Law Offices have fires - Some have online storage

Several legal offices have been victims of fires recently. How they recover may depend on how their computer data is backed up.

The National Law Journal (NLJ) recently profiled the story of Dan Hurst. This criminal lawyer lost everything in his law office when a Feb. 2 fire ravaged a row of historic buildings located behind Texas' Smith County Courthouse. In addition to losing all paper documents, his computer data was destroyed. Yes, he had performed a backup. His words, as quoted by the NLJ, "Everything I had on my computer is lost," he says. "I backed [the data] up like you're supposed to, but I left the backup disk in my office. I was thinking computer crash, not fire."

Another fire occurred recently at the Maricopa County Bar Association in Phoenix. According to The Arizona Republic, "The county Bar's computer server was also destroyed, but the company has a Web-based database (DataPreserve) that stores all of their important information regarding members."