Will your office be ready when What if? becomes What now? J.R. Phelps Director, The Florida Bar’s Law Office Management Assistance Service During 2005, there were 27 named storms wreaking havoc all across our country. Four of those hurricanes, within a six-week period, directly impacted the state of Florida.During that time many law firms were “knocked down, but not out.” This year’s hurricane season is predicted to be just as ferocious. Will your office be prepared this year? Will your office survive? You’ve heard the old saying, “An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure.” When it comes to hurricanes, prevention through preparedness will again prove this homily to be true. Conversely, thinking “it could never happen to me” and being caught off guard can have devastating consequences and may bring your law firm to its knees.Many lawyers in Florida, Mississippi, and Louisiana say it will take years to recover from last year’s hurricanes. Many had disaster plans. Some did not. Few had a plan to deal with a disaster the size of hurricanes Andrew or Katrina. Through hindsight and lessons learned, we can, and should, develop plans designed to mitigate the effects of hurricanes, regardless of how large. Communications The first concern after any disaster is to locate and ensure the safety of all family and employees. If Florida’s governor ordered a mass evacuation, do you know where the people in your office are likely to head? You should! The key to normalizing any office after a disasteris the ability to make contact with key employees and learn their situation or availability. No employee will concentrate on the office until they know their family and home are safe.One of the first responsibilities of a firm’s disaster crisis team is to contact all employees. This task will be easier if you have recorded the intended evacuation locations of everyone in the office. In addition to evacuation locations, up-to-date directories with employees’ home addresses should also include home numbers, cell phone numbers, and e-mail addresses. These directories should routinely be distributed to your key office personnel. From previous disasters we’ve learned that cell phone communications may be reestablished first. Even then communication may be difficult. However, we’ve learned that IM (instant messaging) traffic will get through when regular cell phone service is problematic. If you don’t know how to IM, ask any teenager; they can help you learn. Another procedure is a telephone notification tree which sets up a calling chain as a method to notify every firm employee of emergency information on weekends or after hours. Telephones and Disaster Kits Disaster experts recommend establishing a mutual aid pact with a law firm or other business in some distant city unlikely to be impacted by the same disaster. The designated firm’s telephone number should be listed as an emergency contact point to keep everyone posted on the status of the firm, and as a rally point to establish contact with each other. Such an arrangement will, if the disaster necessitates a long-term office closing, also become a useful tool for attorneys to stay in touch with their clients.Digital phone systems require electrical power, and most cease to function immediately without electricity or once the battery runs down. Older analog phones, however, may operate when digital phones will not. Analog phones operate on low-level power from the telephone network. LOMAS recommends including an analog phone in your emergency disaster preparedness kit.Another technology of value is the walkie-talkie. Some of today’s versions have a viable communication range of over 15 miles. Add several walkie-talkies to your kit for use by key personnel as an additional strategy to facilitate communication during a disaster. Give them to key personnel before the disaster, along with frequencies or channels to be used and other emergency procedures. Business Continuation Once you are assured of everyone’s personal safety, including your own, your next concern is reestablishing the office in some fashion.A well-crafted disaster recovery plan will focus on business continuation as the next step. Of critical importance is re-establishing communication with clients. Clients need to know you are still in business and where or how they can contact you. Obviously, until Internet or telephone service is re-established, your communication options are limited. One excellent way to facilitate communication is to place some form of signage at the office location, such as, “We’re down but not out, contact us by….” Once you make contact with your reciprocal firm, ask them to update your Web page with information regarding the firm’s situation, and anticipated return to operation date.As part of your preparations, inventory the technology equipment available at partners’ and associates’ homes. Working from home on a limited basis may be the best option for keeping the practice going. Particularly note those who have a home power generator. Knowing who has the ability to communicate and/or produce work from home will go a long way in restoring operations. It’s not unusual for individuals to have a home fax, printer, computer, adding machine, desk, chairs, portable computers, PDA’s etc.; all of which can be patched together to make up a temporary office.After the disaster, it may be necessary to relocate to temporary office space during the time the office is being repaired. This might be in a partner’s garage, rented tent, or shared space in another law office. Some deciding factors may be who has power, telephone, or Internet connections. Whatever situation you arrange, it’s important to have some private area available in which you can converse with clients.Past hurricanes have demonstrated that Florida lawyers are extremely generous and gracious in extending offers of assistance, including sharing their own limited space. The LOMAS office of The Florida Bar coordinates offers of assistance with those expressing a need. Following a disaster you can look to LOMAS for assistance, be it space or loaned equipment. Computer Data It goes without saying: A well-designed computer backup system should be part of every disaster plan. And backups should always be stored off premises. But, as we saw along the Gulf coast, local off-site may not be enough. Unfortunately, none of us has the luxury of knowing exactly where a disaster will strike, so there is some potential that your backup, as well as your originals, will be lost if both your home and office are destroyed. Many firms are opting for Web-based backups onto ASP servers located in remote regions out of harm’s way. While they are a reliable and secure alternative, a speedy recovery could be hindered by your limited access to the Internet to download your data. Many ASP vendors will also provide CDs or DVDs of your data to facilitate recovery. Additionally, at your firm, you can scan calendars, accounting data, insurance policies, and other selected data to CDs. Typically, if a PC or server hard drive fails or is destroyed, the rebuilding of the replacement computer is a time-consuming process of reinstallation of both the operating system and every program once resident. Simply using a normal backup of the operating system and program system files won’t give you a restored system.Instead, consider creating a clone or image of the functional hard drive and save it off-site. This can be done by using a program like Norton Ghost. Restoring the Ghost image file, which has all the operating and program system files, will result in an operable computer as soon as the restore is complete. No reinstalls are necessary. It’s a two-step process. Image the new hard drive using the Ghost image file and boot the machine. Restore your data using the most current data backup. Paper Files Water is, of course, an enemy of paper. As part of preparation planning, don’t forget that plastic garbage bags are your friend. Files, as well as computers, printers, servers, telephones, and other equipment can easily be stored in plastic garbage bags and sealed with duct tape. Plans should include moving valuable files and equipment out of offices with windows into interior offices or hallways. The most valuable equipment or papers should be taken home or placed on the tallest file cabinet or closet shelf. Don’t leave them on the floor. Before moving equipment and files, take pictures of everything in your office. Those pictures will be invaluable for insurance claims.After a flood or hurricane, if you do have waterlogged paper files, move quickly to deal with the issue. If possible, freeze any waterlogged documents until you can hire experts to deal with them. Move quickly because mildew happens fast in Florida’s high humidity, and many companies won’t work with damp, moldy paper because of the health hazards. Conclusion While no amount of planning can totally eliminate all of the perils we face in a disastrous situation, sound planning can help to mitigate the personal and business costs. Hurricane disaster preparation and recovery is not a one-time project — it is a process, and one that must be continuously tested, updated, and tested again. Despite what history tells us to do, some firms continue to ignore the perils of hurricanes and other disasters by having no concrete business continuation plan. It brings to mind the line in “Jaws” from Richard Dreyfuss: “I think that I am familiar with the fact that you are going to ignore this particular problem until it swims up and bites you.” Or Roy Scheider’s: “I think you’re going to need a bigger boat.” I hope you or your firm doesn’t get bitten.For additional information on hurricane and disaster recovery, refer to The Florida Bar’s Web site at www.floridabar.org. Hurricane season begins in June Will your office be ready when What if? becomes What now? April 15, 2006 Regular News
read more