When firms talk about disaster recovery, ransomware tends to dominate the conversation. It is a real threat, but a firm in Texas, Oklahoma, Louisiana, Arkansas, or Kansas also faces tornadoes, ice storms, hurricanes, flooding, and extended power outages. A burst pipe or a failed air-conditioning unit in the server closet can be as disruptive as any attacker.
A disaster recovery plan answers a simple question: if our office or systems were unavailable tomorrow, how would we keep serving clients and meeting deadlines?
Start with a business impact analysis
List what the firm cannot do without, and for how long.
- Email and calendar
- Document and matter access
- Billing and trust accounting
- Phone and client communications
- Court filing and deadline tracking
- Payroll and accounts payable
For each, decide the longest acceptable outage (recovery time) and the most data you can afford to lose (recovery point). Deadlines drive priorities. A firm with a filing due Friday needs different answers from one waiting on discovery.
Types of disruption to plan for
Loss of premises
Fire, flood, storm damage, or a building closure can make the office unusable. Plan for staff to work remotely or from an alternate site, with the equipment and access they need.
Loss of power or internet
Outages can last days after a major storm. Consider a backup internet connection, such as a cellular failover, and ask your IT provider what runs on battery backup and for how long.
Loss of systems
Hardware failure, software corruption, or a cloud service outage can take down key applications even when the building is fine.
Loss of people
Illness, a regional emergency, or the departure of the one person who knows the passwords can be as disruptive as equipment failure. Cross-train and document.
Cyber incidents
Ransomware and account takeover belong in the plan, with their own response runbook, but they are one scenario among several.
Core elements of the plan
Contact and decision lists
Keep a printed and offline list of who to call and in what order: partners, IT provider, insurer, key vendors, building management, and bank. Include personal phone numbers and a way to reach everyone if email is down.
Communication plan
Decide how you will tell staff and clients. Prepare templates. Identify a person who speaks for the firm. Consider which clients have urgent needs.
Remote work readiness
If everyone had to work from home on Monday, could they? Check that laptops are available and encrypted, that MFA works from anywhere, and that phones can be forwarded or run through a softphone.
Data and systems recovery
Document where backups live, how to restore them, and in what order. Include credentials stored securely and accessible offline to authorized people. Test the process on a schedule.
Paper and physical records
Some firms still hold original wills, deeds, or client property. Know where those are, whether they are in fireproof storage, and how you would retrieve them after an event.
Court and deadline continuity
Know how to reach the court clerk, how to request extensions, and where your calendar data lives independent of your office.
Insurance and documentation
Review property, business interruption, and cyber coverage with your broker. Understand what triggers coverage, waiting periods, and what documentation you would need. Keep inventories and photos of equipment, stored off-site.
Test the plan
- Tabletop exercise (annually): walk through a scenario such as a tornado warning on a Thursday afternoon.
- Communications test (twice a year): confirm the call tree works.
- Technical restore test (quarterly): prove you can recover key systems.
- Remote work drill: have the office work from home for a day.
Record what fails, fix it, and update the plan.
Keep it usable
A binder nobody can find does not help. Keep a short version, ideally two to four pages, with the key steps, stored both digitally and in print and shared with partners and the office manager.
Ethical dimension
Client files and funds remain your responsibility during a disaster. Check your state bar's guidance on file protection and continuity planning, which some bars have discussed in connection with disasters and with succession planning.
How we help
Counsel Cyber builds disaster recovery plans for law firms, including cloud-based continuity, failover connectivity, and restore testing. If your plan consists of "we'll figure it out," we can help turn it into something you can rely on.