Lawyers: Managing the Work-Life Balance

Networks First
March 27, 2013

It’s a well known fact that solicitors are expected to work very long hours, particularly in prominent City firms. According to leading graduate website, prospects.ac.uk, legal professionals can expect to work 12 hour days during busy periods, and are also often expected to work at weekends.

In fact, recent research by the Trades Union Congress found that 18% of legal professionals did more than 10 hours of unpaid overtime a week.

This kind of working culture is considered unhealthy by many people however, if you are a solicitor, there are ways to tip the scales in your favour. One of these is an efficient and secure IT infrastructure.

Working from Home
The ability to extend the working day by working from home is one of the most obvious ways of improving your work-life balance. OK, so you are still working, but you’re doing so in the comfort of your home, surrounded by family and loved ones, as opposed to sitting alone in a dark office swilling down yet another cup of instant coffee.
Unfortunately for the legal profession, working from home comes with its own unique set of risks and pitfalls: can you guarantee the security of legal documents on your home PC? Do you even have the software required to edit said documents?

Working on the Move
As busy, working people, many of us take our work everywhere with us. That’s particularly true if you’re fond of whipping out an iPad Mini on the train, or have your business emails synced to your smartphone.

However, for lawyers, other than checking emails, this can be a somewhat risky and problematic solution to staying longer at the office. Can you be sure documents are secure on your mobile device? Are you able to edit them? If they’re saved in a shared location, can you be sure no one else is editing them at the same time?
Thankfully, there are ways round these issues, and one of these is a product called ProductivityONE.

ProductivityONE
ProductivityONE allows users to access, share and control everything from contacts and calendars to secure legal documents across a range of platforms, including iPhones and iPads, Android devices and Blackberries.

Law firms can share information and collaborate both inside and outside the organisation without having to worry about security, meaning you can manage your work-life balance far more efficiently, working on the move and from home without worrying about security breach PR disasters!

To find out more about ProductivityONE and a whole suite of legal IT services products designed to make lawyers’ lives easier, visit Networks First at http://www.networksfirst.com/