Tech Savvy Cost Reductions

Florida commercial litigation lawyer Marc Dobin wrote an informative article for law.com on cost saving tech solutions for smaller firms.

Starting with securing a firm's web presence, Dobin recommends GoDaddy.com, which offers domain name registration, very low cost web hosting, and has tremendous customer service to assist the novices.

While GoDaddy also offers adequate, free website templates, Dobin points to justia.net for the free version of their search engine optimized websites specifically for law firms. According to the article: "It is a template-based, form-based, legal-specific website, but is very professional looking and has good SEO. It is probably 75 percent of what I would want with a website with 0 percent of the cost."

For the firm's blog, he utilized the free Google product blogger.com, and then he registered his blog's domain name to protect against domain name poachers.

For email he turned to another Google product at Google Business Solutions that provides email accounts that function just like Gmail accounts -- but they also allow a firm to use their registered domain name.

The Google Business email accounts also have POP3 access, so IPhones and BlackBerries can access the mailbox.

Rather than a land-line fax, Dobin highlights unityfax.com -- a site that allows you to send and receive faxes (using a traditional fax number) via the web or email. For only $4.99 a month for unlimited inbound faxes, it is cheaper than a fax line and you can keep your fax number permanently (in fact, they can even port your existing fax number).

Dobin explains the way unityfax operates: "The faxes are sent to an e-mail address that can then forward them, using a Google Mail filter, to any user on the domain." And because the faxes are received as PDFs, they can be read on your computer or smartphone.

And for document delivery, he recommends yousendit.com, which allows password protected large volume delivery of electronic documents. You can send up to 2 GB of files in a password protected zip folder for $3.99, which is a significant savings over Fed-Exing hard copies.

As every legacy form of communication and marketing now offers a digital complement or alternative, Mr. Dobin underscores the advantage enjoyed by the technologically savvy.