Key takeaways
- A small or mid-sized Dallas law firm does not need a big vendor to set up document management, backup and e-discovery infrastructure; a small owner-led IT company that knows legal work can plan it, build it and keep running it.
- Document management is a decision about where matter files live and how they are found, not just a product purchase; most firms under 30 people do well with NetDocuments, iManage Cloud, Clio or a properly structured SharePoint.
- A law firm backup must cover the file store, email, the practice management database and every workstation, keep copies that ransomware cannot alter, and be restored as a test on a schedule.
- E-discovery infrastructure for a firm your size means being able to preserve, collect, hold and hand off data cleanly; the review platform itself is usually rented per matter from a vendor.
- Litigation holds and retention are configured inside Microsoft 365 or Google Workspace and should be set up before you need them, not on the day a hold letter arrives.
Who sets up document management and backup for a Dallas law firm?
I do. I am Anthony Omini, the owner of Cross River Tech in Dallas, and setting up document management, backups and the infrastructure behind e-discovery is a large part of the work I do for law firms in Dallas. You do not need a national legal-technology vendor or a big managed service provider with a ticket queue to get this right. You need someone who understands how a firm actually works: matters, not projects; privilege, not just permissions; a partner who wants the file open before the client walks in.
Here is the short version of what a firm needs, and the rest of this article explains each piece. First, one place where matter documents live, organized by client and matter, searchable, with permissions that follow the firm's conflicts and ethical walls. Second, a backup that copies that store, your email, your practice management data and every laptop somewhere a criminal cannot reach, and that has been proven to restore. Third, for litigation practices, a way to preserve and collect email and files under a hold, store large productions, and hand data to a review vendor or opposing counsel without it going out over an unencrypted link.
I plan it with you, I build it, and if you want I keep running it under a month-to-month managed IT agreement. Onsite in Dallas–Fort Worth by appointment, remote for everything that can be done remotely, which is most of it. If you would rather just talk it through, contact me and describe how your files are stored today.
What does document management actually mean for a small firm?
Document management is the answer to one question: when an associate needs the signed engagement letter for the Hernandez matter, how long does it take to find, and are you sure it is the final version? A shared folder on a server or in Dropbox answers "it depends" to both. A document management system (a DMS) answers "seconds" and "yes", because every document is filed against a client and matter number, versions are tracked, and full-text search covers everything including scanned PDFs.
For firms under about thirty people I see four realistic options, and I support all of them:
- NetDocuments or iManage Cloud: purpose-built legal DMS platforms. Matter-centric, strong ethical walls, email filing from Outlook, audit trails. The most capable choice and the most expensive per user.
- Clio or MyCase document storage: if you already run your practice on one of these, its built-in document module is often enough for a transactional or family-law practice. I cover the IT side of that in IT support for Clio, MyCase and other legal software.
- Microsoft SharePoint and OneDrive, structured properly: one site per practice group, a document library per matter created from a template, metadata for client and matter number, retention labels. Cheapest if you already pay for Microsoft 365. It only works if someone enforces the structure, which is part of what I do.
- An on-premises file server with Worldox or a similar product: still common in older Dallas firms. Workable, but every piece of it, the server, the software, the backup, is yours to maintain and replace.
What I will not recommend is "a shared drive with a folder for each client". It is free and it is where most of the data-loss stories I hear begin: a paralegal drags the whole Litigation folder into Archive by accident, nobody notices for a week, and the backup has since overwritten the good copy.
Should your files live on a server, in the cloud, or both?
The honest answer is that most small Dallas firms should be cloud-first for documents and email, and keep a local copy only as a backup or for very large scan and video collections. Here is how I weigh it.
| Question | On-premises server | Cloud DMS or SharePoint |
|---|---|---|
| Works from home, court, a client's office | Only through a VPN, which attorneys tend to fight with | Yes, from any device you approve |
| Who replaces failed hardware | You, on your schedule and your dollar | The provider, invisibly |
| Ransomware exposure | High if one laptop gets infected and has a mapped drive | Lower, and version history usually gives you a clean copy |
| Very large files (deposition video, imaging) | Fast on the office network | Slower to open, and storage adds up |
| Ethical walls and per-matter permissions | Possible but manual | Built in on legal DMS platforms |
| Backup responsibility | Entirely yours | Still yours: the provider protects its platform, not your deleted files |
That last row surprises people. Microsoft and Google keep their services running; they do not promise to recover a matter folder an ex-employee deleted six weeks ago. A separate backup of your cloud data is not optional for a law firm, and I set one up as part of every engagement of this kind.
A hybrid setup, cloud DMS plus a small local NAS for bulky media, is what I most often end up building for litigation firms in Dallas. The NAS is cheap, sits in the IT closet, and is itself backed up offsite.
What does a law firm backup have to do?
A backup that has never been restored is a hope, not a backup. When I build one for a law firm, it has to pass every item on this list:
- Cover everything that matters. The document store, whether that is a server, SharePoint or NetDocuments. Email in Microsoft 365 or Google Workspace, including deleted items and shared mailboxes. The practice management or accounting database. Every laptop, because attorneys keep drafts on the desktop no matter what the policy says.
- Keep three copies on two kinds of storage with one offsite. Local copy for fast restores, cloud copy for disasters. If the office in Downtown Dallas floods, the cloud copy is the firm.
- Be immutable. At least one copy must be written so that nobody, including an administrator whose password was stolen, can change or delete it for a set number of days. This is what defeats ransomware that hunts for backups before it encrypts anything.
- Retain long enough. Retention for a law firm is a question you answer with your malpractice carrier and the applicable rules; I then configure the backup to keep versions for that long. Sixty days is not a legal retention policy.
- Prove it. I run a test restore on a schedule, pull a random matter folder and a random mailbox back, and tell you the result. If you have never seen a restore report from your current IT provider, ask for one this week.
The tools I use for this are ordinary business backup products for servers and workstations plus a dedicated Microsoft 365 or Google Workspace backup service. Nothing exotic. The value is in the configuration and the testing, not the brand. The wider picture of how backup fits into protecting the firm is in cybersecurity, backup and disaster recovery.
What is e-discovery infrastructure for a firm your size?
When a Dallas litigation firm asks me for help with e-discovery infrastructure, they usually do not need a review platform built in the office. Relativity, Everlaw, DISCO, Logikcull and similar tools are rented per matter and hosted by the vendor. What the firm needs is everything around that platform, and that is the part that goes wrong.
Here is what I actually set up:
- Preservation. The ability to place a litigation hold on your own email and files when the firm itself, or a client whose Microsoft 365 you help administer, receives a hold notice. In Microsoft 365 this is a configured feature, not a habit; if it is not turned on in advance, deleted mail is gone.
- Collection. Exporting mailboxes, OneDrive and SharePoint content in a form a vendor can load, with hash values so the collection can be shown to be unaltered. I document what was collected, when and from where.
- Storage. Productions from opposing parties arrive as hard drives and multi-gigabyte downloads. They need a home that is backed up, permissioned to the trial team and not on someone's laptop. This is where the local NAS earns its keep.
- Secure transfer. A firm-controlled way to send and receive large files with encryption and an expiry date, instead of consumer file-sharing links. Microsoft 365 and Google Workspace can both be configured for this without buying another product.
- Workstation capacity. Paralegals reviewing native files and video need machines with enough memory and a second monitor. Slow review hours are billed hours, and clients notice.
What I do not do is give legal advice about what must be preserved or produced. Your obligations under the Texas Rules of Civil Procedure and the federal rules are yours and your litigation support vendor's to interpret. My job is to make sure that when you decide something must be held, collected or handed over, the technology can do it cleanly and you can show how it was done.
How do litigation holds and retention work in Microsoft 365 and Google Workspace?
Most Dallas firms I meet run Microsoft 365, a smaller number run Google Workspace, and in both cases the retention and hold tools are sitting unused on a license the firm already pays for.
In Microsoft 365, the Purview compliance area lets me create retention policies (keep all mail and files for a set period regardless of what users delete), retention labels (keep this matter's documents for a set period after it closes), and litigation holds on specific mailboxes and OneDrive accounts. Once a hold is on, a user can press delete all day and the content stays in a hidden folder an administrator can search and export. Business Premium and the E3 tier include enough of this for a small firm; some advanced features need an add-on, and I will tell you which before you buy.
In Google Workspace, Vault does the same job: retention rules, holds on specific users or organizational units, search and export. It requires the Business Plus tier or above, which is worth knowing before a hold letter arrives and you discover the firm is on Business Starter.
Either way, the order of work is the same. I sit with the managing partner or office manager, write down what the firm wants kept and for how long, configure it, test that a deleted message is really recoverable, and document the settings so a future auditor, or a future IT person, can see what was done. This ties directly into the confidentiality work described in law firm cybersecurity and client confidentiality, because the same admin accounts that control holds are the ones that must be protected with multi-factor authentication. I handle the platform side of both under Microsoft 365 and Google Workspace support.
How I set this up for a firm
Every firm is a little different, but the shape of the project is consistent enough that I can describe it.
- A conversation, usually an hour. How many attorneys and staff, what practice areas, where documents live today, what practice management software you use, whether anyone works from home, and whether you have ever had to produce your own email. No sales deck.
- A written plan. One or two pages: what platform, how matters will be structured, what gets backed up where, what retention will be set, what it will cost per month in licenses and what my time will be. You can hand this to a partner meeting.
- Migration, done in stages. I move closed matters first, then active ones by practice group, usually over evenings and a weekend so nobody loses a working day. Old locations become read-only, not deleted, until everyone is comfortable.
- Backup and retention, before go-live. The backup of the new platform runs and is test-restored before the last user moves. Holds and retention are configured the same week.
- Training, short and specific. Fifteen minutes per group on filing an email to a matter and finding a document. Not a webinar.
- Ongoing. Under a managed agreement I keep watching the backup, add and remove users as staff change, and the "I cannot find the file" calls come to me and my team, not a ticket queue; you call, and you get an answer.
What does it cost?
Three cost lines, and I keep them separate so you can see what you are paying for.
Software licenses. These go to the vendor, not to me, and I do not mark them up. A legal DMS such as NetDocuments or iManage Cloud is priced per user per month and is the largest line for most firms. A Microsoft 365 or Google Workspace backup service is a few dollars per user per month. SharePoint-based document management costs nothing beyond the Microsoft 365 licenses you already hold.
Project work. If you want the setup done as a one-time project with no ongoing agreement, I bill it at my hourly break/fix rates: $100 per hour remote and $150 per hour onsite during business hours, with a one-hour minimum. I will estimate the hours in the written plan so there are no surprises.
Ongoing support. If you would rather have it all covered, including monitoring the backup, managing users and unlimited remote support, that is my managed IT service, billed per user or per device, month to month, cancel anytime. I quote it after the first conversation rather than publishing a number, because a four-attorney transactional firm and a fifteen-person litigation shop with a review team are not the same amount of work. For context only, small business managed IT in the Dallas market is commonly quoted somewhere around $100 to $175 per user per month; that is a typical market range, not my price list. More on how to read quotes is in pricing.
Mistakes I see in Dallas law firms, and how to avoid them
These come up over and over, and every one of them is avoidable.
- Assuming Microsoft or Google is the backup. They keep the lights on; they do not restore the folder an ex-paralegal emptied before she left. Back up the cloud.
- A backup nobody has ever restored. Ask your current provider for the date of the last test restore. Silence is an answer.
- Turning on litigation hold the day the letter arrives. By then the deleted items from last month are gone. Configure retention now.
- Productions on a laptop. A ten-gigabyte production sitting on one associate's machine is one spilled coffee from a sanctions motion. Give it a permissioned, backed-up home.
- Sharing links that never expire. Consumer file-sharing links to client documents, forwarded and forgotten. Use the firm's own platform with expiring, password-protected links.
- A single admin password with a single holder. Usually a departed IT contractor. I document every credential in a password manager the managing partner controls.
If any of these describe your firm, the fix is smaller than you might think. Tell me how your documents are stored today and I will tell you, honestly, what I would change first and what can wait. Start at contact, or read how I generally work with Dallas law firms.
Questions people ask
Do I need a legal DMS like NetDocuments, or is SharePoint enough for a small firm?
For a firm under ten people with mostly transactional work, a well-structured SharePoint with matter libraries, metadata and retention labels is usually enough and costs nothing beyond Microsoft 365. Litigation firms, firms with ethical-wall needs, and firms that file a lot of email to matters tend to get real value from NetDocuments or iManage. I will tell you which after seeing how you work, and I support both.
Is my data in Microsoft 365 or Google Workspace already backed up?
Not in the way a law firm needs. Microsoft and Google protect their platforms against their own failures, and they keep deleted items for a limited window, but they do not promise to recover files or mail a user deleted months ago. A separate backup service for your Microsoft 365 or Google Workspace data, with its own retention, is a standard part of any setup I build for a firm.
Can you run e-discovery review software in my office?
I can, but I usually advise against it for a small or mid-sized firm. Review platforms such as Relativity, Everlaw and DISCO are hosted by the vendor and rented per matter. What I build is everything around them: litigation holds, defensible collection and export, secure storage for productions, encrypted transfer, and workstations that can handle review work. That is where firms actually run into trouble.
How long does it take to move a firm onto a document management system?
For a firm of five to twenty people, plan on two to four weeks from the first conversation to the last user working in the new system. Most of the moving happens on evenings and a weekend so nobody loses a working day. Old locations stay available as read-only for a while so people can check they have what they need before anything is retired.
Will you give me legal advice on retention or what to preserve?
No. What must be kept, for how long, and what must be preserved under a hold are questions for you, your malpractice carrier and your litigation support vendor. I handle the technical side: configuring retention and holds exactly as you decide, proving they work, documenting the settings, and making sure collection and transfer can be shown to be clean.
Do you work with law firms outside Dallas?
Yes. Almost all of this work is done remotely, so I support firms anywhere in Texas. Onsite visits, for example to install a NAS or set up a new server closet, are by appointment across the Dallas–Fort Worth metroplex. Remote support is available 24/7, including holidays, with after-hours rates for work outside business hours.
Sources and further reading
Market price ranges in this article are my own observation of quotes in the Dallas market, not a published survey. Where I state a rule or a standard, the source is linked above.
