Law Firm Backup Plan Best Practices
Do You Need a Backup System?
Do you have casualty insurance on your home? Of course
you do, and you would even if the mortgage didn’t require
it. It’s worth a couple of hundred dollars per year to
insure your home against its loss by fire, flood,
hurricane, etc., even though the chance of them happening
is very low. To lose your house and all its contents to a
fire or other catastrophe would result in the loss of
hundreds of thousands of dollars. It doesn’t make sense
not to have insurance on your home.
Backing up the data on your computer system is
analogous. In fact, it’s better than insurance because it
restores everything to its original condition.
If you lost the data on your computer system due to
equipment failure, accident, electrical surge, fire,
theft, user error, or intentional sabotage, how much would
it cost you to replace it? How many billable hours would
be lost? How many clients would you lose? Even after doing
your best to replace all of the data by copying the
court’s files, borrowing correspondence from your clients
and other lawyers, etc., how much data would be lost
forever? Would there be any way to replace your billing
system data? What is your legal liability to your
clients or others if you failed to maintain a backup
system that a reasonably competent lawyer would maintain?
The cost of a backup system that meets the "standard of
care" is less than $2,000. That amount includes hardware,
software, and training. If someone offered you a one-time
insurance policy for that amount that would guarantee to
replace all of your electronic records in case of loss,
would that sound too good to be true? It doesn’t make any
sense not to have a state-of-the-art backup system, and it
doesn’t make any sense to try to save a couple of hundred
dollars on a system that is even a little bit less
reliable. If the system doesn’t work the one time you need
it, it’s not worth what you paid for it.
Backup System Schedule
This scheme is based on a two-week rotation schedule
with a four-week archival backup. Ten tapes will be used
in the normal rotation: five marked Set A and five marked
Set B. An additional 12 tapes will be used over a 12-month
period to create an archival tape each month because many
problems can occur that require restoring your data from
more than just five days or even one month ago, e.g.,
billing system corruption occurring during the last
month-end close-out more than one month ago, corrupted
form file that would take many hours to recreate, etc.
At the end of the fourth week, one new tape is used for
an archival backup. This archival tape is marked with the
date and retained for at least one year. Another new tape
is archived at the next four-week interval. The goal is to
have 12 archival tapes at the end of the year. See chart
below for example. This procedure will require 22 tapes in
total.
It is imperative that this procedure is followed to
ensure disaster and/or file recovery.
Backup Rotation Schedule
Month 1 |
Monday |
Tuesday |
Wednesday |
Thursday |
Friday |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
A-Monday |
A-Tuesday |
A-Wednesday |
A-Thursday |
A-Friday |
Tape Sets |
Set B |
Set B |
Set B |
Set B |
Set B |
|
Set A |
Set A |
Set A |
Set A |
Set A |
|
Set B |
Set B |
Set B |
Set B |
Archive Tape 1 |
Month 2 |
Monday |
Tuesday |
Wednesday |
Thursday |
Friday |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Set A |
Set A |
Set A |
Set A |
Set A |
Tape Sets |
Set B |
Set B |
Set B |
Set B |
Set B |
|
Set A |
Set A |
Set A |
Set A |
Set A |
|
Set B |
Set B |
Set B |
Set B |
Archive Tape 2 |
Month 3 |
Monday |
Tuesday |
Wednesday |
Thursday |
Friday |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Set A |
Set A |
Set A |
Set A |
Set A |
Tape Sets |
Set B |
Set B |
Set B |
Set B |
Set B |
|
Set A |
Set A |
Set A |
Set A |
Set A |
|
Set B |
Set B |
Set B |
Set B |
Archive Tape 3 |
Etc.
When you first use a tape, write the date on it, and
replace on a yearly basis tapes that are used in the
normal rotation.
Your backup software should print a report each night
showing whether there were any errors.
Some backup software will backup your e-mail, and some
won’t. (Normally, open files are not backed up, and the
e-mail database is normally open.) Make sure your e-mail
is getting backed up. In many cases, e-mail is just as
important as hard copy mail.
Make sure all your important data is being backed up:
It should be stored on one computer, normally the
server. If you have more than one server, e.g.,
communications or database servers, they need to be backed
up, also.
The entire file server should be backed up. I have seen
backup schedules in which only part of the file server was
backed up, so when additional programs, e.g., time and
billing, were added, they were not in the backup path.
It is false economy to try to perform incremental
backups because they can be difficult to restore. All of
the tapes in the chain must work properly, or the whole
data set can be lost. High-capacity backup systems are not
expensive, and when you need to restore you don’t want to
run into any problems.
Newer backup programs will not only restore data, but
also restore the operating system, making the restore
process simpler and faster. Some of these are called
"Disaster Recovery®."
You should test the restore process at least once per
month to verify that the system is working properly. I
have seen firms that thought their backup was working
properly have no backup when a problem occurred. They
thought because they heard the tape moving it was working.
A test restore is the only way to confirm that you will
be able to restore your data if disaster strikes. If
your staff is unable to test the system, or cannot
remember to do it each month, pay your computer support
vendor to do it.
You should keep your backup tapes secure. Many firms
leave all the tapes sitting next to the server. This makes
it easy for a thief or saboteur to not only steal your
hardware but also your backup. Keep the archival tapes in
a safe deposit box, not in your breadbox at home. Keep the
daily backup tapes in the office (a) at least out of
sight, and (b) better yet, locked up.
The greatest backup procedures in the world are not
worth the paper they’re printed on if they’re not
followed. Delegate the primary responsibility to perform
the backups to a trusted staff member or IT staff person.
Train one or two other persons to perform the backup
procedures in case the primary person is not available,
and implement a policy such that the backup staff members
know when the primary staff cannot perform the backup
tasks, i.e., not only when they plan to be absent, but
when they are unexpectedly ill.
Don’t totally delegate your responsibility to oversee
the system. Occasionally ask the staff, "How did the
backup run today?" Create your own folder, and copy some
word processing files into it. After the system is backed
up, delete the folder. Then ask the staff to restore the
test folder. Check to see if all of the files were
restored, and that you can open them with your word
processor and read them.
There are other steps you can take to make your
computer system even more reliable and "fault tolerant,"
such as mirrored, duplexed, hot-swappable, and/or RAID 5
file server hard disk drive systems, and redundant power
supplies, fans, and network cards, but a good, reliable,
backup system is the first line of defense, and will
protect you against the vast majority of catastrophic
problems that you may encounter. Remember Murphy’s Law,
and keep in mind that Murphy was an optimist.
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