Information Exchange between Lawyers and Clients

Excellent legal service and competent lawyers is what a successful law firm is made of. But, these are not adequate if there is no proper coordination between lawyers and clients. Day to day process on a law firm usually involves a lot of information exchange and it is important to have a system to quickly access and convey information. It is also crucial to keep information that goes in and out of the firm confidential, organized and secured. All of these can be attained with the use of the following:

• Call Forwarding – clients can easily reach a lawyer by allowing the office phone system to access all of the phone numbers configured on the call forwarding feature.
• Internet Fax – one of the reliable tools not only for law firms but also for every business. Transmitting documents the fast and secure way is more probable with this technology rather than utilizing an old fax machine. Law firms can assure a reliable exchange of information between them and their clients since internet faxing does not rely on PSTN (Public Switched Telephone Networks).
• Voicemail – law firms may not be opened 24 hours a day but their phone system is. Phone calls from clients can be unexpected anytime of the day and even during sleeping hours. But, that does not prevent information from being conveyed since unattended calls are taken care of by allowing callers to leave important messages on the voicemail inbox. Modern phone systems can even notify the user that a new message has arrived via SMS or e-mail alerts.

Collaboration Tools for Law Firms

In general, law firm practice and services are facing a big challenge when they start to think about the assumption of the collaboration tools to utilize. Latest methods for delivering such service have resulted in coining new terms such as Electronic Discovery 2.0, Law 2.0 and the Web 2.0. These are important terms that indicates new processes being innovated and used for the deliverance of legal services that takes advantage of today’s information technology and modern telecommunication.

To equip lawyers with collaboration tools means to eliminate geographic barriers which enable them to effectively represent their clients’ case wherever they maybe. Technology has led to the transition of law firms into today’s virtual law firms:

• IM (Instant Messaging) – an online form of real-time communication that is text-based.
• Internet Fax – allows the sending and receiving of faxes via the internet.
• Intranet – an internal website for an organization that used for secure sharing of private information.
• KMS (Knowledge Management System) – an IT (Information Technology) based system used by different companies for capturing, creating, distributing, sharing or storing of information.
• Open-Source Software – software or an application that are available at no cost to any business.
• P2P (Peer to Peer) Network – a network of computers that are connected directly to the internet. This eliminates the requirements of web servers or web host to access the internet.
• Packet Sniffer – software utility used for the purpose of capturing, intercepting or logging of data on a network.
• PBX (Private Branch eXchange) – phone system for serving the communication requirements of a business.
• Social Networking – web services that allow the creation of an online community profile in order to make friends, promotion, share information or to socialize. Among the popular social networking sites are Facebook and Twitter.
• SQL (Structured Query Language) – programming language used for modifying, managing or querying of information on a database. Popular free SQL are MySQL and PostgreSQL.
• SSL (Secure Socket Layers) – protocol that provides secure communication over the network.
• Virtual Phone Extension – phone system feature that allows an extension to be assigned to any number.
• VNC (Virtual Network Computing) – graphical system for remotely sharing the computer desktop through the internet or network.
• VoIP (Voice Over Internet Protocol) – a protocol that transmit voice via the internet.

Fax Over Internet for Low Cost Faxing

For the past decade, faxing has greatly evolved by merging with computer, internet and mobile technology. With the use of fax applications and the web, fax transmission has now become much easier, more efficient, and economical. Fax over internet now allows the sending and receiving of faxes globally. An estimate of about million of pages gets faxed all over the world every year with the use of this modern day fax transmission.

Internet fax is also known as IP (Internet Protocol) fax. IP fax uses the same operational concept as the traditional fax machine but instead utilizes the mechanism of the internet whenever it send or receive a document. But, it is not limited to it since IP fax is also capable of sending/receiving a fax that passes through the phone network.

The world of faxing is continuously being developed even if it is already technologically advanced. At present, some of the studies being made are on enhanced protocol, improved transmission, intelligent fax software and IP-enabled internet fax machine.

When compared with a traditional faxing method, the cost of faxing via internet is 50 to 70 percent cheaper when faxing internationally. Moreover, this present day method of faxing is so simple that it can utilize come in the form of an e-mail when broadcasting a fax. This faxing methodology is so flexible that it can be used in different ways: email-to-fax, fax-to-email, computer-to-fax, fax-to-computer and fax-to-fax.

800 toll free providers have now included this faxing capability with an added support for fax-on-demand as a feature of their toll free service in order to meet the growing communication demands of every business.

The Internet Fax Service Capabilities

The traditional fax is slowly being superseded by the more technologically advanced internet fax. With more than a decade of dominating fax transmission, the traditional fax machines will soon be replaced in the future with Internet fax as the standard way of doing business fax operations.

While it offers some of the fax machine's characteristics such as sending and receiving of facsimiles, this modern fax alternative is offering more than what its predecessor can provide. Take for example the ability to send and receive a fax anywhere in the world. Not so impressive right? Because a traditional fax can do the same feat. How about sending and receiving of a fax via internet 

anywhere in the world. Unimpressive? How about sending and receiving of a fax via internet anywhere in the world through an email account?

This modern fax service utilize the power of the internet. It allows users to access a fax using a PC. That's not all. A user is also not limited to the confinement of the office premises. This is because an internet-enabled device and an online account makes simultaneous sending and receiving of faxes possible while on the go or on a business travel.

Internet fax service providers even made it more innovative by allowing users to edit, create and sign faxes digitally with the use of a free fax software. This fax software can be easily installed on a PC and allows seamless integration with Microsoft Office applications such as Word, Excel, Outlook, etc.

Today, more companies are switching to this better alternative because it helps in saving for the cost of electricity and telephone bills. For this new method of faxing does not need any additional hardware, paper, ink and toner to continue its operation. Aside from cost savings, internet faxing also helps in ensuring that all documents are kept confidential and safe in the email inbox.