Guides

What IT support costs a small law firm in Florida

Here is the short answer: a small law firm working with IT First Response pays $125 per hour for help as needed, $60 per user per month to keep the protection running with support billed hourly, or $125 per user per month for a managed plan that includes the day-to-day support. This guide explains what each one buys, where the line between them falls, and what to ask any provider before you sign, because most will not show you a number until you sit through a sales call.

The three ways law firms pay for IT

Hourly, when something breaks. You call when there is a problem and pay for the time it takes to fix it. Our commercial rate is $125 per hour with a one-hour minimum, including Microsoft 365 and Azure work. For a firm that genuinely breaks two or three times a year, this is the cheapest option on the page, and we will tell you so rather than sell you a plan you do not need.

The catch is what hourly does not include. Between calls, nobody is watching your backups, applying patches, or noticing that an account was signed into from somewhere it should not be. And when something does break, the person triaging it is usually whoever at the firm is least busy, which at most small firms means a paralegal or an attorney. A firm sells time. An attorney spending an afternoon on a printer costs the firm more than the printer did.

Protection without a retainer. Essentials is $60 per user per month. The monitoring, patching, antivirus and ransomware protection, backup, account management, and email authentication all come with it, and when you need a person you pay $125 per hour for the time you actually use. It closes the gap above, which is that nothing happens between calls, without buying support hours a quiet office may never touch.

A managed plan with the hours included. Managed IT turns the whole thing into a fixed line item. You pay per person, the routine protection is automated, and day-to-day problems go to us instead of interrupting billable work. This is the model most providers sell as managed IT or managed services, and it is the model the rest of this guide prices out.

How much does managed IT cost for a small law firm?

This is the actual plan card from our pricing page, not an example. Slide the seat count to your firm and the math updates.

What does a five-person firm actually pay?

Take a firm with two attorneys, two paralegals, and an office manager. On Managed IT, five users at $125 comes to $625 per month, and the firm has five pooled support hours each month for day-to-day issues during business hours. The pool belongs to the firm, not to individuals, so it does not matter whether one person uses all five hours or five people use one each, and it resets at the start of each billing month. Getting the five machines and accounts under management is a one-time $150 per user, $750 total, and that fee is waived if the firm chooses an annual term.

The same firm on Essentials pays $300 per month, and onboarding is the same $150 per user, $750 total, also waived on an annual term. It is the same because the setup work is the same: the machines, accounts, backup and mail records all get built either way. The protection is identical. What is missing is the pooled time, so every support call is billed at $125 per hour. A quiet month with no calls costs $300. A month with two hours of help costs $550, still less than the managed plan. A month with four hours costs $800, and the managed plan would have been the cheaper choice.

On either plan, the same work sits outside the monthly fee: on-site visits, after-hours work, and projects such as an office move or a migration, all billed at $125 per hour. Projects are quoted up front so you approve the number before the work starts, and we will always tell you before anything moves into billable territory.

Where the line between the two plans falls

The gap between the plans is $65 per user per month, and an hour of support costs $125. Divide one by the other and the answer does not depend on the size of the firm: if your office uses more than about half an hour of support per person per month, Managed IT costs less. Below that, Essentials plus hourly does. For the five-person firm above, the line sits at 2.6 hours a month.

Most offices have no idea which side of that line they are on, and that is a reasonable place to start from. Begin on Essentials, watch the hourly invoices for a quarter, and move up if they keep landing above the line. We would rather move you to the plan that costs you less than watch you overpay for hours you never use.

How to compare quotes from other providers

If you take nothing else from this page, take the questions. Any managed IT quote should be able to answer these in writing:

• •What is covered by the monthly fee, and what is billed on top? The gap between those two lists is where surprise invoices live.
• •Is there a seat minimum or a multi-year commitment? Many providers are built for offices of twenty seats and up, and a five-person firm ends up paying for a helpdesk sized for someone else.
• •Who actually answers when we call? A named person, a queue, or an offshore desk are three very different products at the same price.
• •Will you put the price on your website? If the answer is no, ask why the number changes depending on who is asking.