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TECH SUPPORT Protecting the mail Neither snow, nor rain, nor heat, nor gloom of server outages should keep lawyers from their e-mail, and law firms are now putting protections in place to ensure service continuity. BY GERRY BLACKWE LL T en years ago, e-mail was still rel- atively newfangled. Today it's an essential business communica- tions tool — especially for law- yers. Which is why Calgary-based Ma- cleod Dixon LLP decided a few years ago to take extraordinary measures in protecting access to e-mail. The firm now subscribes to an e- mail continuity service from Austin, Texas-based MessageOne Inc.: EMS Continuity. If Macleod Dixon's own mail system — a Microsoft Exchange server — goes down, MessageOne's web-based service takes over, allowing users to continue sending and receiv- ing mail with little or no interruption. Web-based continuity services are one of two basic approaches to pro- tecting e-mail. The other is installing a second server, either on the same site or a remote site. The second server maintains an exact image of the pri- mary mail server and takes over when the primary server goes down. Both approaches have advantages and dis- advantages. Electronic mail is now the principal way lawyers communicate with clients to maintain and build relationships and deliver work product, notes Mel McEvoy, Macleod Dixon's manager of information systems. Not having ac- cess can have "huge impacts" on their productivity, and could result in lost business — if a lawyer failed to re- spond to a client request because she didn't receive a message, for example. Even a relatively short-term disruption could effect the bottom line and dam- age client relationships," McEvoy says. "So we see e-mail as one of the most mission-critical applications for us. And we want to take proper care of that [system] and make sure it's maintained and operational 24/7." Macleod Dixon's Exchange server, located in Calgary, hosts mailboxes for about 550 lawyers and support staff in the firm's six offices, including four overseas. Its hard drives store 75 days' worth of messages, typically about 400 GB. Older messages are archived. The firm also has a BlackBerry Enterprise Server connected to Exchange that re- lays messages to the BlackBerry PDAs that about 180 Macleod Dixon lawyers carry. Like e-mail in general, BlackBer- ries have become essential tools. What could go wrong? Natural and man-made disasters: flood, fire, terrorist attack, power grid failure — anything that takes out the entire facility. But the server itself, hardware or software, can also fail. Data can become corrupted with mes- sages ending up garbled or missing. Even, on occasion, administrative staff www. C ANADIAN Law ye rmag.com JANU AR Y 2008 25 MATT MIGNANELLI