IT support for solo attorneys and small law offices in Dallas

Who handles IT for a solo attorney or small law office in Dallas?

I do, and I think a small, owner-led IT company is the right shape of help for a one-attorney or boutique law practice. I am Anthony Omini, the owner of Cross River Tech in Dallas and the person you deal with. Solo practitioners and firms of two to fifteen people are the core of my law firm IT work, and they are the clients a large managed service provider serves worst, because a firm with four users is not worth a big provider's attention and gets the newest help-desk hire on every call.

The short answer to "who should a small Dallas law office call for IT" is this: someone who will know your setup personally, who answers the phone himself, who charges either by the hour with no contract or a flat month-to-month fee you can cancel, and who has done enough legal work to know what Clio is, why you cannot just email a client a file from your personal Gmail, and why the practice grinds to a halt when the one printer in the office goes offline.

Most of what a small firm needs I can do remotely, which keeps the cost down. When something has to be done in person, a new workstation, a network problem, moving into a new suite, I come out by appointment anywhere in Dallas–Fort Worth. If you want to skip the reading and just tell me what is going on, contact me; the first conversation is free and I will tell you honestly whether you need ongoing help or a couple of hours.

What does a solo or boutique law practice actually need from IT?

Less than the vendors say, and more than most solos have. When I first look at a small practice I check these eight things. If all eight are in place, you are in better shape than many firms three times your size.

1. One good business laptop (Dell or Lenovo business lines, not consumer models), with a docking station and two monitors at the desk. It should be replaced on a schedule, roughly every four years, not when it dies during trial prep.
2. Microsoft 365 Business Premium or Google Workspace on your firm's own domain. Not a personal Gmail, not the free tier. Business Premium in particular includes the security features a firm needs without buying anything else.
3. Practice management software such as Clio, MyCase, PracticePanther or Smokeball, set up so documents, calendar, billing and email are in one place. I cover the IT side in IT support for Clio, MyCase and other legal software.
4. A backup you have seen restored. The laptop, the cloud mailbox and the document store, copied somewhere separate, with a test restore on a schedule.
5. Multi-factor authentication on email, practice management and banking. This one setting stops most of the account takeovers I get called about.
6. A password manager so the firm's credentials are not in a notebook or a spreadsheet called passwords.xlsx.
7. Managed endpoint protection, which is antivirus that reports to someone who looks at it, plus email filtering for phishing.
8. A phone number that follows you. A cloud phone service so your office number rings your desk, your laptop and your cell, with voicemail to email. Small firms lose clients to voicemail more than to competitors.

Notice what is not on the list: a server. A solo or small firm in Dallas today almost never needs one. Everything above runs in the cloud, which means no IT closet, no hardware to replace and nothing to carry when you move suites.

Hourly or managed: which makes sense for a solo?

This is the question I get asked most by small firms, and the honest answer depends on two things: how stable your setup is, and what an hour of downtime costs you. Here is how the two models compare for a practice your size.

My advice to a true solo with a good setup is usually to start hourly. Let me do a one-time cleanup, a few hours to get the eight items above in place, and then call when you need me. When you hire your first associate or paralegal, or when you find yourself calling every month, the managed agreement becomes the cheaper option and you can switch without a new contract. The longer comparison is in hourly vs monthly IT support, and the hourly service itself is described at hourly IT support and break/fix.

What does affordable IT support for a small Dallas law firm really cost?

Affordable is a word every IT company uses, so let me put actual shapes on it for a firm of one to five people in Dallas.

Software you pay the vendors directly. Microsoft 365 Business Premium or Google Workspace at their published per-user prices. Practice management software at its published per-user price. A cloud backup for your mailbox and files, a few dollars per user per month. A cloud phone line per person. A password manager for the firm. Add it up and a solo attorney's entire software stack is commonly well under a hundred dollars a month, and I do not mark any of it up.

Hardware, roughly every four years. A business laptop, a dock and two monitors per person. Buy the business line, not the consumer one; the extra cost is repaid the first time the warranty matters.

My time. Either hourly at the rates above, or a flat monthly fee per user. For context, 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, and large providers often add a minimum of ten or more users, which is exactly why a boutique firm ends up paying for seats it does not have. I have no minimum user count. A two-person firm pays for two people.

What makes a small firm's IT expensive is not any of these lines. It is the unplanned day: the laptop that dies with the only copy of a brief, the mailbox taken over by a phisher who then emails your clients, the hours lost because nobody knows the Wi-Fi password after the last IT person left. Affordable IT is mostly about making that day not happen. The pricing page has the published rates and how I quote managed service.

The setup I recommend for a solo attorney

If you asked me to set up a solo practice in Dallas from nothing, this is what I would build, and why. It is the same setup whether you practice from a Class A tower in Uptown, a shared suite in North Dallas or a home office in Oak Cliff.

• Identity and email: Microsoft 365 Business Premium on your own domain, with multi-factor authentication enforced, conditional access so only your enrolled devices can sign in, and Defender's email filtering turned on. Google Workspace Business Plus is the equivalent if you prefer Google.
• Documents: either inside your practice management software or in a SharePoint site structured by client and matter, with version history and retention labels. Never a folder on the laptop alone.
• Backup: a Microsoft 365 or Google Workspace backup service for mail and documents, plus device backup for the laptop. Tested every quarter.
• Devices: one business laptop, enrolled in Intune so it is encrypted and can be wiped remotely if it is stolen from your car at the courthouse. A dock and two monitors at the desk.
• Phone: a cloud phone service with a Dallas number that rings the laptop app and your cell, with a professional voicemail greeting and voicemail-to-email.
• Client communication: a client portal through your practice management software or a secure sharing link with an expiry date, so you never attach a settlement agreement to an ordinary email.
• Scanning: a small desktop document scanner that sends straight to your document store. Solos live and die by the scanner.

This takes me a day or two to set up for a new practice, most of it remote, and after that it mostly runs itself. The security side of the same setup is described in law firm cybersecurity and client confidentiality.

What changes when your firm grows from one to five to fifteen?

Small firms grow in jumps, and each jump changes what IT should look like. Here is what I watch for.

One to three people. The solo setup above still works. The new items are shared calendars, a shared mailbox for intake, and permissions: the paralegal should see the matters she works on, not the managing attorney's personal folders. This is also when a password manager becomes non-negotiable, because now two people know the passwords.

Four to eight people. Onboarding and offboarding become regular events, and each one has a checklist: create the account, license it, enroll the laptop, add to the right groups; and in reverse, revoke access the same hour someone leaves. This is usually where a managed agreement becomes cheaper than hourly, because there is now steady work every month. You will also want a proper office network: a business firewall, a switch and Wi-Fi access points rather than the router the internet provider left, and if you are moving into a new suite, cabling done once and properly. That work is described under data cabling and IT room setup.

Nine to fifteen people. Now you have practice groups, ethical walls and a real document management question, covered in document management, backup and e-discovery for law firms. You may want written IT policies for your malpractice application and cyber insurance questionnaire. You still do not need a server, and you still do not need a big provider; a firm this size is comfortably within what a small, owner-led company that knows the setup can run well.

Why a small, owner-led IT company fits a boutique firm, and when it does not

I am open about the trade-offs, because a boutique firm choosing IT deserves the same honesty it gives its own clients.

Why it fits. You deal with me, and I know your practice, your software and your people; my team handles the routine monitoring and updates behind me. You never explain your setup twice. There is no ticket queue and nobody reading from a script. I prefer remote-first support because it is faster for you and cheaper than sending a van, and I come onsite when remote cannot solve it. Billing is by the hour with no contract, or per user month to month; either way there is nothing to get out of. Most of my legal clients came to me from a larger provider that was fine for the firm that referred them and wrong for a five-person office.

When it does not. If you need someone physically in your office every day, I am not that. If you have forty people across three cities and need a help desk staffed in shifts, a bigger provider is the right call, and I will say so. If your firm has to satisfy a client's vendor questionnaire that requires a provider with a compliance department and audited controls, that may rule out a small company like mine, in the same way it rules out a small firm like yours for some corporate legal work.

The full comparison is in a small IT company vs a big MSP. For a solo attorney or a boutique firm in Dallas, I think the answer is usually clear, but I would rather you decide with the trade-offs in front of you.

Security basics a small firm cannot skip

A solo practice holds the same kind of confidential material a large firm does, and attackers know a small firm is easier to get into. The good news is that the basics cost almost nothing beyond a few hours of setup.

• Multi-factor authentication everywhere. Email, practice management, bank, e-filing. If it has your clients' information in it, it needs a second factor.
• Encrypted devices. Every laptop encrypted and able to be wiped remotely. A stolen unencrypted laptop is a breach notification; a stolen encrypted one is a hardware expense.
• Email filtering and a habit of suspicion. Wire-fraud emails aimed at real estate and settlement transactions are the most common serious attack on small Texas firms I see. Verify payment instructions by phone, every time.
• A separate, tested backup. Ransomware on one laptop with a synced folder can encrypt the cloud copy too. Version history and a separate backup are what save you.
• Offboarding done the same day. When a paralegal leaves, her access ends that day, not when someone remembers.

None of this makes a firm hack-proof, and anyone who tells you otherwise is selling something. It does make you a much harder target than the firm down the hall, and it helps you answer the cyber insurance questionnaire honestly. I manage all of it under cybersecurity, backup and disaster recovery, and for a solo practice it is a couple of hours of setup and a quarterly check.

How to get started

Send me a short note through the contact page or call (214) 612-7080. Tell me how many people are in the practice, what software you run, and what prompted the call, whether that is a specific problem, a move, a new hire or just a feeling that nobody is really looking after this.

From there it goes one of two ways. If you have a specific problem, I fix it at the hourly rate and you are done. If you want the practice looked at properly, I do a short review, usually remote, and give you a one-page list of what is fine, what I would fix now and what can wait, with costs against each. You can act on that list with me, hourly or managed, or take it to anyone you like. Either way you will know where you stand, which is more than most small Dallas law offices can say about their IT today.

Questions people ask

Written and reviewed by

Anthony Omini, founder of Cross River Tech

Over 15 years in IT across many industries, now running Cross River Tech, a small owner-led managed IT company in Dallas. Every article is written from his own client work and checked by him before it is published.

Tell me about your practice How many people, what software, and what prompted the call. I will tell you honestly whether you need a couple of hours or ongoing help, and what either would cost.

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