The SRA does not prescribe specific technologies. It requires firms to maintain effective systems and controls, safeguard client money and assets, protect confidentiality, keep accurate records and manage risk proportionately. That is deliberately outcome-focused, which means the burden of demonstrating adequacy sits with your firm.

We translate those outcomes into configuration and evidence. Access controls are matched to your confidentiality and information-barrier requirements. Systems supporting the SRA Accounts Rules are protected and backed up, with accounting records retained for the periods the Rules require. Security posture is documented continuously rather than reconstructed annually. Incident response procedures exist in writing and get tested, because the SRA's thematic work has repeatedly flagged firms with no documented process.

Your COLP and COFA remain accountable — that never transfers to us. Our role is to ensure that when they are asked how the firm protects client data and client money, the answer is already documented.

Yes. We support the platforms UK firms actually run, including practice and case management systems such as LEAP, Clio, Proclaim, Osprey and IRIS, legal accounting packages, digital dictation, and document management systems including iManage and NetDocuments.

Two points are worth being straight about. First, we are your IT partner rather than the software vendor: for deep application-level configuration we work alongside your provider's support team and coordinate escalations, so nobody leaves your firm passing between them. Managing that relationship is part of our service.

Second, the integration layer is where most problems actually live — single sign-on, email filing into matters, document syncing, permissions mapping between your DMS and Microsoft 365. That is squarely our responsibility, and it is where firms feel the difference between a specialist and a generalist.

If you are considering a migration or platform change, we will advise on the IT implications before you commit rather than afterwards.

This is the dominant financial threat to UK law firms, and it is worth understanding the mechanics. An attacker compromises a mailbox — usually through phishing or credential stuffing — then watches quietly. When a completion approaches, they intervene with amended bank details. Individual incidents have cleared six-figure sums from client accounts.

Technical controls address the first stage: enforced MFA, conditional access, credential monitoring, and alerting on the behaviours that indicate compromise — impossible-travel logins, new mailbox forwarding rules, unusual delegation. Our SOC monitors these continuously, not only in business hours. Properly enforced DMARC, DKIM and SPF then make it substantially harder to spoof your domain to clients or the other side.

But technology alone does not close this. The decisive control is procedural: a firm rule that bank details are never accepted or amended by email without verbal verification on an independently sourced number. We will help you implement and train it, though the discipline has to be yours.

There is no rule requiring law firms to hold Cyber Essentials. In practice, though, the five technical controls it covers are close to the minimum needed to deliver against the SRA's expectations, and the SRA itself points firms towards the scheme as a practical baseline.

The commercial pressures are increasingly what drive the decision. A growing number of professional indemnity insurers now ask about certification at renewal, some price accordingly, and cyber sub-limits and exclusions have tightened across the market in recent years. The Legal Aid Agency mandates certification for criminal legal aid contracts. Corporate clients and lender panels increasingly ask during onboarding.

The process itself tends to be valuable regardless of the badge, because it surfaces inconsistent patching, weak account management and device control gaps firms did not know they had. We support firms through Cyber Essentials and Cyber Essentials Plus, and can advise on whether Lexcel, CQS or ISO 27001 alignment makes sense.

Speed matters, and so does sequence. Our SOC monitors continuously, so indicators of compromise are triaged rather than sitting unread until Monday morning.

On confirmation, we contain: isolating affected devices, revoking sessions and tokens, forcing credential resets, removing malicious mailbox rules and closing the entry route. In parallel we preserve evidence properly, because premature clean-up destroys the forensic trail your firm later needs for its own investigation, for the regulator and for any insurance claim.

We then support your reporting decisions rather than making them. Personal data breaches meeting the threshold generally require ICO notification within 72 hours; serious incidents, particularly those involving client money, will usually need reporting to the SRA; and your PI insurer will have its own conditions, where late notification can prejudice cover. Those calls belong to your COLP, COFA and insurers. Our job is to give them accurate technical facts quickly, plus a written timeline, root cause analysis and remediation plan.

Specialist support for legal practices broadly runs from around £50 to £120 per user per month, with most established firms landing in the middle of that range. The spread is wide because the label covers materially different things.

The main cost drivers are security depth (a managed SOC costs considerably more than endpoint protection alone), support hours, the number and complexity of legal applications you run, whether you still hold on-premise infrastructure, and how much compliance evidence and accreditation support you need.

Be cautious of quotes priced for the general SME market. They are built for organisations without regulatory obligations, and the gap tends to appear as out-of-scope charges precisely when you are least able to argue. It is also worth setting cost against exposure: a day of firm-wide downtime has a calculable cost in lost fee-earning time. Our pricing is a fixed monthly fee with scope defined clearly in advance.

Response times are agreed upfront in your service level agreement rather than left to goodwill, and we set them with your firm's actual pressure points in mind. A completion day, a court filing deadline or a bundle going out are not moments for a queue position.

Our service desk operates 8am to 6pm from our London office with 24/7 wrap-around cover, and most issues are resolved remotely. Because we allocate a named account manager and a consistent engineering team, your people speak to someone who already knows your environment rather than explaining it from scratch.

We also track the recurring friction firms tend to tolerate — the slow document open, the weekly printer failure, the login that drops at court. Removing those permanently is usually worth more billable time than any single fast fix.

Yes. We support multi-site firms, hybrid teams and solicitors working from home, court or client premises under a single managed arrangement, with security controls applied consistently rather than varying by location.

This is an area where we differ from most London-focused providers. Northern Star already acts as the European IT arm for multinational organisations, delivering local support in line with standards set by a head office elsewhere. Fragmented arrangements across jurisdictions create inconsistent controls and gaps that are difficult to explain to a regulator, an insurer or a corporate client running supplier due diligence.

Practically, we combine a central service desk with scheduled on-site embedded days at satellite offices, so smaller locations receive the same standard as your main office. Your account manager coordinates across sites, keeping visibility with your firm.

Both arrangements work. Plenty of firms have a capable IT manager stretched across user support, security, projects and supplier management. A co-managed model lets you decide the split — many clients keep firm-facing systems in-house and hand us out-of-hours cover, SOC monitoring and specialist project work, which also provides continuity when someone is on leave or leaves altogether.

Switching is generally less disruptive than firms expect. Most Northern Star clients are onboarded within two to four weeks, and a well-planned transition should not require downtime beyond agreed maintenance windows.

We begin with a full audit: systems, licences, suppliers, security posture, documentation and the undocumented arrangements that always exist. We then agree a transition plan with defined milestones, running in parallel with your incumbent where possible. Administrative credentials are transferred and rotated securely, the outgoing provider's access is removed and confirmed, and the handover is documented for your risk register.