Law Firm Operations
The complete technology stack for NZ law firms
A practical breakdown of the technology categories every New Zealand law firm relies on — from practice management to cybersecurity.
Most NZ law firms rely on 15–40 distinct systems to operate. Very few have a single view of them all.
Practice management
The system of record for matters, clients, time and billing. Common in NZ: OneLaw, Actionstep, LEAP, Smokeball.
Document management
Where the firm's documents actually live. NetDocuments, iManage, SharePoint or a shared file system.
Accounting and trust
General accounting (typically Xero) plus a compliant trust accounting solution. Trust accounting has specific NZ Law Society obligations.
Communication
Phone (traditional or cloud), email hosting, video conferencing, secure client messaging.
Cybersecurity
Endpoint protection, backup and recovery, MFA, email filtering. Increasingly a Law Society expectation.
Cloud platform
Where email, documents and workloads sit — commonly Microsoft 365 or Google Workspace.
The visibility gap
Very few firms can answer, in one place:
- What systems do we actually use?
- Who owns each one internally?
- When does each renew?
- What are we paying?
- What happens on the day one supplier fails?
Start with the NZ Law Firm Technology Stack Checklist, then move to a proper register in AvenorOps.