeCarrera has guided companies through emergencies of several different types in the past, including cyberattacks and ransomware. She lives in an area that is prone to natural disasters as well — remembering the tornado that hit her hometown in high school, not to mention floods that have hit from remnants of hurricanes. Emergency preparedness is definitely top of mind for Kimberly.

Emergency preparedness is part of the best practices that every law firm should follow. Want help designing the best law firm for you? We’ve got you covered – from operating policies, employee recruiting and retention strategies, and building a firm that works for both your personal and professional goals.

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