Secure File Transfer and the Legal Industry

It goes without saying that law firms handle very sensitive documents. Traditionally, these documents were just that - paper files that could number in the hundreds or thousands of pages, depending on the case. But continuing advances in digital communications have made needing to courier huge files a thing of the past.

An increasing number of law firms and legal departments (corporate and governmental) have started using digital dictation and (of course) a team’s lawyers and paralegals do all their work on computers. Now, one might be tempted to think that email is the way to go here, but despite it’s ease of use (almost everyone and their grandmother uses email) it has two major flaws - especially for the legal industry:

1. File size issues: email was never designed as a way to send, store or track files. IT departments (rightly) limit the size of files that can be sent or received to keep their servers from getting overwhelmed. Anyone who’s ever worked for a big company has probably received a message from IT asking them to go through their email folders and “clean house”. And in the unlikely event that your firm doesn’t limit attachment sizes, chances are that the recipient’s email account does. So even if you CAN send it, they can’t receive it.

2. Security: email is not really known as a secure method of communication, and files sent by email are easy to retrieve or send on to an unauthorized source (just click “Forward”). Legal files may contain information about cases, defendants, plaintiffs or witnesses, so ensuring their security is of utmost importance.

Despite security necessities, lawyers have better things to do with their time than futz around with file transfer and administration, so a large file transfer solution has to be not only secure but easy to use as well.

Enter large file transfer from FilesDIRECT! Unlike FTP, there is no software to download (and thus no holes in a company’s firewall) and our system uses an intuitive, “e-mail style” interface. But unlike email, it highly secure, and includes 128-bit SSL encryption on all file transfers, password-protected downloads, and the ability to set files to only download once.

Simplicity, security and tons of features all mean that FilesDIRECT is the sine qua non of large file transfer - click here to try it free for 30 days !

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