Legal

IT Support and Cyber Security for Law Firms and Solicitors

A law firm's reputation rests on confidentiality and continuity. Client money, privileged communications and matter files make legal practices a deliberate target, and the SRA expects firms to be able to explain their controls. Cloud Agile supports solicitors and legal practices with resilient case management infrastructure, security that stands up to a professional indemnity questionnaire, and support that understands a court deadline is not negotiable.

The Problems We Typically Find in Legal

These are the issues that come up again and again when we audit organisations in this sector. If more than two look familiar, a conversation is probably worth having.

Case management systems that slow the fee earners

The practice management platform is fine; the infrastructure, storage or remote access underneath it is not, and every document open takes ten seconds too long.

Conveyancing and payment redirection fraud

Criminals target completion funds with convincing email interception. One redirected transfer can exceed a firm's excess and its reputation.

Confidentiality across hybrid working

Fee earners working from home, court and client sites on a mix of devices, with privileged material moving through channels the firm cannot see.

Professional indemnity and client due diligence questionnaires

Insurers and corporate clients ask increasingly detailed technical questions, and answering them accurately takes evidence the firm may not hold.

Email archiving and matter retention

Long retention obligations, files that must be produced years later, and inboxes doing a job an archive should be doing.

Downtime with a hard deadline attached

Unlike most businesses, a legal practice cannot simply catch up tomorrow when a filing deadline falls today.

Services and Technology That Fit Legal

One senior team covering support, infrastructure, security, governance and AI, so nothing falls between suppliers.

Managed and co-managed IT support

Responsive support for fee earners who cannot afford to wait, with senior engineers owning issues end to end and priority handling for anything affecting a deadline or a completion. Explore our business IT support services.

Cyber security and email protection

Impersonation and domain protection, email authentication, multi-factor authentication and Conditional Access, plus monitoring that detects mailbox rule tampering, the classic precursor to payment fraud. Explore our managed cyber security services.

Secure infrastructure for case management

Microsoft 365 and Azure or hybrid hosting designed around your practice management platform, with performance, secure remote access and document handling that fee earners do not have to work around. Explore our cloud and infrastructure services.

Backup, archiving and disaster recovery

Immutable backups, tested restores and retention aligned to your file destruction policy, so matter files are recoverable years later and a ransomware event does not become a closure event. Explore our backup and disaster recovery services.

Security and Compliance Requirements

Legal practices carry both regulatory and contractual obligations around information security. These are the ones that most often drive the technical work.

  • SRA Code of Conduct and Accounts Rules

    Confidentiality, client money safeguards and the ability to demonstrate proper systems and controls, including around payment authorisation.

  • Lexcel and quality standards

    Information management, risk management and business continuity sections all require documented, evidenced technical controls.

  • UK GDPR and legal professional privilege

    Strict access control over matter files, defensible retention, and clarity about where privileged material is stored and processed.

  • Cyber Essentials and Cyber Essentials Plus

    A baseline expected by many corporate clients and increasingly reflected in professional indemnity pricing.

  • Payment fraud controls

    Technical and procedural controls around bank detail changes and completion funds, evidenced rather than assumed.

  • Incident response and reporting

    A tested plan covering ICO notification, SRA reporting and client communication if data is compromised.

  • Backup and matter file retention

    Immutable, encrypted backup of case management data, matter files and email, with retention configured to seven years or longer, and far longer for wills, probate and conveyancing where files are kept for decades. Retention policies, legal holds and tested restores are documented for SRA, Lexcel and insurer review.

A Typical Onboarding Process

  1. 1

    Discovery call

    Practice areas, headcount, case management platform, current provider arrangements and any insurer or client requirements coming up.

  2. 2

    Technical and risk audit

    A review of infrastructure, Microsoft 365 configuration, backups, email security and identity controls, benchmarked against what an insurer or Lexcel assessor will ask.

  3. 3

    Prioritised plan and quote

    Fraud and confidentiality risks first, performance improvements second, with clear per-user pricing and any project work costed separately.

  4. 4

    Transition

    Deployed outside billable hours wherever possible, with case management supplier coordination handled by us and no interruption to filing deadlines.

  5. 5

    Steady state and review

    Ongoing support with quarterly reviews covering incidents, risk changes and the evidence pack for your next renewal or audit.

Co-Managed or Fully Managed Support

Both models are priced the same way per user. The difference is how much you keep in-house.

Fully managed

Typical for practices up to around 60 fee earners with no internal IT.

  • Priority helpdesk for fee earners and support staff
  • Case management platform liaison and escalation
  • Device management, patching and secure remote working
  • Email security, monitoring and fraud protection
  • Insurer and Lexcel evidence maintained year round

Co-managed

For larger firms with an IT manager or small internal team who need depth rather than headcount.

  • First-line and out-of-hours cover handled by us
  • Your team retains ownership of the practice platform
  • Access to security, cloud and compliance specialists
  • Independent assurance review ahead of insurance renewal

AI and Automation Opportunities in Legal

Legal AI has moved quickly, and so has the risk of privileged material ending up somewhere it should not. We help firms adopt it deliberately.

Document drafting and summarisation

Copilot working inside your own tenant on your own documents, so bundles and correspondence can be summarised without material leaving your control.

Client intake and matter opening

Automation of conflict checks, client due diligence chasing, engagement letter generation and file opening steps that currently consume fee-earner time.

Time recording and billing prompts

Automated capture prompts from calendar and email activity, recovering time that is routinely written off because it was never recorded.

AI use policy for a regulated practice

Explicit rules on privileged and client-identifiable material, approved tools only, and human review before anything reaches a client or a court.

More detail on how we approach this is on our AI consultancy and automation services page.

Our Pricing Approach

Managed support is priced per user per month: Agile Core at £45 per user and Agile Fortify at £75 per user. Most legal practices choose Agile Fortify, because the managed detection, response and identity controls it includes are the same controls insurers and corporate clients ask about.

Servers are £100 each per month and network devices £10 each per month. Project work, migrations, Cyber Essentials preparation and consultancy are quoted separately at £120 per hour.

Legal FAQs

Common Questions

Yes. We support the infrastructure, devices, network and Microsoft 365 environment around your practice management platform, and handle escalation with the vendor when an issue crosses the boundary. We do not ask firms to change platform to suit us.

Through layered controls: email authentication and impersonation protection to stop spoofed correspondence, monitoring for mailbox rule changes and unusual sign-ins that indicate an interception attempt, multi-factor authentication across the firm, and staff training on bank detail verification procedures.

Yes. We maintain the technical evidence behind the questions insurers ask, including patching, backup testing, multi-factor authentication coverage and incident response, so the questionnaire is completed from records rather than from memory.

We help contain the incident, secure affected accounts and devices, investigate the entry point and restore from immutable backups that have been tested. We also help assemble the technical evidence your insurer, the ICO and the SRA will expect, and coordinate specialist forensic support where required.

Yes. We build secure remote access around managed devices, Conditional Access and multi-factor authentication, so working from anywhere does not mean privileged material travelling through unmanaged channels.

Typically three to four weeks for a legal practice, scheduled around filing deadlines and completion dates so nothing time-critical is at risk during the transition.

We work remotely as standard and onsite where it genuinely helps. Choose a region to see how our support, security and consultancy work locally.

Legal

Talk to an IT Partner Who Knows Your Sector

Book a 20-minute discovery call and we will tell you plainly what we would fix first, what it would cost and whether we are the right fit.