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A solo practitioner from New Jersey, who has been at firms from mega international to mid size 25 attorneys before branching off on her own and to do primarily dispute resolution through litigation and alternative means, sent in the following account of how Clio helped her law firm not miss a beat during Hurricane Sandy.

I wish to write briefly about my experience using the Clio Cloud during Hurricane Sandy. 

When I first started using Clio about a year ago, I was thinking more along the lines of what would happen if my computer crashed.  Little did I know the services would be invaluable in the face of an unnatural natural disaster.  

I live in Hoboken (yes that Hoboken, the one on national television) and I work in the New Jersey suburbs of Morris County.  Both places had no power, no Internet, etc.  Yet, once I was able to relocate to an abode with power and Internet, I was up and running without missing a beat.  I had all my files at the tips of my fingers, along with my calendar, billing, etc. I didn’t even have to worry about gas lines to get to my office.  

If you’ve been impacted by Hurricane Sandy, Clio is here to help. E-mail hurricane.sandy.assistance@goclio.com for more information.

During a recent trip to Manhattan for the New York City Bar Association Solo and Small Firm Symposium, I had the opportunity to connect with a variety of legal practitioners, IT providers and residents of the New York-New Jersey-Connecticut tristate area. The devastation to businesses of all types and sizes was readily apparent – transit outages, massive lineups at gas station, and pictures of coastal devastation on just about every smartphone pointed my way.

Most chilling of all was my entry to Manhattan through the Lincoln Tunnel – having had my connecting flight cancelled due to the Nor’ Easter, I drove into town quite late, only to find myself alone in the tunnel save for one other vehicle. It suddenly became quite clear that things weren’t business as usual. 

Clio is reaching out to help hurricane victims.

If you’ve been impacted by Hurricane Sandy, Clio is here to help. For both new and existing users, we are offering 60 days of free service to help deal with hurricane recovery, and have a special startup offer for users moving their practices to Clio and “the Cloud” as a result of the hurricane. E-mail hurricane.sandy.assistance@goclio.com for more information.

Cross post from Small Firm Innovation. Drawing on his personal and professional experience, Joe Bahgat advises clients in matters relating to intellectual property licensing and contract negotiation, drafting, and litigation; trademark and copyright protection; and Internet and privacy law.

As I type these words into Evernote, using my iPad, the late night news is on the TV. It’s been 10 days since Hurricane Sandy graced the Jersey Shore with her unladylike presence, and yet there are still hundreds of thousands of New Jersians and New Yorkers without power. In my neighborhood we got lucky; the power was back on by the third day. Even better yet, when the power came back on, our Internet/phone/cable came on as well. That was a bonus—after Hurricane Irene in 2011, we were without all three for weeks, even though we only lost power for less than a day.

Irene came around about a year after I’d taken my law practice paperless. Although I had been vigilant about backing up our data, that didn’t help me with accessing the data at my office—which I couldn’t drive to because of flooded roadways—so that I could work from home. After that, I realized how important it was that I have local copies of all my files, so I could access the files regardless of whether I had an Internet connection, and regardless of whether the network at my office is online.

Fast forward about 14 months. Everybody’s running around New Jersey, frantically, preparing for this supposed hurricane that was headed straight for the Atlantic City casinos. I made sure we had plenty of bottled water, batteries, and an assortment of flashlights. And I checked all my backups, rotated the offsite drives, and shut everything down in advance of the severe weather. I thought I was prepared. I probably was prepared. Just not prepared for #Sandy.

Over the next few days I learned a lot.

1. Preparation is necessary, but often times it’s not sufficient. In other words, although you do have to be prepared, you can’t allow yourself to be naïve. As cliché as it sounds, you have to prepare for the unexpected. For example, we all rely on our smartphones, and one of the reasons we’ve learned to do so is that they’re usually unaffected by things like storms. Even if the Wi-Fi goes down, we can still read and send email on our iPhones, right? Wrong. If you’re an AT&T subscriber, you wouldn’t have been able to make or receive a phone call, send an email, or even get a text message for about four days after #Sandy hit. Not to check on your kids, not to tell your client that the deposition is canceled, not to assure your mother that everybody’s okay, despite what she saw on the news.
2. Many, if not most people don’t know basic traffic laws. It may sound trivial, or even silly, but when you approach an intersection with a traffic light that isn’t working, you treat it as though it’s a four-way stop (at least that’s the way it is in any state where I’ve lived). Since New Jersey drivers apparently forgot that rule after drivers’ ed. was over, the local police thought they could solve the problem by putting orange cones across all the intersections, to give the impression that you couldn’t drive through, or make a left turn. What a brilliant idea—make everybody drive around aimlessly—trying to find their destinations using only right turns—while there’s also a gasoline shortage. Needless to say, the are quite a few smashed orange cones in the town where I live…
3. Read and be familiar with your homeowners policy before an emergency arises. Knowing exactly what’s covered and what isn’t can help guide you when it comes time to choose among the items/property that you want to keep.  It’s also extremely helpful if you know the ins and outs of your policy coverages before you have a conversation with any adjusters. Enough said.
4. Chris Christie will be the next President of the United States. I’m not making an endorsement; I’m not even intending this as a political statement per se. It’s just an observation, a gut feeling I got while listening to him speak, and then seeing the way he bonded with Barack. He demonstrated courageous leadership and empathy. For a second I forgot that I didn’t vote for him.