The complete technology stack for NZ law firms

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?

Infrastructure

Internet connectivity, hosting and DNS — the layer everything else quietly depends on.

Why the operational view matters

Each system is also a supplier, a contract and a renewal date. Managed separately, they drift. Managed together in a technology stack register, the firm keeps one clear operational view.

Start with the NZ Law Firm Technology Stack Checklist, then move to a proper register in AvenorOps.