The Oklahoma Bar Journal October 2026

not have to persuade the outgoing provider to release credentials the firm should already control. CHECK THE REST OF THE FIRM’S TECHNOLOGY Apply the same ownership and access review to the firm’s other essential systems: Telephone system: Who has administrative rights, and can the firm transfer its numbers to another provider? Practice management software: Who owns the account, and who can add or remove users? ness profiles: Does access depend on an employee’s personal account? Password manager: Who controls the business account, and what happens if that person leaves? Social media and busi

It controls more than the web site. It may also control the firm’s email addresses. If your firm uses addresses such as lawyer@yourlawfirm.com, a problem with the domain can potentially affect both the website and email. Find out where the domain is registered. Determine who is iden tified as the account holder, what email address is associated with the account, who receives security and password-reset notifications, whether the firm has login creden tials and who controls multi-factor authentication. Ideally, the account should be registered to the law firm and connected to an address the firm controls. A web designer, market ing company or IT provider may manage the domain for you. That does not mean the domain should belong to them.

LOOK AT MICROSOFT 365 OR GOOGLE WORKSPACE For many law firms, Microsoft 365 or Google Workspace have become the center of the office. Email, calendars, documents, cloud storage, video meetings and other functions may all depend on that environment. Yet lawyers sometimes have sur prisingly little information about how it is configured. Ask a simple question: Does the firm have its own administrative account? If the answer is, “Our IT company handles that,” ask again. There is nothing wrong with the IT com pany handling administration. The question is whether the firm could regain control if necessary. The firm should understand who owns the environment, who the administrators are and how emergency access would work. This matters especially when changing technology providers. The incoming provider should

OCTOBER 2026 | 87

THE OKLAHOMA BAR JOURNAL